Coburn’s plan is a joke of what needs to be done to get the economy and the country back on track fiscally. From raising the retirement age to 70 to start collecting Social Security to even proposing that many veterans pay more for their medical care as well as prescription drugs. There are other items of concern in his proposal such as cutting funding for community development grant, student aid, farm subsidies, housing subsidies for the poor and medicare. These things being mentioned are “hot points” for political battles. Just the mention of these items will put someone on the defensive, but let’s be for real, we need to get EVERYTHING in order fiscally if we want to survive as a nation.

Coburn’s plan also includes eliminating $1 trillion in tax breaks over the next ten years. A move that has set off an uproar from the anti-taxation group, Americans For Tax Reform. The plan will prevent taxpayers from claiming the mortgage interest deduction from their second home as well as limiting it to homes worth $500,000. He would also ease taxpayers into higher tax brackets more quickly by using a smaller measure of inflation to adjust the brackets.

Senator Coburn’s figure of $9 trillion in savings doesn’t include an additional $2.4 trillion in cuts to Social Security that will be funneled back into the program. Added to the fact of Coburn’s plan of raising the retirement age, his plan also calls for future benefits to be topped out at a less generous measure of inflation and hinder benefit increases even more for the top 40% of earners.

“I have no doubt that both parties will criticize portions of this plan, and I welcome that debate,” Coburn told reporters. “But it’s not a legitimate criticism until you have a plan of your own.” It’s too bad that many have offered some great ideas, but the powers that be won’t listen to them for the simple fact is that they don’t like the plan.

As a Libertarian, I’m tired of the political moves of the Democrats and the Republicans which will always leave the American people out in the cold while they live the high-life. There are so many unnecessary programs that the federal government is involved in. Many of which, they shouldn’t even be involved in. If the Senate would write the overdue budget, we would be able to see what and where we can cut to save the country. Too bad the democratic controlled Senate has not written a budget in over 800 days. What are they waiting for? I’ll tell you. As long as there isn’t a budget in place, they (politicians) can spend without any checks and balances. It’s just a spending frenzy that isn’t being monitored.

When politicians talk about how much money this program or that plan will save over a period of five, ten, or twenty years, it’s a joke. What they’re doing is what is known as “creative accounting. President Clinton did it during his term by saying that his administration had a surplus of $9 billion and the Democrats like to say that G.W. Bush destroyed and spent it all. In actuality there was never a surplus, it was all “projected” surplus and that is not the same thing as actually having the money in the bank.

This news comes out only one day after the City of New York has decided to add seventy electric cars to the NYPD. Mayor Mike Bloomberg made the announcement by saying the Big Apple will lead by example, hoping to entice other urban cities to follow suit.

What I find disturbing about these two press releases is that the two entities that are buying electric vehicles, one is intertwined with the current administration and the other is a government entity. To add to the fact that the manufacturer of the Chevy Volt is the General (Government) Motors a company that took a major bailout of tax payer’s money to keep themselves from going bankrupt. There is a major conflict of interest here in these deals.

As it is General Electric’s Chief Executive Officer is Jeffrey Immelt, The man whom president Obama hand picked to be on the energy commission. This is also the one company that had a ZERO tax liability in 2010. Is it me or does anyone else see a problem with all of this? Immelt is quoted “Wide-scale adoption of electric vehicles will also drive clean energy innovation, strengthen energy security and deliver economic value.” It’s all amazing how this is exactly what the Obama Administration has been pushing since he starting running for president. Too bad green energy is still in it’s infancy and the government has no business footing the bill at this point. The government is not is the business business and should step back and allow the free market to work through the kinks of the industry to really see if it’s profitable and worth the risk.

At this point with regards to electric vehicles, it’s too soon for local governments to invest tax payer money into it before the industry improves the efficiency of its product. Currently these vehicles will only go as far as forty miles on a single charge and then has to be charged for hours before being able to do it again. How is that going to be efficient for the different departments of the city of New York to do it’s job, especially the NYPD? Let’s not even get into the price tag for one of these vehicles. They are nearly double the price of a standard gas powered car that the police are using now. It will take years, if not decades to seen the benefits of these vehicles. Once these vehicles have been improved to go much further than they do now, then I say yes, let’s do it.

*UPDATE*
After writing this article, news came out about the electric car company Green Vehicles closing it’s manufacturing plant after the city of Salinas invested $500,000 into the company with the hopes of creating 70 new jobs and bring in $700,000 annually in taxes.

AP Photo- Charles Dharapak

Of course, in true form of politicians, nothing was done except Obama and Cantor had their feelings hurt and walked out of the meeting. Depending on who you talk to, you will get different comments as to what happened behind closed doors. Either way you look at it, our political leaders are more concerned about their chances in next year’s election instead of what’s right for the country. Obama (like the kid in the playground with his marbles) is threatening to veto any bill that is put before him if he doesn’t get his way. The president said that he’s concerned for the American people. So if he is, why isn’t he eliminating programs that are draining the system?

The big problem that politicians are faced with, is if they have to close portions of the government for any length of time, the American people may realize that these programs weren’t needed in the first place and there won’t be a need to be reinstated once the crisis is over. Obama has used scare tactics this week by saying he can’t guarantee that the social security checks will go out in August. He knows that will not be the case and saying it just shows you how he’s willing to play ball.

Every time the threat of the country (or State) having to shut down part of the government, politicians will always use the tactic of claiming that the police, firefighters and medicare will be the programs that will be affected. This isn’t the case since there are so many other ones (parks, museums and rest areas) that can be cut for the time being (if not permanent).

So in the meantime, politicians will sit there and use spin tactics to scare the people and in turn whine and complain about the way things are getting done. If you think about it, the government is working exactly the way our politicians have set it up to work…poorly.

Once again President Obama wanted to play the blame game as well as campaign for his next election. He spoke for roughly 20 minutes on how the debt ceiling needed to be raised and the hurdles which laid in the way from the Republicans. Several times he stated that if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised, America would default on it’s obligations to pay it’s debt. That is partially correct, but not entirely. Never during his speech did he mention cutting spending unless you count the times how the only spending cuts that would be affected are the ones tied to seniors, children and the “less” fortunate.

The biggest game politicians play is striking fear into the American voter. To do that, they need to inform people that the spending cuts that that are available to do are the ones that will affect these three categories of people. Don’t get me wrong, I do care and I feel those people shouldn’t be sacrificed to rein in the spending spree that politicians have been on for the last 20 years.

After Obama finished speaking, he allowed a few questions from the press. During the nearly thirty minutes of questions, only six questions were asked. Why? Because Obama once again went into campaign mode, blaming the “other”side of not doing what needed to be done. Each question was about 20-30 seconds long, but his average answer was seven minutes. One question that was asked, “What contingency plans do you have Mr President if an agreement can not be reached before the deadline.” His answer was short… “We will meet the deadline of August 2nd.”
Another question was asked in regards to a bill towards the minorities in this county finding employment. This time his answer was not short, but very lengthy. He stated off by saying, “I’m not going to talk about the bill.” Then continued with a very long winded answer which was more towards a campaign bullet point than anything a president would say during a press conference. Another big problem we’re having in this country is the lack of a backbone from the main stream media. the other questions that were asked were “easy”, “softball” questions at best. None of the reporters have the “guts” to ask serious straight forward questions to the president. Add to the fact that when the president goes off on a tangent that has nothing to do with the question, the reporters should remind Obama what the question was and ask him to answer it this time around. The president works for us. it’s only right that he answer questions the public want to know.

One comment Obama made really disturbed me. He said, “America’s democracy will only work if people listen to other people.” America was not built on democracy, it was designed to be a republic and nothing more. I spoke about it in a recent post about the difference between Democracy vs Republic governments. I feel president Obama has no intentions of keeping this country free and set by the “rule of the land”.

The only way to save this country by it’s own financial failures is by cutting spending of many programs that are not needed or required to run the federal government. Both the Republican and the Democrat politicians need to look at their district and cut programs without worrying about how it will affect their next election results. We as Americans need to keep a careful eye out on all of them before the next election and clean house no matter what political party they are affiliated with.

The issue with subsidies is that it’s only props up the the desired industry to stay a float when it isn’t profitable. The United States have been trying to find a better way to reduce our need for foreign oil for years and giving ethanol a chance seemed like the right idea at the time. We now know so much more about it that we know it isn’t worth subsidizing it. Ethanol hasn’t been the bio fuel we needed to get to the final goal of energy independence. It’s actually has affected the price of corn as well as taking a food source away from the American people.

Finally Congress is moving forward to banning the subsidy support for ethanol. This week a vote was taken on a measure to repeal ethanol subsidies. The Senate voted 73-27 Thursday to end two major subsidies. The first is a $0.45 a gallon tax credit given to oil companies which blend ethanol into gasoline. The other is a $0.54 per gallon tariff on imported ethanol which is aimed at Brazil to help protect our domestic market.

The result will be a savings of about $6 billion dollars per year of the American tax payer’s money. President Obama, of course is not happy with Congress’ decision to take this step. He has made remarks towards vetoing the bill when it comes to him for his signature. The measure passed by a veto-proof margin will still need the Senate to take action since the repeal of the ethanol subsidies was only an amendment. If it clears the Senate, it will need to go to the House of Representative for approval too.

In a year where cutting the spending has never been more important than before, Obama vows to veto the bill. The bill the repeal language is attached to is expected to never make it into law. It’s a slap in the face to the American people as Washington is looking to cut spending, but no one in the Beltway is willing to make the sacrifices needed to get the job done.

This vote comes at a time when global criticism rises over the subsidies for corn-based ethanol. Some blame the industry for the rising food costs. Ethanol may be good for corn farmers, but U.S. livestock farmer argue about the rising cost of feeding which in turn has caused the rise in food prices.

In my opinion, if the idea of ethanol is such a great profitable one, then the industry doesn’t need the subsidies in the first place. I understood in the beginning of the ethanol movement, subsidies were needed to get the ball rolling. After ten plus years of subsidies to any industry is still needed, then maybe it wasn’t such a good idea.
In the case of energy independence, the best way to get there is by America drilling in their own backyard. After all, we have the biggest deposit of natural gas than any other country or continent. Many other countries like China, Russia, and Cuba are now drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, why would we not do the same.

After all that Obama has done to “save the economy” from it’s recession, it hasn’t worked. Besides, why would it? Everything he has done has been the opposite of Reaganomics. The increase in the deficit is the most than any other president has done and if you were to combine the spending of all the past presidents, Obama has them beat. Programs that have been supported for by the stimulus are nothing more than wasteful spending that won’t do anything for growing jobs and bringing us out of this recession.

Of course some voters, especially liberal and progressive Democrats, think this is what needs to be done to save the country. They don’t seem to realise that more wasteful spending is not the answer!

As for ideas that will save this economy and help launch us ahead by leaps and bounds, Peter Ferrara has written a book that details the issues we are experiencing now because of the policies implemented by past and present administrations. In his book “America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb”, Peter shows us ways to turn the economy around in a short period of time. He talks about how a normal recession lasts about ten months, while this current one has been going on for forty-one months and how the situation can not be changed while on this current course.

Click the link to view or purchase this eye opening book.

It’s a must read book for all those who are concerned with their financial future.