When asked if Obama can run on a weak economy, White House press secretary Jay Carney says it's "uncontestably [sic] true" that the economy has "vastly improved" since Obama took office.Speaking of that extra debt and the debt ceiling debate, a solution via Instapundit:
STEVE CARTER: Threat of Jail Would End U.S. Budget Gimmicks. “The Congress that passed Sarbanes-Oxley concluded that the only way to ensure transparency in corporate numbers was to require corporate officers to certify that their numbers were correct. The penalties for falsely certifying are substantial — fines of as much as $5 million, and up to 20 years in prison — on the theory that the fear of personal liability will reduce the incentive to exaggerate future revenue or conceal future liabilities. By contrast, congressional appropriators and federal agency heads, are under no similar constraints. True, the government does have its own accounting principles. But nobody faces liability if the numbers are off. Nobody has skin in the game.”UPDATE: The Detroit Free Press is of course for raising the debt ceiling by imposing taxes right away with the promise of spending cuts in the future that they know darned well will never materialize: Time runs short, but Gang of Six plan is worth pursuing
UPDATE #2: Just so we don't end up like Greece, a warning:
BILL FREZZA: Give Greece What It Deserves: Communism. “What the world needs, lest we forget, is a contemporary example of Communism in action. What better candidate than Greece? They’ve been pining for it for years, exhibiting a level of anti-capitalist vitriol unmatched in any developed country. They are temperamentally attuned to it, having driven all hard working Greeks abroad in search of opportunity. They pose no military threat to their neighbors, unless you quake at the sight of soldiers marching around in white skirts. And they have all the trappings of a modern Western nation, making them an uncompromised test bed for Marxist theories. Just toss them out of the European Union, cut off the flow of free Euros, and hand them back the printing plates for their old drachmas. Then stand back for a generation and watch. The land that invented democracy used it to perfect the art of living at the expense of others, an example all Western democracies appear intent on emulating. Being the first to run out of other people’s money makes Greece truly ripe to take the next logical step beyond socialism.”Plus: Many states celebrate surpluses as Congress struggles with debt. That's because those states are required to have a balanced budget by law. That Balanced Budget Amendment to the US Constitution sure is sounding good at this point, no?