An Israeli F-16 fighter aircraft, January 18, 2011

War seems imminent again. According to The Washington Post‘s David Ignatius, the Americans believe that there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran before June of this year when Iran is expected to enter what the Israelis described as a “zone of immunity” to commence building a nuclear bomb.

“Very soon,” he writes, “the Israelis fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon—and only the United States could then stop them militarily.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want to leave the fate of Israel dependent on American action, which would be triggered by intelligence that Iran is building a bomb, which it hasn’t done yet.

The United States are reluctant to engage in military action against Iran. Attacking the country carries great tactical and strategic risks.

Iran has threatened to shut the narrow Strait of Hormuz if menaced which would put roughly 40 percent of the world’s seaborn oil transports at risk.

Tehran has more retaliatory options at its disposal across the Middle East. It could seek to incite Shī’ah violence in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia as well as in Iraq where there are no longer American forces to quell sectarian unrest. The Iranians could also encourage Hezbollah to initiate a renewed missile barrage against Israel. Reportedly, the Israelis are anticipating such a counterstrike and expect casualties on their side to number in the several hundreds.

According to Ignatius, Israel believes that a military strike could be limited and contained. “They would bomb the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and other targets; an attack on the buried enrichment facility at Qom would be harder from the air.”

This would appear to confirm a 2004 report in the German magazine Der Spiegel which said Israel had prepared a “complex yet manageable” plan of attack against six nuclear sites which were to be bombed simultaneously. The scenario envisioned Israeli jets traversing Iraqi airspace. With the Americans no longer present in the country, that could be complicated.

Israeli fighters are more likely to fly over southern Turkey or northern Saudi Arabia to reach their targets now. Neither country wants to have another nuclear neighbor.

The mountainous terrain in the northwest of Iran inhibits the country’s antiquated radar warning systems from spotting the Israelis from afar which makes the northern route an attractive one. Turkey, however, likes to think of itself as an interlocutor between Iran and the West and does not want to be perceived as an ally of Israel’s anymore.

The Saudis, by contrast, are engaged in something of a cold war with the Iranians and wouldn’t stop Israeli aircraft from overflying their northern desert. They have even warned that if Tehran gets the bomb, other powers in the region (i.e., Saudi Arabia) will seek a similar weapons capacity.

Ballistic missiles probably aren’t an option for Israel because they aren’t as accurate as aircraft delivering precision guided munition.

Iran’s nuclear facilities are scattered and concealed. It would be nearly impossible for an attacker, whether it’s Israel, the United States or both, to take out all of the Iranian nuclear sites in a single strike even if their bunker busting bombs are capable of obliterating the ayatollahs’ fortified positions. A unilateral Israeli strike this year would at best set the Iranians back several years in their alleged quest for a nuclear weapons capacity. Indeed, it would likely strengthen their conviction that Iran needs the ultimate weapon to defend itself against Israel.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina appears on Fox News' On The Record, February 2

Republican senator Lindsey Graham voiced concern about the future of American military involvement in Afghanistan a day after his country’s defense secretary, Leon Panetta, had told NATO allies in Brussels that the United States could suspend combat operations as early as 2013, a year before the alliance is scheduled to transfer security responsibility to the Afghans.

Graham, a South Carolina native and Air Force veteran, is a noted national security hawk who previously questioned the administration’s decision to withdraw thirty thousand surge troops from Afghanistan before the end of this year. “This is all domestic politics,” he said on Fox News’ On The Record on Thursday. “There is no military commander suggesting that we pull out in September of this year the surge forces.”

In bringing home tens of thousand of troops this year, President Barack Obama overruled his military advisors who recommended a slower withdrawal. Admiral Michael Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress last June that the president’s plans were more “more aggressive and incur more risk” than he was originally prepared to accept. Before he resigned in July, defense secretary Robert Gates acknowledged that waning popular support for the grinding military effort was a factor in the government’s decision to draw down forces at a faster pace.

“If we take combat operations off the table in 2013, that’s the second fighting season we’ve lost,” Graham lamented. He worried that General John Allen, the commander of international forces operating in Afghanistan, wouldn’t have the resources necessary to expand his counterinsurgency effort into the eastern tribal regions where the Taliban maintain an active presence.

Defense secretary Panetta insisted that Western troops “will have to be fully combat ready” and will fight “as necessary” even as native forces assume the security lead. However, few NATO countries are still willing to see the war through.

Just two weeks ago, France suspended its combat operations after four servicemen were shot and killed by a local trainee. President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing a war weary electorate as well, could pull out French forces by 2013, a year ahead of the 2014 deadline that was set by NATO two years ago.

These moves communicate a weakness to the insurgents, said Graham. “If you’re trying to win a war and negotiate with the enemy, you want to do so from strength.” Republicans are critical of setting deadlines for troops withdrawals altogether, fearing that the Taliban will bid for time and return to power once Western armies have left the country.

Asked what advice he would give the president, Graham said, “What I think he should do is enter into an agreement with the Afghan Government at their request to have military bases in the country, three or four, past 2014, with air power and Special Forces units that can defeat the Taliban in perpetuity. Then you negotiate with them. Not now.”

There may not be the political will to commit to Afghan security in the long term. Vice President Joe Biden told NBC News in December 2010 that the United States were “gonna be totally out of there, come hell or high water, by 2014.” Other administration officials have been less adamant but far from clear on what, if any, military engagement the president envisions in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 deadline.

Mitt Romney's campaign bus departs Florida, February 2

The Republican Party’s presidential primary race moves west over the next several days. After cementing his frontrunner status in southeastern Florida on Wednesday, Mitt Romney is expected to do well in Saturday’s caucuses in Nevada but the likely outcome in Colorado and Minnesota is less clear.

Romney, a Mormon, will likely appeal to fellow members of his church in Nevada who make up some 20 percent of the Republican electorate there.

When he last ran for the presidential nomination in 2008, Romney won the state’s caucuses easily. Newt Gingrich, however, polled at 25 percent in late January and both Ron Paul and Rick Santorum hope to do well in the Silver State. They hardly competed in Florida, where it was winner takes all, in order to focus on Nevada where delegates are allocated proportionately.

Twenty-eight delegates are at stake in the state that’s best known for its gambling industry in the cities of Las Vegas and Reno. Barack Obama carried Nevada in 2008 but only won the urban districts. The rest of the state is sparsely populated but very conservative if not libertarian.

Paul, whose campaign is staffed by supporters who are very enthusiastic about their cause, may do surprisingly well in Nevada, especially as the statewide Republican Party was thrown in disarray by a miserable 2010 midterm Senate race when Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle failed to beat the Democratic incumbent despite preelection poll numbers that suggested a Republican win.

The septuagenarian congressman from Texas could also exceed expectations in Colorado on February 7. A swing state like Nevada, Colorado’s rural areas trend Republican. Paul’s message of limited government and a noninterventionist foreign policy should resonate there. The president’s approval rating is just 40 percent across Colorado which is down from 52 percent in 2009, an above average drop in support according to Gallup.

The Nevada and Colorado caucuses are closed to registered Republicans which is a disadvantage to Paul who appeals to dissatisfied independent voters. Minnesota’s caucuses, which will also be on February 7, are open to non-Republicans but according to January polls, Gingrich enjoys an almost 20 percentage point lead over Mitt Romney in the Midwestern state.

Between them, Colorado and Minnesota wield seventy-six delegates and they are awarded proportionately. Even if Romney wins, the other three candidates could accumulate delegates for the national convention in Tampa, Florida in August. Gingrich and Paul have both vowed to stay in the race to the very end which raises the prospect of a brokered convention. If none of the presidential hopefuls manages to secure a majority of delegates before the convention, they could be unbound after several unsuccessful ballots and vote for a candidate who didn’t even participate in the primary contests.

There will also be an election in Missouri on February 7 but the outcome is officially meaningless. The state’s fifty-two delegates won’t be selected until March 17 when the state caucuses. Almost half of them will be awarded proportionately.

Mitt Romney is expected to carry most if not all of the states that vote in February. Newt Gingrich should have an opportunity to rebound in early March when, on Super Tuesday, ten states vote at once. Among them, the former House speaker’s home state of Georgia as well as Oklahoma and Tennessee, states in the Upper South that are solidly Republican and home to millions of evangelical Christians who wonder whether Romney really is socially conservative.

Obama is hugely unpopular in Oklahoma and Tennessee. His approval rating hovers around 30 and 37 percent in these states respectively. A majority of voters there will almost certainly support the Republican candidate in November’s election and may be tempted now to nominate the man who presents himself as a true conservative compared to the “Massachusetts moderate” which is how Gingrich likes to characterize his rival.

Chairman Ben Bernanke delivers opening remarks at a Federal Reserve System symposium (Reuters)

The Federal Reserve last week announced that it expected to keep interest rates near zero well into 2014 in an attempt to stabilize markets and help the American economy recover. It hasn’t so far but Chairman Ben Bernanke seems to believe that there just isn’t enough cheap money in circulation yet.

The central bank has kept short term rates below 0.25 percent for over three years and purchased some $2.3 trillion in long term securities during two rounds of “quantitative easing” since the financial panic began in December 2008.

When the Fed initiated its second round of quantitative easing, effectively printing $600 billion, Chairman Bernanke took to the pages of The Washington Post to explain how the “easier financial conditions” he created would stir economic growth.

Lower mortgage rates will make housing more affordable and allow more homeowners to refinance. Lower corporate bond rates will encourage investment. And higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence, which can also spur spending. Increased spending will lead to higher incomes and profits that, in a virtuous circle, will further support economic expansion.

That was twelve months ago. Homeowners are still struggling. Investment has stalled, in part because of the regulatory uncertainty that the Obama Administration has created. Stock prices do move up every time the Fed injects more money into the market but the effects aren’t felt in the real economy because it’s a game of smoke and mirrors and everyone knows it.

You cannot create money out of thin air and expect it to solve a crisis that was made by too much cheap money in the first place.

In his defense, Bernanke admitted that the Federal Reserve cannot save the economy on its own. But it can make prolong the slump by trying to stave off the contraction that must happen if the massive misallocations of credit and investment that were built up in the years preceding the downturn are to be filtered out of the system.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney campaigns for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in Cape Canaveral, Florida, January 28 (Renate Tonstad Flaten)

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney cruised to victory in Florida’s primary election on Tuesday, beating his foremost rival for the nomination, Newt Gingrich, by an almost 15 percentage point margin according to early election results.

Romney, who is considered the frontunner, needed a win in the Sunshine State to rebound after Gingrich came out the winner in South Carolina’s conservative primary more than a week ago.

The former House speaker was up in preelection polls in Florida last week and still leads in the nationwide surveys but a number of grueling television advertisements run by the Romney campaign after a disappointing performance by their opponent in the last debate before the primary may have doomed his chances of staging another insurgent win the South.

Unlike was the case in the earlier primary contest, all of Florida’s fifty delegates to the nominating convention in August are awarded to the statewide winner. There, they will be bound to the candidate for three rounds of voting.

Gingrich has vowed to stay in the race whatever his performance in the upcoming votes, raising the possibility of a brokered convention in which none of the contenders has amassed a majority of delegates necessary to claim the nomination before August.

There will be caucuses in Nevada, Maine, Colorado and Minnesota next week. The Missouri primary is set for February 7 while Arizona and Michigan vote February 28. With the exception of Arizona, these states are all considered less conservative and favorable to Romney.

Gingrich would have a chance to rebound on March 6, Super Tuesday, when ten states vote at once. Among them, Gingrich’s home state of Georgia as well as Oklahoma and Tennessee, states in the Upper South that are solidly Republican and home to millions of evangelical Christians.

Texas congressman Ron Paul hopes to do well in Nevada and Colorado where right wing voters are more libertarian. He, too, could remain competitive in states that award their delegates on a proportional basis although his support rarely exceeds 20 percent.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican Party presidential hopeful, appears on ABC News' This Week, January 29

Appearing on three of the American Sunday morning talk shows, former House speaker Newt Gingrich vehemently criticized his foremost contender for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, accusing his rival of saying things that are “factually false” and tearing down “whoever he’s running against.”

Despite a blistering array of negative television advertisements against him, Gingrich said he was still confident of victory in Florida which votes to elect a candidate on Tuesday.

“I think it’s highly likely that we’re going to win Florida,” he told CBS News’ Face the Nation, “because I think when people understand how many different times [Romney] said things that aren’t true, his credibility is going to just frankly just collapse.”

Polls have been extremely volatile in the Sunshine State over the past couple of weeks. Gingrich enjoyed a solid lead over Romney after his South Carolina win last week but the Romney campaign’s attacks appear to have an effect. Gingrich admitted as much on ABC News’ This Week where he pointed out that it was only in the areas where “Romney carpet bombs with Wall Street money” to run television commercials against him that his popularity eroded.

“The conservatives clearly are rejecting Romney,” he said on the same program. The former Massachusetts governor may take all of Florida’s fifty delegates next week but many of the caucuses and primaries that are next in line elect delegates on a proportional basis, raising the possibility of neither candidate securing a majority before the nominating convention in August.

“He’s not going to be anywhere near a majority by April,” Gingrich predicted, by which point thirty-two states will have caucused or voted in a primary. “This is going to go on all the way to the convention.”

Gingrich has characterized Romney as a “timid Massachusetts moderate” and called him a “liberal” this weekend. As a northeastern governor, Romney enacted a health care reform measure that was very similar to the Democrats’ 2010 reform effort. he also changed his views on abortion.

Establishment conservatives have questioned Gingrich’s own conservative credentials however, pointing out that Gingrich, too, supported an individual mandate in health care before conservatives were against it. As recently as last summer, he rejected plans to privatize federal health support for retirees as “right wing social engineering.”

On This Week, Gingrich tried to convince voters that at least he was more conservative than Romney.

My hope is that gradually conservatives will come together and decide that a Newt Gingrich conservatism is dramatically better than Mitt Romney’s liberalism.

On Fox News Sunday, he reached out to likely Rick Santorum voters. “Romney beats me as long as we split the conservative vote,” he said. If the former Pennsylvania senator, who would gather 12 to 15 percent of the vote in Florida, drop outs, Gingrich hopes to stage another victory in the South.

Santorum has shown no intention of leaving the race. Instead, on ABC News last week, he described Gingrich as an “erratic conservative” and a “very high risk candidate” who could dash Republican hopes of winning back the White House.

NBC News’ political director Chuck Todd wondered on Meet the Press whether Gingrich indeed stood to gain from a Santorum exit. “They’ve made Gingrich so unelectable to some conservatives,” he said about the Romney team, “that if you get rid of the Santorum vote and factor in the second choice” in an NBC/Marist poll that was released on Sunday, “Romney’s lead actually grows by a point. So this idea that somehow conservatives are splitting the vote—not anymore.”

The guided missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill anchors in Manila Bay, the Philippines, May 15, 2011

The governments of the Philippines and the United States are in talks about expanding the American military presence in the island nation. The renewed commitment is part of a comprehensive effort on the part of the Obama Administration to firmly establish America as a Pacific power.

Among the options to bolster America’s alliance with the Philippines are deploying more troops to the islands on a rotational basis and operating United States Navy ships from Philippine ports. Some six hundred Special Forces already operate in the Philippines in assistance of local counterinsurgency efforts.

A future agreement would follow the basing of US Marines in northern Australia and the stationing of warships in the port of Singapore. The United States have also reached out to Thailand and Vietnam to discuss military cooperation. It is all part of an effort to back up President Barack Obama’s words with action. He insisted last November that, “The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has earlier declared stability in Southeast Asia to be of “national interest” to the United States, a claim that drew a fierce rebuke from the Chinese who argued that “China is a big country and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact.”

It’s because of China’s emergence as an economic superpower and regional hegemon that other countries in East Asia welcome America’s security presence to provide balance.

Especially in the South China Sea region, revisionist Chinese border claims have antagonized its neighbors and the United States alike. Both recognize the importance of safeguarding free shipping though this strategically positioned body of water. Officials in the Philippines acknowledged that their priority is to strengthen maritime ties with the Americans to dissuade Chinese saber rattling to their west.

American attempts at mediation have so far failed to significantly change Chinese behavior and may be unlikely to. The country is facing major demographic challenges as well as resource and water scarcities well into the twenty-first century, compelling it to ensure a favorable balance of power in its vicinity and a foothold in Africa and Central Asia where there are natural riches to be secured.

This could pose a threat to the sovereignty and security of China’s neighbors if Beijing is unwilling to share the role of security provider in East Asia with the United States.

The Americans currently have several tens of thousands of troops stationed across East Asia, in Guam, Japan and South Korea.

This article also appeared in The Seoul Times, January 28, 2012.

USS Carl Vinson receives fuel and supplies from USNS Yukon during a replenishment at sea in the Pacific Ocean, December 8, 2010

President Barack Obama’s planned reductions in defense spending have earned him considerable criticism from the right. One of his potential Republican challengers, Mitt Romney, laments that the United States Navy “is smaller than it’s been since 1917.” Other conservatives claim that the cuts in military spending will put the nation at risk.

The “cuts,” worth nearly $900 billion over the next ten years, won’t necessarily reduce spending from today’s $671 billion defense budget. Rather, they will reduce projected increases in spending. Part of the reduction will happen if America winds down its engagement in Afghanistan in 2014. For 2012, the Pentagon has requested $118 billion for overseas military operation, the bulk of which is to finance the Afghan war.

Former defense secretary Robert Gates identified some $400 billion more in savings, largely in organization and procurement. He capped production of the new F-22 fighter jet for instance, much to the dismay of national security hawks in Congress.

Yet it’s because of Congress’ failure to find cuts elsewhere that the Defense Department faces an additional half a trillion dollars worth of reductions.

In budget negotiations last year, Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a plan for long term fiscal consolidation. As a result, some $500 billion in automated cuts was enacted.

Defense secretary Leon Panetta, Gates’ successor, had forecast “doomsday” if the sequester cuts were to come into effect. The American military would be reduced to a “paper tiger,” he said, one that “invites aggression.”

Whatever the effect on the military’s ability to project power, even with the $500 billion in additional savings, the defense budget will not shrink in real terms but remain stagnant for the next ten years.

Since September 11, 2001, defense spending has increased by almost 7 percent a year, up from $291 billion ten years ago. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that in order for the military to execute its base budget plans for this decade, it needed a total of $597 billion or 11 percent more than if funding was held at the 2011 level. Military spending would thus rise by almost $60 billion a year on average unless entire weapons programs were reconsidered or pay and benefits for servicemen and -women was reduced.

As procurement costs rise because weapons system are ever more sophisticated, there will have to be reductions in the force to accommodate the budget squeeze. Army and Marine Corps will lose troops as the strategic emphasis shifts to the Pacific realm where air and sea power are deemed critical.

It’s because of this “Asia pivot” that the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Brian Slattery questions the wisdom of not having a more robust navy. “The US fleet, amid a host of defense issues in need of attention, cannot atrophy any further,” he believes. Among those issues; China’s “increasing efforts to assert its ‘indisputable sovereignty’ over the South China Sea.”

If President Obama wishes to follow through on pledges of a greater Pacific presence, he must either somehow overturn much of the defense slashing he has implemented or attempt to loot other defense accounts to fund a sustainable blue water navy.

In real terms, the US Navy has diminished in size from nearly six hundred ships at the end of the Cold War in 1989 to 283 in 2009. Under current plans, the force could approach the number of 245 ships that were in service before the United States joined the First World War in 1916.

Before it faced the $500 billion in sequestered cuts, the Pentagon envisioned buying 275 new ships over the next thirty years at a total cost of $465 billion—although the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost would be closer to $539 billion through 2041, about 16 percent more.

More than two hundred of those ships would be for combat with seventy for logistics and support missions. Given the rate at which the Navy planned to retire ships from the fleet, the total number in service would remain over three hundred throughout the thirty years period.

It’s unclear how the additional $500 billion in reductions will impact long term procurement although the Pentagon announced Wednesday that it plans to cut sixteen ships from its five year budget plans which would reduce the number of new ships funded in fiscal 2013 by three, from thirteen down to ten.

Secretary Panetta, moreover, insists that whatever the size of the cuts, the navy will maintain its eleven carrier strike groups with the newest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, scheduled to replace the USS Enterprise in 2015.

It seems altogether unlikely that the fleet will approach 1917 levels. Even if it did, it must be noted that simply counting the number of ships gives one a poor indication of American naval power. The vessels that are in service with the US Navy today are among the most sophisticated (and most expensive) in the world. Numbers matter less than capacity and in this regard, the United States military is—and will for decades remain—unparalleled.

President Barack Obama shakes House speaker John Boehner's hand before delivering the State of the Union address, January 25, 2011

President Barack Obama touted a message of economic nationalism in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, promising to rebuild American manufacturing and suggesting that it’s only because of other countries’ unfair trade practices that the United States suffer.

“Our workers are the most productive on Earth,” said the president, “and if the playing field is level, I promise you, America will always win.”

The playing field isn’t level and hasn’t been level in decades. America has, in part, itself to blame yet the president defended the most blatant of government interventions of recent years when he touted the success of the 2008 bailouts of Chrysler and General Motors.

The Detroit automakers are flourishing anew and the president said their revival could be mirrored in other cities. “It can happen in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh,” he said, referring to cities in Rust Belt states that used to employ tens of thousands in factories but have seen many jobs outsourced to Asia and Mexico over the course of the last two decades.

“We can’t bring every job back that’s left our shore,” he admitted but with labor costs rising in China, the United States “have a huge opportunity, at this moment, to bring manufacturing back. But we have to seize it,” the president said.

We should start with our tax code. Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas. Meanwhile, companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and everyone knows it. So let’s change it.

The president didn’t advocate a lower corporate tax rate which, at 35 percent, is among the highest in the developed world, second only to Japan’s. Rather, he would raise taxes on businesses that want to outsource jobs. “That money should be used to cover moving expenses for companies [...] that decide to bring jobs home.”

Multinational companies that are able to avoid paying a high tax rate by “moving jobs and profits overseas” should pay a basic minimum tax, said the president. Manufacturing companies should get a tax cut instead.

It is time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America.

If that isn’t the government picking winners and losers and deciding what the “playing field” should look like, what is?

The president doesn’t merely want to reward companies that follow his orders; he wants to help them with small business loans, programs that retrain workers and trade sanctions “when our competitors don’t play by the rules.” That’s China which (also) subsidizes its domestic industries and manipulates the value of its currency to keep exports cheap.

To crack down on “unfair” Chinese trade practices, the president announced the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit to carry out “more inspections to prevent counterfeit or unsafe goods from crossing our borders.”

When it’s American companies that have an unfair advantage in the form of bailouts or subsidies or tax breaks, or when it’s American companies that “steal” other countries’ jobs by moving production back home, the president welcomed it though, promising to “go anywhere in the world to open new markets for American products.” He even took credit for trade agreements that were negotiated by his predecessor and took him more than two years to enact.

Tuesday’s State of the Union wasn’t a message of free trade. It wasn’t a message of America adjusting to the challenges of globalization nor of a country preparing to lead the world economy in the twenty-first century. It was a message of economic nationalism where the success of one nation necessarily comes at the expense of another and where government intervenes with trade barriers and bureaucratic obstructionism to protect domestic manufacturers from competition overseas. That’s not how America wins the future.

President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address to Congress, January 25, 2011

In his final State of the Union address before he runs for reelection in November, President Barack Obama on Thursday vowed to “fight obstruction with action” and move ahead with policy if Congress didn’t act.

To mend an enormous $1.1 trillion deficit, the president proposed to raise taxes on the wealthy. “The American people know what the right choice is,” he said. “If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes.” He conditioned his support for entitlement reforms on changes in the tax code to ensure that everyone pays their “fair share.”

Americans who earn more than $1 million per year actually pay 35 percent of their income in federal taxes, on top of state income taxes, except if that income is derived from long term investment when it’s taxed at 15 percent.

It’s hardly the first time that the president has blamed the opposition for standing in the way of fiscal sanity by protecting the rich. It’s also hardly the first time that the president has said to be ready to “make choices” on entitlements without volunteering concrete plans.

After three years of growing federal budgets and no initiative on the part of the president nor his party to rein in the ballooning health care entitlement programs that are primarily responsible for driving up public expenditures, who is really at fault?

Recognizing the enormous fiscal challenges the country faced even before taking office, Obama told The Washington Post that it was “not in a position to kick it any further.” Next, he spent nearly $800 billion on economic stimulus and enacted a sweeping health insurance reform act which could add as much as $500 billion to federal spending over this decade. (Although estimates vary greatly.)

The president then created a deficit reduction committee—whose recommendations he summarily ignored in late 2010.

He has repeatedly referred to the deficit committee’s proposals since. In last year’s State of the Union speech, for instance, the president urged a combination of entitlement and tax reforms to restore balance to the federal budget. He repeated this proposal in speeches in February—when he also said Republican budget cutters were “impatient”—and in April and in July—when he said that he had “not seen a credible plan, having gone through the numbers, that would allow us to get to $2.4 trillion [in deficit reduction] without really hurting ordinary folks.”

Throughout it all, federal discretionary spending, excluding defense, has grown by 24 percent and that’s not including the fiscal year 2012 which started last October. The president had asked for $3.7 trillion in spending for 2012. Despite raising taxes on high income earners, his budget would have necessitated more than a trillion dollars in borrowing.

Both House and Senate overwhelmingly rejected the proposal with even most members of the president’s party voting against it. In August, they enacted the Budget Control Act instead which mandated more than $900 billion in savings to projected spending increases over this decade, $21 billion of which was to be cut immediately.

The Budget Control Act was not in fact a proper budget. The United States have been without one for all of Barack Obama’s presidency. His State of the Union address on Tuesday coincided with the one thousandth day since the Senate passed a budget. The Federal Government has been financed on the basis of continuing resolutions and emergency measures since.

After winning a majority in the House of Representatives in 2010, Republicans did propose a budget last year but it was not brought up for a vote in the Senate which is controlled by the Democrats.

In a recent interview with Time magazine, the president said that he was still prepared to do entitlement reform as prescribed by his own debt commission. “The only reason it hasn’t happened,” he said, “is the Republicans were unwilling to do anything on revenue.”

Except Republicans, during the negotiations that led to the Budget Control Act, were prepared to raise several hundreds of billions in additional revenue over ten years by eliminating tax deductions and closing loopholes but they wanted to see overall reduction in the rates as well and keep the “Bush tax cuts” in place for all income brackets, including people who make more than $200,000 per year. The president has called on exactly these people to pay their “fair share” and see the reductions that were enacted during the George W. Bush Administration expire.

Even if the president were correct though and Republicans were so intransigent, why shouldn’t he be bold and put out a plan for long term fiscal consolidation anyway—which, necessarily, would have entitlement reforms?

Republicans at least embraced a plan for Medicare reform which would privatize health support for future generations of seniors, subsidize care with premium support, give choice to consumers and enhance competition among health care providers.

The president last April complained that this approach would leave seniors “at the mercy of the insurance industry” and proposed to “strengthen” the program’s rationing board instead to achieve $100 billion in savings over the same period that Medicare costs are projected by the Congressional Budget Office to increase by $300 billion. The Medicare trust fund is expected to fall into deficit in 2024. $100 billion in short term cuts without fundamental reform of the program would only delay its inevitable collapse.

Medicaid, too, will run out of money soon. Its costs are expected to increase by $434 billion this decade yet the president’s signature health reform law has put twenty million more Americans on Medicaid, making it very difficult for the states, which have to pay for the extra people after 2016, to continue to finance education, infrastructure and police spending besides. Already, Medicaid is often their single largest expenditure. Because the program keeps growing, the very bridges and schools the president talked about Tuesday night are crumbling.

That’s a hole he’d like to plug with more “investment” but his investments have a poor track record.

The Associated Press found in 2010 that the several hundreds of billions of dollars which the Recovery Act was supposed to have “invested” in repairing roads and bridges had no effect on local joblessness. In fact, unemployment rates rose and fell regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for infrastructure.

The Economist reported that same year that just $64 billion of stimulus funds was actually allocated to bridges, public transport, rail, roads and wastewater management. Because the bill prioritized “shovel ready” projects, few new initiatives were undertaken.

Federal education spending has continued to rise under Obama’s tenure but education standards are stagnant. The president admitted that there’s little more Washington can spend so he urged states to do “their part to make higher education a higher priority in their budgets.”

Unlike the Federal Government, states are constitutionally bound to balance their budgets so for them to spend more on schools when they have to spend more on Medicare would force them to raise taxes which inhibits business activity and job growth. That’s a problem the president wants to fix with more “investment” in small business loans and job training, paid for by raising taxes on other business owners or job creators.

There’s a word for doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Now it has a name too: Barack Obama.