The Presidential Budget from Obama’s Dreams

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February 02, 2015

The Presidential Budget from Obama's Dreams

The State of the Union Address from fantasy-land is followed by a presidential budget from fantasy-land:

President Obama will unveil a $4 trillion budget Monday, featuring an ambitious public works program, a one-time tax on foreign profits kept overseas by corporations, tax credits for middle-class Americans, and a 1.3 percent pay raise for federal employees and troops.

The president's budget features a six-year, $478 billion public works program for upgrading the nation's infrastructure, including roads, railroads and ports.

The package is bigger and stretched over more years than Obama's earlier unsuccessful requests for infrastructure money.

The administration is proposing to pay for the ambitious program in part with revenue from a one-time mandatory 14 percent tax on about $2 trillion in profits that corporations have been keeping overseas in order to avoid corporate income taxes here. The tax would be a sizable hit on multinationals and a way of discouraging them from parking money in foreign countries.

The administration also is seeking to lower the corporate federal income-tax rate to 28 percent from 35 percent by closing loopholes.

And the president wants to raise pay for federal workers and troops by 1.3 percent, which would be more than the 1 percent pay bump given to them the past two fiscal years.

Most of these ideas are going nowhere . . . right?

The president will also propose a one-time 14 percent tax rate for companies that bring profits home from overseas, with much of the proceeds going to fund infrastructure, like roads, bridges and airports. But that "repatriation holiday" would have to be part of a broader overhaul of the business tax code, the budget will stress. The president will reiterate his call for a business income tax overhaul that lowers the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, and 25 percent for manufacturers.

Mr. Ryan, the House's lead tax policy writer, embraced that idea as long as it was part of "properly constructed tax reform." He pointed to the proposal as one of several areas where bipartisan agreement is possible.

"It has to be part of a conversion to a permanent system," he said. "One time doesn't work."

The Worst Ad in Super Bowl History?

Nationwide Insurance, doing their part to make sure you don't enjoy the Super Bowl.

In a Super Bowl already laden with heart-tugging ads designed to remind you that you could be a much better friend, parent, lover, or airplane seatmate, it takes something especially egregious to stand out. Midway through the second quarter, Nationwide unveiled an ad of a mopheaded little kid talking of all the wondrous things he'd never do . . . BECAUSE HE IS DEAD.

Really. Nationwide thought it was a great idea to show a dead-kid ad in the middle of the Super Bowl? Yes, yes, we know, this is a Serious Issue, but come on. I'm generally a live-and-let live type, but if we can't agree that dead kids aren't fodder for commercial exploitation, then we're all in trouble.

Nationwide CMO Matt Jauchius had a ready-made defense handy, and if you're going to the trouble of making a preemptive defense you might want to consider whether your "edgy" campaign is really worth it: "The purpose of the ad is to, in a way, stage an intervention on this issue. We're serious about it and we wanted the ad to reflect that. The question was, what level of intervention did we want to stage? If you go funny or lighthearted with this topic, it might offend people, but beyond that it might not be effective in breaking through and creating awareness of this problem. We chose a more serious tone precisely because it will be so different than most commercials during the Super Bowl. We went that way to create awareness in consumers' minds [emphasis added] that this is the number one killer of children in the US. Most people don't know that."

Note the emphasized segment above. Nationwide was looking to appeal to consumers first, parents second. Look, we get it: protecting kids is a noble endeavor. But there's absolutely nobody on earth who's actually in favor of mortal childhood accidents. This was a gargantuan misstep by Nationwide. We didn't think it was possible to get any more cynical about American ads, but yep, we're here.

This was the year that everyone who didn't like guys getting kicked in the crotch as they chased a Pepsi can or cheesecake T&A got what they wanted . . . a lot of sappy ads that were supposed to make us want to hug our kids, but mostly just seemed depressing and dark.

The Worst Call in Super Bowl History?

Rich calls it "the worst play call in Super Bowl history." The Seahawks trail by four, are right at the one-yard line, and have a running back, Marshawn Lynch, nicknamed "BEASTMODE" for his ability to smash through opposing defenders. Time is ticking down, less than a minute left.

Instead of running the ball, the Seahawks decide to throw the ball -- and an undrafted rookie on the Patriots intercepts the ball. The Patriots take control and run out the clock.

Terence Moore: "I'm in the Seahawks locker room. Wow. Talking about despair! Those who can speak are freely ripping that last play call. Big time."

This tweet hit a nerve:

This is going to be a painful part of an otherwise successful coaching legacy.

Ian O'Connor at ESPN:

Pete Carroll was going to be the happy face of the NFL, the guy who put the fun back in the No Fun League. He was one Marshawn Lynch yard away from talking up his back-to-back championships with Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon or David Letterman -- or all of the above -- and showing the world you can create a pro football dynasty while acting like a child loose in a candy store.

All Carroll had to do was apply a little common sense to the final seconds of Super Bowl XLIX, and no, it wasn't too much to ask. Carroll had already won it all with the Seattle Seahawks and the USC Trojans. He had earned the unconditional respect of his opponent, Bill Belichick, who knew Carroll as a closer who had inspired Seattle to "compete relentlessly as well as any team and any organization I've ever observed."

Carroll just had to make a decision any Pop Warner coach worth his whistle and drill cones would have made. Lynch was in full you-know-what mode, barreling his way through the New England Patriots and carrying the Seahawks to the league's first two-peat since Belichick and Tom Brady pulled it off in a different life. Lynch already had 102 rushing yards and a touchdown to his name, and he had just planted Seattle on the Patriots' 1-yard line.

How bad is the fallout? This bad:

ADDENDA: I finally got a chance to see American Sniper this weekend. To the readers who haven't seen it yet, yes, it is every bit as powerful as viewers have said.

After finally watching the much-discussed movie, I can conclude the movie's critics on the left are even more moronic than I thought. The movie is very pro-soldier, but it's not "pro-war," or certainly not unambiguously pro-war. About 7,000 U.S. soldiers lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tens of thousands more wounded; each one a son or daughter, a brother or sister, a friend, a father or mother. The human cost of these wars has been enormous, and it's quite easy to look at the messes of Iraq -- currently struggling against the Islamic State -- and fractured, mismanaged Afghanistan and conclude America has paid far too high a price in these battles.

Again, I'm not sure how you could claim the film is pro-war propaganda when at least two of Kyle's fellow soldiers doubt their efforts are making a difference.

I think what drives lefties bonkers is that this is a big film about Iraq where the terms "weapons of mass destruction," "neocons," "oil," "Cheney," "lied us into war," "imperialism," etc. never appear. By the time Chris Kyle arrives in Iraq, the mission is clear: Find and eliminate al-Qaeda in Iraq and any Iraqis helping them. The cruelty of Abu Zarqawi and his followers is vividly depicted. Whatever one thinks of the U.S. presence in Iraq, the warring factions of bloodthirsty thugs -- all too real -- represent a much worse future for the country than America's aims. However the U.S. got into war, and no matter how complicated the effort of a unified, stable post-Saddam Iraq is, the task at hand for the U.S. at that moment is obvious: put the local brutes out of business or six feet under.

The film takes some liberties -- Slate compares the movie's events to Kyle's autobiography -- but the overwhelming audience reaction is undoubtedly a response to the film's emotional authenticity, its ability to make us feel what its protagonists feel for two hours or so in a darkened theater. And even if the sequence of events is out of order or simplified for screen time, the emotions -- the fear, the determination, the pain of separation, the sense of brotherhood -- ring true, and give civilians an all-too-rare extended look at the lives of our soldiers.

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