Spending Disad

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The economy is fragile but recovering now

Geithner 5/19 (Timothy, US Treasury Secretary, "Most Dangerous Phase behind U.S.," http://www.headliner.co.nz/videos/9097.html)

How is the U.S. economy doing today?

The economy is gradually getting stronger, and we have come a long way since 2008, but we still have a ways to go to repair the damage caused by the crisis. And we face some tough challenges, including many that preceded the financial crisis. The U.S. economy has expanded at an average annual rate of 2.5 percent since the summer of 2009. Our economy has grown by almost 7 percent since mid-2009. The private sector has added more than 4.2 million jobs since job growth resumed, including almost 500,000 manufacturing jobs—the strongest manufacturing job growth since the mid-90s. Importantly, growth has been led by the private sector, particularly investment and exports. The balance sheets of businesses are strong. The economy is more productive than before the crisis. Investment in equipment and software has risen by 34 percent over the past two and a half years. Exports have grown 26 percent in real terms over the same period. And growth in investment and exports has far outpaced the average for comparable periods after the last eight recessions. Growth has been relatively broad-based, with increases in manufacturing, energy, agriculture, and high tech, offsetting the continued weakness in housing and construction and the contraction in government services and employment. American companies are starting to move production back to the United States after decades of offshoring. We are making significant progress in working through the excesses and imbalances that helped cause the financial crisis. Household debt is down almost 20 percentage points relative to income and is roughly back to 2004 levels. Financial sector leverage is down substantially and credit is expanding. Housing and commercial real estate construction are starting to pick up after five years of contraction. Americans are saving more than before the crisis, and our budget deficit has started to decline as a share of the economy. We are borrowing less from the rest of the world; relative to GDP, our current account deficit is now half the level it was before the crisis.

Infrastructure spending kills fiscal discipline

Harding 11 (Jeffrey, Adjunct Professor at Santa Barbara City College in Real Estate Investment, "The Hoax That Is The Infrastructure Bank," http://dailycapitalist.com/2011/09/18/the-hoax-that-is-the-infrastructure-bank/)

Does anyone seriously believe that the reason we have high unemployment in America is because we have a substandard infrastructure? Apparently the politicians in Washington believe that is so because they are trying to make a case for massive infrastructure spending in order to “create jobs” and to “prepare our economy for the 21st Century.” I was watching that fountain of conventional wisdom, Fareed Zakaria tonight and he seems to buy into this proposition. He interviewed Senator Kay Baily Hutchison about her proposal for an infrastructure bank: The Kerry-Hutchison Bipartisan Infrastructure Bank also known as the BUILD Act. It won’t cost the taxpayers any money, she says, because it is a one-time $10 billion funding of this bank which will lend money for projects. As she says on her web site: The idea of a national infrastructure bank is an innovative way to leverage private-public partnerships and maximize private funding to address our water, transportation, and energy infrastructure needs. In our current fiscal situation, we must be creative in meeting the needs of our country and spurring economic development and job growth, while protecting taxpayers from new federal spending as much as possible. This is viewed as a “sensible and business-like approach” to solving this “problem.” When anyone does reporting on this topic you see shots of China’s high speed trains zooming along as well as Brazil’s new super port that will be “the road to China.” We don’t need any of these things because we have an excellent infrastructure despite what the “experts” say. Most of these experts want to cash in on this spending boondoggle. Let me be clear: not one new job will be created by this infrastructure bank. The truth is, we don’t need it. Our freeways, trucks, railroads, and aircraft do just fine getting around delivering people and goods. I’m not arguing that some things need repair, but that is minor compared to what this Infrastructure Bank envisions. As we all know, like all things run by government, they have let some of our bridges, roads, and schools go into disrepair because they manage it incompetently. While I am sure some kids go to run-down government schools, it’s not the buildings that are the problem, it’s the unions. I haven’t heard that our water supply is unsafe or that anyone has been poisoned by drinking out of the tap (spare me the occasional example, please). Our ports are fine despite the longshoremen’s union. We don’t need high speed trains because they are expensive and inefficient and people will fly instead. Please see Bob Poole’s work at the Reason Foundation if you need confirmation of this fact or on any matter dealing with public transportation. Here are some things to think about when the politicians spout this nonsense: 1. Jobs aren’t created by government. That is not to say that government employees or contractors do not work; they do. What it means is that government does not create wealth-creating jobs that are self-sustaining as would a private business. This should be fairly simple to understand. Taxes fund government operations. Only the private sector creates wealth that pay taxes. We can have an argument about whether or not government should provide much of the services that they do. For example, we know that private schools do a far better job at providing an education because they are not controlled by unions who control politicians. But, that is not the topic here. 2. Government spending known as fiscal stimulus, or Keynesian stimulus, as a cure for unemployment is another matter.The idea here is that since consumers aren’t spending all we need to do to revive the economy is to start spending somewhere in the economy and magically things will revive and take off. Unfortunately such stimulus never works to “jump start” the economy. It never has and never will. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 pushed $840 billion into the economy under this theory and it failed. No one (especially our politicians) asks where the money comes from to stimulate the economy. It comes from us, whether through taxes today or taxes tomorrow. And, the more you take out of the private economy, the less capital is available for businesses to create real jobs. Politicians never seem to see this. Right now the Keynesians are pushing on a string with this idea. Until we clean up all the excess houses, commercial real estate and related debt, no amount of spending or tax cuts will work. 3. Then there is the “quality” issue. Assuming that such infrastructure spending worked, the projects chosen are those favored by government politicians and bureaucrats and we know how well they do competing with the private sector. Need I mention the $535 million government loan guarantee to the soon to be bankrupt Solyndra? These folks shouldn’t be handing out your money; they don’t know what they are doing.

Tanks economic recovery

Hunt 5/17 (Lacy H, executive vice president of Hoisington Investment Management Company - investment adviser specializing in the management of fixed-income portfolios for large institutional clients, "Economic Recovery Via Shared Sacrifice, Cutting Government Spending, Deficit and Debts," http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article34706.html)

LH: It may occur sooner than we think. If interest rates in the marketplace were to go up 200 basis points, it would add approximately $350B a year to the federal budget deficit. Of course, you'd have to borrow that, and then borrow more and more in succeeding years. So the interest expense is really a potential time bomb. I don't think a rise in long-term rates is at hand, but it's very problematic as we go forward. TGR: You also write about a negative risk premium—when the total return of the S&P 500 is less than the return on long-term Treasuries and thus equity investors aren't being rewarded for the risks they take. It seems to contradict the concept that we're marching toward this bang point. Will the negative risk premium continue until we reach the bang point? LH: First of all, let me explain a bit more about the negative risk premium. We know that over very long periods of time investors in stocks have received a premium over investors in long-term Treasuries. If that didn't hold true over the long run, people wouldn't take the risk. But there have been significant exceptions. Following the build-up of debt in the 1860s and 1870s, we had a 20-year span during which the S&P 500 return was lower than long-term Treasury returns. Then, even though World War II interrupted, another period of negative risk premiums lasted from 1928 to 1948. In both instances, 20 years was a long time to wait for risk to be rewarded. Certainly there were quarters, even years, during those spans when the S&P 500 returns were better than the Treasuries, but when you stand back and you look at the entire period, risk was not rewarded. We've had another massive build-up of debt over the last 20 years, and since 1991 we've been in another negative risk premium cycle. We've past the 20-year point already, and if we continue along the path toward increased indebtedness, we'll extend the negative risk premium interval this time around. I think it will be very difficult for the normal economic conditions to prevail. A lot of the pioneering work on the role of debt was done by Irving Fisher. He thought the economy operated on a normal business cycle model, one to two bad years, four to five good years. The one to two got a little testy, but it was over and you went on. That's why he was fooled by the Great Depression. He freely admitted he was fooled. He made some outrageous statements about the health of the economy in 1929, but he did his mea culpa, reexamined what he thought and concluded that the normal business cycle doesn't work in highly over-indebted situations. In those situations, the indebtedness controls nearly all other economic variables—including the risk premium. The normal bounds don't work, just as they did not work after the panics of 1873, 1929, and 1989, when risk was not rewarded. So by trying to solve this over-indebtedness problem by getting further in debt, the standard of living will not rise and, in the final analysis, the stock market will reflect how well our people are doing. And our people are not doing well. Of course, the bang point is a point of calamitous development, but it would mark the climax of a prolonged period of underperformance and financial risk management. It's not at hand. We have the ability to control it, but we have to have the political will to do so. At present, it doesn't appear to be forthcoming. TGR: You've indicated that the only way for developed nations to get out from under this debt burden is austerity, not inflation or more Quantitative Easing (QE). With the income of average American citizens stagnant, at best, for a decade already, what would spark the political will to force austerity measures on a beleaguered populace? LH: No one wants austerity. Neither the politicians nor the public want it. The McKinsey Global Institute did an outstanding study of what happens to highly overleveraged countries that get into crisis situations. It found 32 cases that have fully played out, starting with the 1930s. In 16 cases of the 32—or half—austerity was required. Only eight cases were resolved by higher inflation, but they were all very small, emerging economies. A small country with no major role in world markets can get away with debasing its currency, but a major player cannot do that.

Economic decline causes protectionism and war – their defense doesn’t assume accompanying shifts in global power.

Royal 10 – Jedediah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, 2010, “Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises,” in Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215

Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defense behavior of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson’s (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crisis could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin, 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fearon, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner, 1999). Seperately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland’s (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that ‘future expectation of trade’ is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behavious of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations, However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crisis could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states. Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write, The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favor. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflict self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. P. 89) Economic decline has been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. ‘Diversionary theory’ suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increase incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a ‘rally around the flag’ effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995), and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlated economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels. This implied connection between integration, crisis and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention.

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UQ – Econ Up

All indicators predict fragile growth

Wiseman 5/3 (Paul, AP Economics Writer, "US economy recovering but isn 't yet accelerating," http://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-economy-recovering-isnt-yet-212151685.html)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. economy's recovery looks enduring. It's just not very strong. Hiring, housing, consumer spending and manufacturing all appear to be improving, yet remain less than healthy. Economists surveyed by The Associated Press expect growth to pick up this year, though not enough to lower unemployment much. A clearer picture of the nation's economic health will emerge Friday, when the government reveals how many jobs employers added in April. "The outlook is for continued moderate growth," John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said in a speech Thursday. "Nonetheless, we have nearly 4½ million fewer jobs today than five years ago, and the unemployment rate remains very high at 8.2 percent." The 32 economists polled by the AP late last month are confident the economy has entered a "virtuous cycle" in which more hiring boosts consumer spending, which leads to further hiring and spending. They expect unemployment to drop from 8.2 percent in March to below 8 percent by Election Day.

US growth now – growing global economic confidence

PWC 5/1 (Thinktank and Consulting firm for Economic Policy, "Optimism Regarding U.S. Economy Continues to Rise Among U.S. Industrial Company Manufacturers, According to PwC’s Q1 2012 Manufacturing Barometer," http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2012/pwc-q1-2012-manufacturing-barometer.jhtml)

NEW YORK, May 1, 2012― U.S. industrial manufacturers expect continued global economic growth in 2012, with optimism regarding the prospects for the U.S. economy continuing to rise, according to the Q1 2012 Manufacturing Barometer released today by PwC US. Optimism regarding the broader world economy also improved, but only moderately as uncertainty remains prevalent across the globe. Reflecting the overall rise in sentiment, more companies plan to hire employees in the year ahead, while a majority forecast increased investment spending. In addition, companies are reporting improved profitability and decreased concerns regarding barriers to growth, despite volatile oil/energy prices worldwide and ongoing concerns regarding legislative/regulatory issues, among other factors. Optimism regarding the prospects of the U.S. economy during the next 12 months rose 40 points among industrial manufacturers, to 70 percent in the first quarter of 2012 from 30 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011. The gain follows considerable fluctuation in sentiment during the past year, including the historically low level of optimism of five percent, recorded in last year’s third quarter. According to the PwC Manufacturing Barometer, optimism about the world’s economic prospects also increased, rising to 44 percent in the first quarter of 2012, up 28 points from 16 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011. However, 45 percent of survey participants remain uncertain, while 11 percent are pessimistic regarding the world economy. Underscoring the increased confidence levels overall, the projected average growth rate for own-company revenues rose to 5.6 percent for the year ahead, up from 4.4 percent reported in the fourth quarter of 2011. Overall, 92 percent of respondents expect positive revenue growth from their operations, with 17 percent forecasting double-digit gains and 75 percent seeing single-digit growth.

The economy is strong – robust industrial base ensures growth

Wang 4/26 (Lu, Boston Herald, "US firms beat estimates, boosting optimism," http://articles.boston.com/2012-04-26/business/31399287_1_earnings-estimates-earnings-cycle-earnings-projections)

“The domestic economy is faring far better than people thought and that, even in the face of Europe and the slowdown in the emerging world, is blowing away estimates,’’ said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist for Well Capital Management, which oversees about $333 billion. Profits running ahead of forecasts may help ease investor concern that a shrinking economy in Europe and slower growth in China will weigh down earnings this year. Eaton Corp., the Cleveland-based producer of circuit breakers and truck parts, beat earnings projections as construction and vehicle sales rebounded, chief executive Sandy Cutler said in an interview. “What we’ve seen is a pretty good snapback,’’ Cutler said, referring to US economic growth since the financial crisis of 2008. “The industrial side of the economy had a very difficult downturn.’’ All 10 industry groups in the S&P 500 delivered better-than-forecast results, with financial, materials, and technology companies leading with a positive rate of more than 11 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. So far about 168 companies have reported earnings.

Consumer and business confidence prove economic growth

McCarthy 5/16 (Ken, Cushman & Wakefield is the world’s largest privately-held commercial real estate services firm," http://blog.cushwake.com/index.php/2012/05/optimism-is-slowly-returning/)

Optimism is Slowly Returning Two important segments of the economy: consumers and small businesses, are getting more optimistic. In surveys released last week by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) and the University of Michigan, the measures of confidence both reached their highest level since the recession of 2007-2009 began. The NFIB survey measures business activity and the expectations of small businesses across the US. The respondents are asked about their opinion on the economy and their plans to hire and increase capital spending. Using the answer to these and other questions, the Small Business Optimism Index shows the relative level of optimism by small businesses across the US. In March seven of the 10 index components increased, with particularly large improvement in plans to hire and plans to increase capital spending. The overall index rose 2.2%, the largest gain in a year and a half and stood at its highest level since December 2007. The Index was at the exact same level a year earlier in February 2011 before it plunged as the European debt crisis emerged and financial markets dropped. Small businesses are a vital component of the US economy. Businesses with fewer than 100 employees account for 98% of all the businesses in the US and 55% of all the jobs. Historically when the optimism index is rising US payroll employment is increasing. The recovery is small business optimism is a positive for the economic outlook. The Index is still below its expansion levels of the mid 2000’s, but it is also well off the bottom and heading in the right direction If it can be sustained, and barring any economic shocks this is likely, it will point to stronger economic growth in the second half of 2012 and 2013.

UQ – AT: Thumpers

Their ev is wrong – gridlock prevents passage – Obama isn’t involved
Pianin 5/14 (Eric, The Fiscal Times, " The ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Looms Over Taxes and Spending," http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/05/14/The-Fiscal-Cliff-Looms-over-Taxes-and-Spending.aspx#page2)

Transportation and Infrastructure Spending: With the highway and bridge construction season well along, the House and Senate still can’t agree on a new two-year transportation and infrastructure spending bill. Senate Democrats and Republicans got their act together and approved a $109 billion reauthorization bill, but House Republicans are sorely divided over how to pay for the bill. State and local officials and contractors have had to stumble along under a series of temporary measures.

***Links/Internals***

Links – Highways

Highway reform requires massive deficit spending

Ayotte 5/13 (Sen. Kelly, Union Leader, "UL: Ayotte: Highway bill poses a big test for Congress," http://www.ayotte.senate.gov/?p=news&id=504)

Everyone in Congress recognizes the clear value of strengthening America's transportation infrastructure. How to pay for it, though, is another matter. This week, the Senate continues debate on a federal highway bill - presenting a test for Congress. We are simultaneously confronted by two important priorities: the need to responsibly improve transportation infrastructure and the need to stop running massive deficits. Republicans and Democrats from all parts of the country claim to support doing both. But when the rubber hits the road, it's clear that we can't achieve these goals without making some very tough choices. After Congress' earmark-fueled spending binge of the past decade, we can no longer afford transportation bills that perpetuate our broken infrastructure financing system that causes us to borrow more money from China. As currently proposed, the highway bill uses an old Washington trick: it finances two years of infrastructure spending, but pays for it over a period of 10 years. And most of the repayment wouldn't start until after the first two years of spending. These numbers just don't add up. And if this sounds familiar, you may recall that the federal health care law pays for the first six years of costs with 10 years of new taxes. This is the same sort of "buy now, pay later" scheme that in years past has depleted the highway trust fund, which is supposed to be financed through federal fuel taxes. Because revenue hasn't come in as fast as Washington spends the money, it takes more deficit spending to replenish the fund. Over the past four years, Congress has bailed out the highway trust fund to the tune of $34.5 billion - with your money.

That wrecks the economy

Ayotte 5/13 (Sen. Kelly, Union Leader, "UL: Ayotte: Highway bill poses a big test for Congress," http://www.ayotte.senate.gov/?p=news&id=504)

With the national debt now matching the size of our entire economy, we can't keep spending money we don't have. Deficits have consequences. Spending beyond our means has already resulted in our nation's credit rating being downgraded. Failure to fix business-as-usual spending legislation, such as the highway bill, will only keep putting off the tough decisions that inevitably must be made to avoid the kind of fiscal crisis that countries like Greece are facing. Senators on both sides of the aisle want to improve our roads, highways and bridges. Many senators from both parties also want greater fiscal discipline.

Highway spending wrecks fiscal discipline – deficit concerns outweigh infrastructure benefits

Orski 5/9 (Ken, "Revisiting the Senate Highway Bill," http://www.infrastructureusa.org/revisiting-the-senate-highway-bill/)

Adding to the problem of the impending insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund —a conundrum to which neither side has found a solution— is the general mood among House Republicans as we approach the November election. For the rank-and-file, the goal of reducing spending and reducing the deficit, as reflected in the adopted FY 2013 House budget, would likely take precedence over any concerns about “crumbling infrastructure.” For many House conservatives the better solution lies in narrowing the scope of the federal-aid program and shifting more responsibility for transportation to states and metropolitan regions. As T&I Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL) Rep. stated at the May 8 inaugural session of the House-Senate Conference, “…the solution to the Trust Fund solvency problem is not more deficit spending or General Fund transfers. The solution is major reform of programs, cutting wasteful spending and reigning in the federal bureaucracy.” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) and Senate Finance Committee Ranking Republican Orrin Hatch (R-UT) both cautioned their colleagues on the need to maintain fiscal discipline and not spend beyond the Highway Trust Fund’s means. The legitimacy of the “pay-fors”, along with the Keystone pipeline, are thus expected to offer the main stumbling blocks to reaching an agreement.

Links – Infrastructure Bank

The infrastructure bank is government waste – kills fiscal discipline

Harding 11 (Jeffrey, Adjunct Professor at Santa Barbara City College in Real Estate Investment, "The Hoax That Is The Infrastructure Bank," http://dailycapitalist.com/2011/09/18/the-hoax-that-is-the-infrastructure-bank/)

Does anyone seriously believe that the reason we have high unemployment in America is because we have a substandard infrastructure? Apparently the politicians in Washington believe that is so because they are trying to make a case for massive infrastructure spending in order to “create jobs” and to “prepare our economy for the 21st Century.” I was watching that fountain of conventional wisdom, Fareed Zakaria tonight and he seems to buy into this proposition. He interviewed Senator Kay Baily Hutchison about her proposal for an infrastructure bank: The Kerry-Hutchison Bipartisan Infrastructure Bank also known as the BUILD Act. It won’t cost the taxpayers any money, she says, because it is a one-time $10 billion funding of this bank which will lend money for projects. As she says on her web site: The idea of a national infrastructure bank is an innovative way to leverage private-public partnerships and maximize private funding to address our water, transportation, and energy infrastructure needs. In our current fiscal situation, we must be creative in meeting the needs of our country and spurring economic development and job growth, while protecting taxpayers from new federal spending as much as possible. This is viewed as a “sensible and business-like approach” to solving this “problem.” When anyone does reporting on this topic you see shots of China’s high speed trains zooming along as well as Brazil’s new super port that will be “the road to China.” We don’t need any of these things because we have an excellent infrastructure despite what the “experts” say. Most of these experts want to cash in on this spending boondoggle. Let me be clear: not one new job will be created by this infrastructure bank. The truth is, we don’t need it. Our freeways, trucks, railroads, and aircraft do just fine getting around delivering people and goods. I’m not arguing that some things need repair, but that is minor compared to what this Infrastructure Bank envisions. As we all know, like all things run by government, they have let some of our bridges, roads, and schools go into disrepair because they manage it incompetently. While I am sure some kids go to run-down government schools, it’s not the buildings that are the problem, it’s the unions. I haven’t heard that our water supply is unsafe or that anyone has been poisoned by drinking out of the tap (spare me the occasional example, please). Our ports are fine despite the longshoremen’s union. We don’t need high speed trains because they are expensive and inefficient and people will fly instead. Please see Bob Poole’s work at the Reason Foundation if you need confirmation of this fact or on any matter dealing with public transportation.

It’s a huge waste

Harding 11 (Jeffrey, Adjunct Professor at Santa Barbara City College in Real Estate Investment, "The Hoax That Is The Infrastructure Bank," http://dailycapitalist.com/2011/09/18/the-hoax-that-is-the-infrastructure-bank/)

5. Then there is Japan. They spent trillions on fiscal stimulus for much of the same things that are proposed by the Infrastructure Bank. It was all a huge waste of money there and the result was 20 years of sluggishness and the highest debt to GDP of any industrialized nation (225%; we are at 100%). Their economy is still in the doldrums and they stupidly push for even more such stimulus spending. We are going Japanese with all this spending but with a twist: we have inflation and we will have more inflation from quantitative easing and more spending. The Infrastructure Bank is a hoax. Kill it now before it grows.

Links – Airports

Airport modernization will require billions of federal dollars every year

Boushey 11 (Heather, Center for American Progress Action Fund, "Take Two: The President's Proposal to Stimulate the Economy and Create Jobs," http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2011/09/boushey_testimony.html)

The American Jobs Act also includes $50 billion in immediate investments for highway, highway safety, transit, passenger rail, and aviation activities. Here, too, we know there is great need: The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that we need to spend at least $2.2 trillion over the next five years just to repair our crumbling infrastructure. This doesn’t even include things like high-speed rail, mass transit, and renewable energy investments we need to free ourselves from foreign oil and climate change. Of the $50 billion, $27 billion will make our nation’s highway systems more efficient and safer for passenger and commercial transportation, $9 billion of investments will repair our nation’s transit systems, $2 billion in funding will improve intercity passenger rail service, $2 billion will improve safety, add capacity, and modernize airport infrastructure across the country.

It will cost billions per year

Kirk 8 (Robert S, Specialist in Transportation Policy, "Airport Improvement Program: Issues for Congress," http://wlstorage.net/file/crs/RL33891.txt)

Both the FAA and the Airports Council International-North America (ACI-NA) have projected different long-term airport financial needs. In the most recent NPIAS report, the FAA has estimated that the national system’s capital needs for FY2009-FY2013 will total $49.7 billion (an annual average of $9.9 billion).76 The ACI-NA capital needs survey resulted in an estimate of $94.3 billion for the same range of years (an annual average of $18.9 billion).77

Links – Railroads

Railway reform causes runaway spending – global economies prove

Nelder 11 (Chris, energy analyst and consultant, "The silent infrastructure crisis," http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/energy-futurist/the-silent-infrastructure-crisis/101)

Therefore, the real infrastructure challenge for America — repairing our existing crumbling infrastructure, transitioning to rail, transitioning to renewables, and upgrading the grid — is on the order of $1.2 trillion per year, or about 8 percent of our $14.7 trillion GDP, give or take a few hundred billion. And that doesn’t even include some key steps in transition, like upgrading the thermal efficiency of the built environment, fundamental research to support an all-electric infrastructure, and natural gas conversions for transport trucks. Strategic investments, not quick fixes Before you call these numbers absurd, consider what other major economies are spending on infrastructure. According to the Urban Land Institute’s Infrastructure 2011 report, China is spending $1 trillion over five years; that’s 3.3 percent of its GDP. India is planning to spend $1 trillion over five years; about 9 percent of its GDP. The U.K. is spending $320 billion over five years; 2.9 percent of GDP. Brazil has allocated $900 billion over five years; 8.2 percent of GDP. All of the plans include significant investments in rail infrastructure.

Structural issues make railroads a fiscal waste – spending more is not the solution

Palmer 11 (Steve, Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences, "Aging infrastructure is everybody's problem: The need for optimization, not just more money," http://www.analytics-magazine.org/july-august-2011/362-public-policy)

In May, the Obama administration announced $2 billion in grants to build and improve intercity passenger-rail service. This, along with Obama's highly debated Federal Infrastructure Bank is all part of the president's "bold vision for renewing and expanding our nation's infrastructure." At the state level, Massachusetts recently resurrected an approach that had not been offered in more than 20 years. With the availability of the "new" $1,000 Build Mass Bonds — a smaller denomination (compared to the typical $5,000 denominations), investing in the commonwealth's infrastructure will now be accessible to more individuals. In a more intriguing approach to secure funding, the Toronto District School Board is retrofitting its facilities to offset a $3 billion backlog in roofing repairs by installing solar panels. These will enable the board to sell electricity to Ontario's government-owned utility and make enough for the long-needed repairs. While there is no wrong way to secure funding, what's missing from the above examples is a long-term, optimized approach that will allow organizations to spend smarter, not just spend more. Current solutions for battling aging infrastructure focus on "how to secure more capital" — an approach that is extremely limiting and doesn't address the long-term ramifications and solutions. The focus needs to instead be on "how to approach the problem differently," so the entire maintenance and repair process becomes a more regular and sustainable activity.

Links – Spending – General

Keynes style spending measure skyrocket the deficit and send the economy into recession

Calhoun 4/29 (Joe, Alhambra Investment Partners' money management services, Weekly Economic & Market Review, http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2012/04/29/weekly-economic-market-review-26/)

Now some will certainly say that Keynesianism hasn’t failed but has rather not been tried; if the stimulus had been targeted better, we would have gotten a different result. Others will say that if the “stimulus” is running out – and with interest rates so low – we should just borrow and spend more, that Keynes will eventually be proven correct. Given the success of Solyndra, the first argument leaves a lot to be desired. Given the results of Japan’s 25 year spending binge, the second fares no better. In any case, any stimulus funded through continued deficits is by definition temporary. Contrary to Dick Cheney’s voodoo economics, deficits do matter. There is a limit to how deeply in debt bond markets will allow governments to get, as Europe is discovering now. So the economy continues its ragged recovery and absent an inexplicable surge of investment appears headed for, at best, a continuation of PIMCO’s new normal. At worst, one of the many challenges facing the global economy – from a slowing China to a fresh round of debt denouement in Europe – causes a return to outright recession. With an election and another debt ceiling debate on tap, further government spending measures seem highly unlikely and as we’ve just seen, ineffective in any case. Those who make their living punting on the stock exchange seem to be placing their faith in further emanations from the Fed’s printing press but betting on further impoverishment of the lower classes is so declasse as to earn one the dreaded moniker of speculator.

Links – Infrastructure General/AT: Keynesian Link Turn

Infrastructure spending is unnecessary government waste – it collapses fiscal discipline

Harding 11 (Jeffrey, Adjunct Professor at Santa Barbara City College in Real Estate Investment, "The Hoax That Is The Infrastructure Bank," http://dailycapitalist.com/2011/09/18/the-hoax-that-is-the-infrastructure-bank/)

Does anyone seriously believe that the reason we have high unemployment in America is because we have a substandard infrastructure? Apparently the politicians in Washington believe that is so because they are trying to make a case for massive infrastructure spending in order to “create jobs” and to “prepare our economy for the 21st Century.” I was watching that fountain of conventional wisdom, Fareed Zakaria tonight and he seems to buy into this proposition. He interviewed Senator Kay Baily Hutchison about her proposal for an infrastructure bank: The Kerry-Hutchison Bipartisan Infrastructure Bank also known as the BUILD Act. It won’t cost the taxpayers any money, she says, because it is a one-time $10 billion funding of this bank which will lend money for projects. As she says on her web site: The idea of a national infrastructure bank is an innovative way to leverage private-public partnerships and maximize private funding to address our water, transportation, and energy infrastructure needs. In our current fiscal situation, we must be creative in meeting the needs of our country and spurring economic development and job growth, while protecting taxpayers from new federal spending as much as possible. This is viewed as a “sensible and business-like approach” to solving this “problem.” When anyone does reporting on this topic you see shots of China’s high speed trains zooming along as well as Brazil’s new super port that will be “the road to China.” We don’t need any of these things because we have an excellent infrastructure despite what the “experts” say. Most of these experts want to cash in on this spending boondoggle. Let me be clear: not one new job will be created by this infrastructure bank. The truth is, we don’t need it. Our freeways, trucks, railroads, and aircraft do just fine getting around delivering people and goods. I’m not arguing that some things need repair, but that is minor compared to what this Infrastructure Bank envisions. As we all know, like all things run by government, they have let some of our bridges, roads, and schools go into disrepair because they manage it incompetently. While I am sure some kids go to run-down government schools, it’s not the buildings that are the problem, it’s the unions. I haven’t heard that our water supply is unsafe or that anyone has been poisoned by drinking out of the tap (spare me the occasional example, please). Our ports are fine despite the longshoremen’s union. We don’t need high speed trains because they are expensive and inefficient and people will fly instead. Please see Bob Poole’s work at the Reason Foundation if you need confirmation of this fact or on any matter dealing with public transportation. Here are some things to think about when the politicians spout this nonsense: 1. Jobs aren’t created by government. That is not to say that government employees or contractors do not work; they do. What it means is that government does not create wealth-creating jobs that are self-sustaining as would a private business. This should be fairly simple to understand. Taxes fund government operations. Only the private sector creates wealth that pay taxes. We can have an argument about whether or not government should provide much of the services that they do. For example, we know that private schools do a far better job at providing an education because they are not controlled by unions who control politicians. But, that is not the topic here. 2. Government spending known as fiscal stimulus, or Keynesian stimulus, as a cure for unemployment is another matter.The idea here is that since consumers aren’t spending all we need to do to revive the economy is to start spending somewhere in the economy and magically things will revive and take off. Unfortunately such stimulus never works to “jump start” the economy. It never has and never will. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 pushed $840 billion into the economy under this theory and it failed. No one (especially our politicians) asks where the money comes from to stimulate the economy. It comes from us, whether through taxes today or taxes tomorrow. And, the more you take out of the private economy, the less capital is available for businesses to create real jobs. Politicians never seem to see this. Right now the Keynesians are pushing on a string with this idea. Until we clean up all the excess houses, commercial real estate and related debt, no amount of spending or tax cuts will work. 3. Then there is the “quality” issue. Assuming that such infrastructure spending worked, the projects chosen are those favored by government politicians and bureaucrats and we know how well they do competing with the private sector. Need I mention the $535 million government loan guarantee to the soon to be bankrupt Solyndra? These folks shouldn’t be handing out your money; they don’t know what they are doing.

Keynsian spending policies fail – economy structured in a way where it is ineffective

Olen 5/2 (John, America's Economic Report, "There Is No Recovery," http://economyincrisis.org/content/there-is-no-recovery)

A look at the official government numbers shows that the United States has been making very slow but steady progress toward recovery after the economic downturn we experienced late in the last decade. Digging a little deeper into the figures shows a more dire portrait of our economy. It turns out that structural problems in our economy are keeping us from recovering at all. In past crises, Americans could spend their way out of recession, but structural problems now keep us from doing so. John Williams’ Shadow Government Statistics (SGS) is a useful tool for looking at the real state of the American economy. Williams uses official government statistics as the basis of his work, but unlike government reports, Williams does not massage the numbers using the methodological tools that have been integrated in recent years. According to Williams’ most recent report “adjusted for gimmicked inflation and other methodological changes, the business downturn that began in 2006/2007 is ongoing; there has been no meaningful economic rebound.” While the most recent report of GDP growth put out by the government states that the nation saw a meager but positive 2.1 percent gain, William’s alternative GDP calculations showed an estimated 2.2 percent annual loss. He points out that government estimates are usually revised downwards as well, meaning that even the official numbers are less than reassuring. The reason for this protracted downturn is not lack of effort by businesses and government; it is that their efforts are misdirected. Americans simply do not have the money to spend to grow the economy because even those with jobs are often making less than they used to. Attempts at fiscal stimulus cannot be effective when the economy is structured to send our money overseas.

Links – AT: Keynsian – Theory

Keynes is wrong – multiple reasons

Cochrane 9 (John H, Myron S. Scholes Professor of Finance @ U Chicago Booth School of Business, “Fiscal Stimulus, Fiscal Inflation, or Fiscal Fallacies?” http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/Papers/fiscal2.htm)

Most fiscal stimulus arguments are based on fallacies, because they ignore three basic facts. First, if money is not going to be printed, it has to come from somewhere. If the government borrows a dollar from you, that is a dollar that you do not spend, or that you do not lend to a company to spend on new investment. Every dollar of increased government spending must correspond to one less dollar of private spending. Jobs created by stimulus spending are offset by jobs lost from the decline in private spending. We can build roads instead of factories, but fiscal stimulus can’t help us to build more of both1 . This form of “crowding out” is just accounting, and doesn't rest on any perceptions or behavioral assumptions. Second, investment is “spending” every bit as much as is consumption. Keynesian fiscal stimulus advocates want money spent on consumption, not saved. They evaluate past stimulus programs by whether people who got stimulus money spent it on consumption goods rather than save it. But the economy overall does not care if you buy a car, or if you lend money to a company that buys a forklift. Third, people must ignore the fact that the government will raise future taxes to pay back the debt. If you know your taxes will go up in the future, the right thing to do with a stimulus check is to buy government bonds so you can pay those higher taxes. Now the net effect of fiscal stimulus is exactly zero, except to raise future tax distortions. The classic arguments for fiscal stimulus presume that the government can systematically fool people.

Internals – Fiscal Discipline Key to Econ

Fiscal discipline is key to economic recovery

Hunt 5/17 (Lacy H, executive vice president of Hoisington Investment Management Company - investment adviser specializing in the management of fixed-income portfolios for large institutional clients, "Economic Recovery Via Shared Sacrifice, Cutting Government Spending, Deficit and Debts," http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article34706.html)

LH: It may occur sooner than we think. If interest rates in the marketplace were to go up 200 basis points, it would add approximately $350B a year to the federal budget deficit. Of course, you'd have to borrow that, and then borrow more and more in succeeding years. So the interest expense is really a potential time bomb. I don't think a rise in long-term rates is at hand, but it's very problematic as we go forward. TGR: You also write about a negative risk premium—when the total return of the S&P 500 is less than the return on long-term Treasuries and thus equity investors aren't being rewarded for the risks they take. It seems to contradict the concept that we're marching toward this bang point. Will the negative risk premium continue until we reach the bang point? LH: First of all, let me explain a bit more about the negative risk premium. We know that over very long periods of time investors in stocks have received a premium over investors in long-term Treasuries. If that didn't hold true over the long run, people wouldn't take the risk. But there have been significant exceptions. Following the build-up of debt in the 1860s and 1870s, we had a 20-year span during which the S&P 500 return was lower than long-term Treasury returns. Then, even though World War II interrupted, another period of negative risk premiums lasted from 1928 to 1948. In both instances, 20 years was a long time to wait for risk to be rewarded. Certainly there were quarters, even years, during those spans when the S&P 500 returns were better than the Treasuries, but when you stand back and you look at the entire period, risk was not rewarded. We've had another massive build-up of debt over the last 20 years, and since 1991 we've been in another negative risk premium cycle. We've past the 20-year point already, and if we continue along the path toward increased indebtedness, we'll extend the negative risk premium interval this time around. I think it will be very difficult for the normal economic conditions to prevail. A lot of the pioneering work on the role of debt was done by Irving Fisher. He thought the economy operated on a normal business cycle model, one to two bad years, four to five good years. The one to two got a little testy, but it was over and you went on. That's why he was fooled by the Great Depression. He freely admitted he was fooled. He made some outrageous statements about the health of the economy in 1929, but he did his mea culpa, reexamined what he thought and concluded that the normal business cycle doesn't work in highly over-indebted situations. In those situations, the indebtedness controls nearly all other economic variables—including the risk premium. The normal bounds don't work, just as they did not work after the panics of 1873, 1929, and 1989, when risk was not rewarded. So by trying to solve this over-indebtedness problem by getting further in debt, the standard of living will not rise and, in the final analysis, the stock market will reflect how well our people are doing. And our people are not doing well. Of course, the bang point is a point of calamitous development, but it would mark the climax of a prolonged period of underperformance and financial risk management. It's not at hand. We have the ability to control it, but we have to have the political will to do so. At present, it doesn't appear to be forthcoming. TGR: You've indicated that the only way for developed nations to get out from under this debt burden is austerity, not inflation or more Quantitative Easing (QE). With the income of average American citizens stagnant, at best, for a decade already, what would spark the political will to force austerity measures on a beleaguered populace? LH: No one wants austerity. Neither the politicians nor the public want it. The McKinsey Global Institute did an outstanding study of what happens to highly overleveraged countries that get into crisis situations. It found 32 cases that have fully played out, starting with the 1930s. In 16 cases of the 32—or half—austerity was required. Only eight cases were resolved by higher inflation, but they were all very small, emerging economies. A small country with no major role in world markets can get away with debasing its currency, but a major player cannot do that.

The deficit should be the center of debates on the economy – it spills over into all other economic indicators

US Action News 5/17 ("Bachmann: Debt too big to wait," http://usactionnews.com/2012/05/bachmann-debt-too-big-to-wait/)

In 2004 Obama said the “monstrous” deficits were “an enormous problem” when the deficit was $413 billion. In 2008 he said increasing the debt would burden our children and was unpatriotic. Every year of his term deficits have been over a TRILLION dollars. By the end of his first term he will have increased the debt more than all other presidents combined. Can we afford four more years of two faced, self serving fiscal insanity? “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.” – Barack Obama “Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, its time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt.” – President Barack Obama on his Office of Management and Budget website. “We’re spending twice as much money as we did in 2001. If you go back 15 years our deficit this year is bigger than what our entire budget was. That’s how out of control the federal government is. … There is a political reason we’re not having a budget. Everybody understands that. Nobody’s going to say it. .. “because we don’t want to make the hard choices in an election year.” – Senator Dr. Tom Coburn “Whether one believes leaves in a large, very active government or something more limited, mathematically, the amount of debt we already have and the terrifying rate at which it is accumulating will lead to national ruin,” Gov. Mitch Daniels “Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.” -Alan Greenspan

Deficit reduction is key to investment and business confidence

Klein 5/18 (Ezra, Washington Post, "Sen. Tom Coburn, part one: Defusing the debt bomb," http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/sen-tom-coburn-part-one-defusing-the-debt-bomb/2012/05/15/gIQAIUteRU_blog.html)

EK: Is there anything we need but deficit reduction to get growth back on the right path? TC: It’s signals. The number one thing, and I think most economists would agree, confidence matters. If you have negative confidence, then you get much lower growth. If you have positive confidence you get much better growth with the same set of numbers. I think people are so disgusted with Washington that if we send a signal we’re actually going to fix this -- with any combination of tax and spending, remember that I voted for Simpson-Bowles -- we’ll get our mojo back when people have some confidence in the future and see their Congress solving their problems.

Austerity works – Europe proves how half-hearted economic strategies lock countries into pseudo-growth with long-term consequences

Bonner 5/9 (Bill, Daily Reckoning, "Austerity in the Face of a “Fiscal Cliff”," http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/austerity-in-the-face-of-a-fiscal-cliff/2012/05/09/)

Real austerity - with deep cuts and balanced budgets - could work. But it contradicts the whole idea of government, which is to transfer as much wealth from the outsiders to the insiders as possible. Besides, such deep cutbacks would probably trigger a zombie revolution. And by the way, 'austerity' is coming to the US too - if Congress doesn't stop it. Economists are calling it the "fiscal cliff." The nation is scheduled to run off the edge on Dec. 31st... Mohammed El-Erian explains: Economists are rightly starting to warn that the United States faces a worrisome "fiscal cliff" at year's end. The blunt spending cuts mandated by the 2011 compromise on the debt ceiling - and the failure of the "supercommittee" that followed - along with across-the-board tax increases would derail the US recovery and undermine the well-being of the global economy. We should be avoiding the edge of this cliff - and politicians should not believe that they have until the end of this year to act. The sequestration mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the reversal of the Bush-era and payroll tax cuts would essentially mean withdrawing from the economy some 4 percent of the national income in one blunt go - and this doesn't factor in possible knock-on effects. The importance of this issue cannot be overstated. A fiscal contraction of this magnitude and composition would stop dead in its tracks the economy's nascent healing and job creation. Consumption and investment would be harmed. Foreigners would become more cautious about buying our ever-increasing debt issuance. And with our internal growth momentum weakened, the headwinds from the European debt crisis could prove overwhelming. The austerity show has been playing in Europe for the last two years. That's why half of Europe is in recession...with the other half not far behind. Europeans are tired of it. So, now the Europeans seem to be giving up on phony austerity and turning to phony growth. They are going to spend more borrowed and printed money. This will look vaguely like "growth." There will be more jobs and more incomes. But there will be precious little real prosperity going on. Of course, going for growth is precisely what got the developed world into such a jam in the first place. Too many people spent too much money they didn't have on too many things they didn't need. In America, the Fed encouraged it with low rates...then after the private sector debt bubble blew up, the feds made up for the missing spending by spending more themselves. In Europe, the euro-feds made a debt bubble possible by establishing a single currency bloc...with harmonized interest rates. All of a sudden Greece and Ireland could borrow as easily and cheaply as France and Germany. And so they did; they borrowed their way to the brink of bankruptcy. Now, Francois Hollande has a plan. He wants to make Europe more like America...with a central bank that lends to government directly and "mutualization" of credit risk. In other words, he wants to do what Alexander Hamilton did to the US in 1791: make the states collectively responsible for each other's debt. And then he'll let the ECB print the money to buy sovereign bonds directly. Yes, dear reader, the trend towards centralization continues...with central financial planning...central bank counterfeiting...and everybody going broke together.

Internals – Defense – FD Won’t Hurt Econ

Link shield – Fiscal discipline won’t hurt the economy

Pethokoukis 5/11 (James, American Enterprise Institute, "When the U.S. Really Did Try Austerity, it Worked!," http://ricochet.com/main-feed/When-the-U.S.-Really-Did-Try-Austerity-it-Worked)

Now, we all all know “austerity” from deep spending cuts (not the tax hikes, of course) is killing Europe’s economy and would do the same here in America, right? Well, here’s a story about austerity that critics such as President Obama, Paul Krugman, and Ezra Klein never seem to mention: From 1944 to 1948, Uncle Sam cut spending by a whopping 75% as World War II came to end. Spending as a share of GDP plunged to 9% in 1948 from 44% in 1944. Superstar economist and devout Keynesian Paul Samuelson—later to become the first American to win the Nobel Prize in economics—predicted such shock austerity would cause “the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced.” That dire, disastrous prediction was widely held by his fellow Keynesians, with one even predicting an “epidemic of violence.” Except the doomsayers were wrong, even though Washington obviously ignored Samuelson’s call for gradual spending reductions. Despite cuts which dwarfed those seen in the EU today—not to mention those Republicans are calling for here at home—the U.S. economy thrived. There was no mass unemployment despite rapid demobilization of the armed forces. As George Mason University economist David Henderson explains is his 2010 paper, “The U.S. Postwar Miracle” (which this entire post draws upon): As demobilization proceeded rapidly, employers in the private sector, full of the optimism … scooped up millions of the soldiers, sailors, and others who had been displaced from the armed forces and from military industries. … The number of unemployed people did increase, rising from 0.8 million to 2.3 million, but with a civilian labor force of 60.1 million, the 2.3 million unemployed people implied an unemployment rate of only 3.8 percent. As President Truman said, “This is probably close to the minimum unavoidable in a free economy of great mobility such as ours. Of course, liberals are quick to point out the U.S. economy suffered its worst one-year downturn in history in 1946, a drop of 12%. To many Americans, it surely must have seemed like Samuelson was right, that the Great Depression had returned. But no one thought that back then, especially with jobs plentiful unlike during the 1930s. The drop in output was a statistical quirk caused by the removal of price controls. As Henderson explains: For example, imagine that the free-market price of a pound of filet mignon during the war would have been $1.40 a pound. But imagine further that the government had set the price at $1.00 a pound. Then, when the price control was removed, the price would have shot to $1.40 a pound. Inflation statistics would have recorded some amount of inflation due to this large price increase. But those statistics would have overstated the real price increase because getting beef at $1.40 a pound is better for many of the people who couldn’t, because of the shortage, get it at $1.00 a pound. Second, those sky-high output figures during the war measured government spending on goods and services, lots of it military hardware, at their cost. But what was all that stuff really worth, in purely economic terms, vs. post-war consumer purchases of homes and cars and nylon stockings? While total output fell by 12% in 1946, private-sector GDP rose by nearly 30%. Or look at it this this way: Real U.S. output in 1947 was 17% higher than in 1941 despite the decline in government spending. Why was the economy prospering in way it never did during the Great Depression? Taxes were cut a little, and government interference—including price and production controls and rationing—was reduced a lot. But perhaps just as important, Truman dumped many of FDR’s most radical New Dealers. That change boosted business confidence, and companies started to invest again in America. The typical Keynesian response mostly centers around dismissing the immediate post-war boom as a one-off event complicated by many unique factors. But it happened again, as Henderson notes! After the Cold War ended, overall federal spending fell to 18% of GDP in 2000 from 22% in 1991. But again the economy boomed. Real U.S. GDP grew by 40% with an average annual growth rate of 3.8%. Henderson speculates that perhaps the decline in defense spending freed up knowledge workers to help make technological miracles happen in the private economy. The lesson here: Spending cuts might well produce prosperity instead of austerity, especially if accompanied by less government interference in the economy and less fear in the private sector of anti-market government policies.

***DEBT CEILING MODULE***

Links – Debt Ceiling

New spending will kill debt ceiling negotiations

Welna 5/16 (David, NPR, "Debt Ceiling Debate Is Revived In Washington," http://www.npr.org/2012/05/16/152809395/debt-ceiling-debate-is-revived-in-washington)

INSKEEP: Let's recall - who could forget - Congress boosted the Treasury's borrowing authority by $2 trillion after a dramatic showdown last summer that also led to the first downgrade ever of the nation's credit rating. But yesterday, the Obama administration said that borrowing authority is set to max out by the end of the year. GREENE: And that prompted House Speaker John Boehner to insist that any increase in the debt limit will have to be matched by even greater cuts in spending. Here's NPR's David Welna. DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Sometimes it takes a Washington summit to tease out what's coming down the political pike. That's just what happened yesterday in the big auditorium a few blocks from the White House, where administration officials and lawmakers came together for the third annual Peter G. Peterson Foundation Fiscal Summit. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner arrived with a warning: The United States, he said, will likely hit its debt limit sometime before the end of the year. SECRETARY TIMOTHY GEITHNER: Only Congress, of course, can act to raise the debt limit and, you know, we hope that they do it this time without the drama and the pain and the damage they caused the country last July. WELNA: Inflicting such pain and damage, Geithner pointedly noted, would not be responsible. House Speaker John Boehner responded a few hours later. REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: Yes, allowing America to default on its debt would be irresponsible. But it would be more irresponsible to raise the debt ceiling without taking dramatic steps to reduce spending and reform the budget process. WELNA: Boehner vowed he'll approach raising the debt ceiling next time the same way he did last year.

Spending cuts are key to debt ceiling negotiation – the plan reverses this

Hooper and Wasson 5/15 (Molly K, and Erik, The Hill, "Speaker Boehner sets stage for another showdown on the debt ceiling," http://thehill.com/homenews/house/227441-boehner-spending-cuts-must-accompany-debt-deal)

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will threaten Tuesday that Congress will not raise the debt limit next year without spending cuts greater than the size of the debt ceiling increase. According to excerpts of the remarks Boehner will deliver to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation fiscal summit on Tuesday afternoon, the Ohio lawmaker will "insist on my simple principle of cuts and reforms greater than the debt limit increase. This is the only avenue I see right now to force the elected leadership of this country to solve our structural fiscal imbalance." He will also tell the audience: “We shouldn’t dread the debt limit. We should welcome it. It’s an action-forcing event in a town that has become infamous for inaction. ... Let’s start solving the problem. We can make the bold cuts and reforms necessary to meet this principle, and we must." Last summer's debate over raising the debt limit increase drove the partisan level of hyperbole to a fever pitch as President Obama and congressional leaders negotiated round the clock for a deal that extended the borrowing authority, while requiring more than one trillion in spending cuts.

Republicans will use the debt ceiling to push for cuts – the plan derails republican support

Pianin 5/16 (Eric, The Fiscal Times, "Boehner to Dems: We Won’t Blink First on Debt Deal," http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/05/16/Boehner-to-Dems-We-Wont-Blink-First-on-Debt-Deal.aspx#page1)

Boehner agreed in his speech that allowing the Treasury to default on its borrowing would be “irresponsible, while insisting that Republicans have no choice but to use the debt ceiling as leverage to force action on further reductions in spending, reforming Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and overhauling the tax code without raising rates. Republican House leaders say they will offset the cost of lowering everyone’s tax rates by eliminating costly tax loopholes, but they have yet to identify a single “tax expenditure” for elimination.

Internals – Debt Ceiling Key to Econ

Raising the debt ceiling is key to economic recovery – inaction pushes the US over the fiscal cliff

Pianin 5/16 (Eric, The Fiscal Times, "Boehner to Dems: We Won’t Blink First on Debt Deal," http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/05/16/Boehner-to-Dems-We-Wont-Blink-First-on-Debt-Deal.aspx#page1)

Unless Congress acts before the end of the year, the Bush era tax cuts and scores of other tax provisions are set to expire, literally driving up Americans tax obligations over night, while the first big installment of $1.2 trillion of automatic cuts in domestic and defense programs are set to take effect under sequestration. At the same time, the Treasury will begin bumping up against the current statutory $16.39 trillion debt limit late this year, and will need new authority early next year to continue to borrow and pay interest on the national debt. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and other economists have warned that the government could be headed over a “fiscal cliff” that would undermine the fragile economic recovery unless Congress and the White House can reach a compromise on all these matters.

The link threshold is low – perception of gridlock will kill global economic confidence

Sahadi 5/16 (Jeanne, CNN Money, "Fiscal cliff: What you need to know," http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/16/news/economy/fiscal-cliff/index.htm)

What's at stake in a debt ceiling showdown? When and how the debt ceiling is raised will matter. Last year, the fight was ugly and protracted. The end result: a first-ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor's, which cited political brinksmanship as the chief cause, and one of the most volatile weeks in recent history for world stock markets. There's no reason to believe this year would be any different if the fight again becomes ugly and protracted, especially since it may get tangled up with the fiscal cliff debate, which will also weigh on investors and credit rating agencies.

***POPULISM MODULE***

Links – Populism Module

Aggressive left-leaning spending projects make Obama a lame duck in 2013

Julian Zelizer, CNN Contributor, “Campaign rhetoric may tie next president's hands,” 4/23/2012, http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/23/opinion/zelizer-winning-governing/index.html

If Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are staying up late worrying about whether they can win the election, they should ponder another, ultimately more important, question: Will their campaign rhetoric make it impossible for them to be effective if elected president? The decisions that each man makes in his effort to defeat the other will shape the political environment in January 2013. Although we often consider the campaign phase of a presidency to be entirely separate from governing, the truth is that the two are intimately connected. Whoever takes office in January will face many difficult challenges that will force him to compromise, adjust and move away from campaign promises that no longer fit the reality of the times. The Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year, along with the payroll tax cut designed to boost the economy. The pressure will be on for the president and Congress to make deep spending cuts and revenue increases. The president's health care law will either need to be implemented and funded, or it will have been ruled unconstitutional, thus pushing to the forefront once again the skyrocketing costs of health care. In foreign policy, the Middle East, Iran, North Korea and China all point to hot spots that are volatile and unpredictable. And these are just the known challenges, let alone the crises we can't yet see coming. For Obama, the dangers are significant. To keep Democrats excited about a second term, it appears that he will continue to focus on the rhetoric of economic populism as well as on attacking the do-nothing Congress. Although he has governed like a moderate, his speeches have increasingly stressed the liberal themes of progressive economic policy, criticism of Wall Street and big business and, to some extent, laments about the growing inequality in American life. In his State of the Union Address, Obama castigated Wall Street with populist rhetoric, saying that the problems in the economy had stemmed from the fact that "Wall Street was allowed to play by its own set of rules." He promised that this time around, "It's time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts and no copouts." The danger for Obama is twofold. One the one hand, if the president veers too far to the left on the campaign trail, he will offer more fodder to his opponents who want to paint his every move as being those of a left-of-center Democrat. This will be even more problematic than it was in 2009 and 2010, when Obama still enjoyed political capital from his election, which allowed him to rebuff some of these charges and push through his legislative agenda. After his re-election, Republicans wouldn't have any fears about retribution and they wouldn't have any reason to compromise. As with every second-term president, he would be a lame duck from day one. Just as important, many moderate Democrats could be leery about supporting him unless they were sure that doing so wouldn't hurt their chances for re-election. At the same time that a rhetorical shift to the left could alienate possible legislative support, it could also create inflated expectations within the Democratic base. Just as many of Obama's supporters have been disappointed in his decisions after a campaign that promised transformation, liberals would be doubly dejected if his populism proved to be pure posturing. He could leave many Democrats deeply disappointed over the dim chance of ever delivering on these core ideas.

Global nuclear war

Chapin and Hanson, 12/7/2009 (Bernard - interviewer and Victor Davis - Martin and Illie Anderson senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Change, weakness, disaster, p. http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/change-weakness-disaster-obama-answers-from-victor-davis-hanson/)

BC: Are we currently sending a message of weakness to our foes and allies? Can anything good result from President Obama’s marked submissiveness before the world? Dr. Hanson: Obama is one bow and one apology away from a circus. The world can understand a kowtow gaffe to some Saudi royals, but not as part of a deliberate pattern. Ditto the mea culpas. Much of diplomacy rests on public perceptions, however trivial. We are now in a great waiting game, as regional hegemons, wishing to redraw the existing landscape — whether China, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Syria, etc. — are just waiting to see who’s going to be the first to try Obama — and whether Obama really will be as tenuous as they expect. If he slips once, it will be 1979 redux, when we saw the rise of radical Islam, the Iranian hostage mess, the communist inroads in Central America, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, etc. BC: With what country then — Venezuela, Russia, Iran, etc. — do you believe his global repositioning will cause the most damage? Dr. Hanson: I think all three. I would expect, in the next three years, Iran to get the bomb and begin to threaten ever so insidiously its Gulf neighborhood; Venezuela will probably cook up some scheme to do a punitive border raid into Colombia to apprise South America that U.S. friendship and values are liabilities; and Russia will continue its energy bullying of Eastern Europe, while insidiously pressuring autonomous former republics to get back in line with some sort of new Russian autocratic commonwealth. There’s an outside shot that North Korea might do something really stupid near the 38th parallel and China will ratchet up the pressure on Taiwan. India’s borders with both Pakistan and China will heat up. I think we got off the back of the tiger and now no one quite knows whom it will bite or when.

AT: GOP Won’t Cooperate

The GOP will cooperate in the status quo.

Eleanor Clift is a staff writer for the Daily Beast, “Will a Reelected President Obama Face More Gridlock in 2013?” 12/23/2011, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/26/will-a-reelected-president-obama-face-more-gridlock-in-2013.html

Obama is more likely to win in a squeaker than with a Reagan-sized mandate. “You might say if the election of 2008 didn’t persuade Republicans to go along with the majority, why would a narrow Obama victory in 2012 have a better effect?” asks William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. If the president couldn’t quell fractious lawmakers when he had a 70 percent approval rating and a big electoral mandate, why would he be any more effective in dealing with Congress after a hard-fought reelection campaign in which the GOP has a better than even chance to capture control of the Senate, and keep its hold on the House? Yet in politics, as in life, things rarely turn out as predicted. Unless a major backlash against the GOP restores Democratic primacy in the House and maintains the Democratic Senate, a unified Republican Congress might not be such a bad thing from Obama’s perspective, says Galston. “They would be co-owners of the government, and if they want to get the White House [in 2016] they’ve got to persuade the people they can say yes as well as no.” Given a truly divided government, Galston argues there could be greater cooperation between the Democratic White House and the Republican Congress. That would echo the Clinton presidency when the GOP Congress, led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, served up welfare reform and a balanced budget for Clinton to sign.

AT: Obama Lose

Obama will win the election now.

Paul Weisman is a staff writer for the Associated Press, “Swing-state unemployment down, Obama's chances up,” 4/22/2012, http://news.yahoo.com/swing-state-unemployment-down-obamas-chances-140909615--finance.html

The improving economy is swinging the pendulum in President Barack Obama's favor in the 14 states where the presidential election will likely be decided. Recent polls have shown Obama gaining an edge over his likely Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, in several so-called swing states — those that are considered up for grabs. What's made the difference is that unemployment has dropped more sharply in several swing states than in the nation as a whole. A resurgence in manufacturing is helping the economy — and Obama's chances — in the industrial Midwestern states of Ohio and Michigan. And Arizona, Nevada and Florida, where unemployment remains high, are getting some relief from an uptick in tourism. "The biggest reason for the president's improving prospects probably is the economy," says Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Lichtman predicts it – most qualified source

Michael Mathes is writing for Afripol, “Obama victory a sure thing, predicts expert,” 4/23/2012, http://www.afripol.org/afripol/item/591-obama-victory-a-sure-thing-predicts-expert.html

Mitt Romney is in the midst of a bruising, costly campaign to oust Barack Obama from the White House, but one expert has long said the Republican challenger's efforts are for naught: the president's re-election is a sure thing. "Even if I am being conservative, I don't see how Obama can lose," historian and American University professor Allan Lichtman told US News & World Report. That was last August, and he stands by his prediction today. Lichtman is no ordinary soothsayer; he and his pattern-recognition model have been right 100% of the time since he created The Keys to the White House in the early 1980s. His system, based on 13 conditions that favour re-election of the incumbent party, has also retroactively called every presidential election since 1860. That's 37 in a row, including advance calls on every election since 1984. As for 2012, "I don't think [Romney] can upset the apple cart," Lichtman said, as his system gyrates around a simple truth: "presidential elections are essentially referenda on the performance of the party holding the White House." In other words, "there is little or nothing the challenging party can do to change election outcomes."

2.	Divided GOP and independents means Obama win

Aaron David Miller is a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, “5 Reasons Obama Will Win in November,” 4/25/2012, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/25/5_reasons_obama_will_win_in_november?page=0,1

4. The Republicans are weak and divided. You can't beat something with nothing. That old saw in politics wins out most every time. The Republican Party has never gotten over its love affair with Reagan. Look at the parade of Republican hopefuls who rose and fell during primary season. Had Reagan been around, he'd have been frustrated with the divisions in Republican ranks. And the Gipper might have described the primaries as an audition in which the last guy standing got the part only because the producers were exhausted and needed to get the play into rehearsals before the opening. I know the main counterpoint: Republicans will come together because they need to defeat Obama. But the gaps between the Republican base and the centrists are huge; the obsession with social issues risks alienating independents; there are real doubts that Romney is conservative enough; and there's not much enthusiasm for his stiff style on the campaign trail. All this is creating real trouble for a party that seems to have lost its way. Add to that Republican difficulties in making inroads with women and Hispanics, and you might conclude that the election is Obama's to lose.

Agenda Impacts – Warming

Obama is key to solve climate – the impact is extinction.

Buffalo News, “Stakes are high in race for president,” 4/22/2012, http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial-page/viewpoints/article822432.ece

Despite what you hear from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and other fossil- fuel industry apologists, climate change is real, already occurring and principally caused by human activity —releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning coal, oil and natural gas and, to a lesser extent, by destroying forests. If we don’t act soon, we’ll be cooked — figuratively and literally. Our current “business as usual” trajectory is leading to a hostile and unsustainable world. The Earth’s surface temperature could be an average 10 degrees warmer by the end of the century. We can spare our children and grandchildren this hellish hothouse future by rapidly shifting from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy resources like wind, solar, biomass and geothermal — coupled with much greater energy conservation and efficiency. This is not a hoax, a conspiracy or mere speculation. These conclusions are scientifically established and endorsed by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, representing thousands of scientists in 195 countries; U.S. Academy of Sciences and academies in more than 30 other countries; American Association for the Advancement of Science; National Aeronautics and Space Administration; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and American Meteorological Society. In fact, virtually every scientific organization with credible climate expertise acknowledges the reality of human- caused climate change and the need to quickly transition away from fossil fuels. Many other experts have concluded that the costs of addressing climate change would be far less than those associated with coping with its devastating aftermath. Furthermore, a serious effort would significantly reduce respiratory illness and provide a bonanza of green jobs. Imagine the jobs created by super-insulating and solarizing every house in Western New York! While Obama’s environmental record is not perfect, he is committed to environmental progress. He understands and respects the international scientific consensus on climate change and the increasingly urgent calls for action from expert scientists. A look at Obama’s record The positive impact of a generally pro-environment Obama presidency is evident in Western New York. EPA Region 2 Administrator Judith Enck has strongly supported local efforts, led by the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York, to curtail toxic industrial pollution from Tonawanda Coke. Nationally, the Obama administration has: • Incorporated clean energy projects into “stimulus” spending. • Helped double renewable energy production. • Established EPA greenhouse gas emissions reduction rules for large stationery sources, vehicles and new power plants. • Raised fuel economy standards to 54.5 mpg by 2025. • Reduced water pollution in the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay and elsewhere. • Set strict rules against mercury and other toxic emissions from coal-fired power plants. • Restricted new mountaintop removal coal mining. • Reinstated the Roadless Area Rule protecting 58.5 million acres of wilderness. • Sought to end $4 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies to the oil industry. These and other actions constitute a solid record of environmental achievement. But his record is not without disappointments. Obama’s handling of the 2010 BP oil spill received mixed grades. The Sierra Club praised Obama’s mercury rule and fuel economy achievements, but wished for more. Grass-roots groups want more protection for endangered species. Greenpeace called Obama’s environmental performance “mediocre at best.” And highly respected physicist and climate blogger Joe Romm (thinkprogress.org/romm) gave Obama an “F” grade because he hasn’t done enough to address the climate emergency. The Obama administration’s “all of the above” energy policy fails to consistently address environmental concerns. In the aftermath of the largest oil spill in U.S. history, Obama accelerated oil and gas drilling — even allowing Shell to drill in the Arctic Ocean where spills can’t be cleaned up. The administration announced new EPA rules that will prevent most new U.S. coal plant construction, yet opened vast new areas of Wyoming to coal mining. Then there’s the Keystone XL pipeline. After 8,000 people were arrested in front of the White House last fall protesting the pipeline, Obama won environmental praise for postponing the decision on it until 2013. But last month, during all-time record-breaking March temperatures, he approved the pipeline’s southern portion. In further irony, he made the announcement in Cushing, Okla., the site of recent severe drought, tornadoes, ice storms and wildfires. Climate protection failure However, Obama’s greatest environmental lapse was his failure to provide adequate leadership and support for national climate protection legislation in 2009. The result was a disastrously compromised House bill that no one liked and that could not pass the Senate. As a result, the United States still doesn’t have a comprehensive and coherent climate action policy. Defeats like this are inevitable unless the American public is better educated, false propaganda is countered and political will is instilled. But Obama’s bully pulpit was MIA. Writing in Rolling Stone magazine, Nobel Prizewinner and former Vice President Al Gore faulted Obama for never having “presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis. He has simply not made the case for action.” In the president’s defense, one could say he was busy dealing with an inherited severe recession and two wars not of his making. Moreover, he was thwarted by coal-state Democrats and a climate change-denying, filibuster- wielding Republican Party singularly bent on denying Obama a second term. These are mitigating circumstances, but they don’t excuse. Scientists say we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions between 80 percent and 90 percent by 2050 to avoid runaway catastrophic climate change. Enacting laws to accomplish that will now be even more difficult because of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which opened the floodgates of corporate money into politics. Let’s not reverse progress While Obama has not yet delivered on some environmental priorities, his environmental record is solid in many areas. He appears to be committed to addressing environmental problems in a meaningful way within the constraints of what he views as politically possible. Obama’s re-election offers the promise of continuing his pro-environment programs and the hope he will do more in his second term. Cleaner air, water and energy mean tens of thousands of green jobs with improved public health outcomes that reduce health care costs. The president understands this win-win. Additionally, Obama is likely to do more on climate change in a second term if re-elected with a Democratic Congress and an increasingly informed public demanding action on this life-and-death issue.

Agenda Impacts – CTBT

Obama’s pushing to ratify CTBT – his defeat crushes the initiative

Schneidmiller 11 (Chris, "Senate Decision Key to Future of Test Ban Treaty," Global Security Newswire, 7/18/11, http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20110714_9351.php)

The Obama administration is preparing for a lobbying campaign that could determine the future of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) (see GSN, July 15). Administration officials have declared in recent months that they intend to follow through on their long-stated pledge to seek the U.S. Senate’s advice and consent on the accord. Still to be determined are when that will occur and whether the White House can overcome entrenched divisions on Capitol Hill to secure necessary Republican support for ratification. The stakes are significant: U.S. approval could draw other holdout nations into the treaty regime, bringing it that much closer to becoming international law, proponents say. Failure would provide those states with continued reason to dismiss the pact -- though critics say they might do that anyway. Before seeking a vote, the administration intends to carry out a program to educate lawmakers and the public on the value of the treaty, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher has said on multiple occasions this year (see GSN, May 11). The effort would address issues likely to be debated in the Senate -- the viability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal without testing, whether all CTBT member states have accepted an absolute ban on any trial blasts, and the ability to catch any state that attempts to cheat. “We continue a long, methodical process to lay the groundwork for Senate consideration of the CTBT,” the State Department said last month in a statement toGlobal Security Newswire. “Currently, we are in the process of engaging with members of the Senate and their staff on the importance of the CTBT.” It added: “We are not moving for a Senate vote, don’t expect one anytime soon, and will not push for one until we have done the engagement work needed to secure approval.” Several analysts agreed that the White House would not begin the fight until it felt secure the result would be an improvement on the last time a Democratic president tried to persuade the Senate to approve the treaty. The United States signed the pact in 1996, but three years later the Clinton administration ratification effort ran into a brick wall of skeptical lawmakers. The Senate voted 51-48 against approval. A two-thirds affirmative vote would be required for the United States to become a full participant in the accord. Washington is among 44 capitals that must ratify the test ban before it can enter into force. Thirty-five nations have taken that step, leaving only China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the United States. President Obama might wait to make his push until after publication of a new National Academy of Sciences report on the treaty, said arms control specialist Jeffrey Lewis. The follow-up to a 2002 academy study is expected to assess the effect that ratification would have on the U.S. capability to keep its nuclear weapons in working order without testing and on the capacity to identify atomic detonations in other nations. The new report is undergoing classification review, which could take weeks or years, according to Lewis. A classified National Intelligence Estimate on the matter was sent to Capitol Hill last August, but has not been seen by most lawmakers, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. The document is said to offer an updated, thorough assessment of the ability to detect secret nuclear tests, according to Kimball. Senator Robert Casey (D-Pa.) suggested at the Arms Control Association’s annual meeting in May that the Senate might not take up the treaty until after the 2012 election. "In my judgment, we should act before the 2012 elections. I don't have a high degree of confidence that we will," the lawmaker said, echoing time line estimates from other observers. “I don’t think [the Obama administration is], at least in the near term, serious about putting this to a vote,” said Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “I don’t think there’s a desire to have a vote if they think they’re going to lose, and I don’t think the votes are there yet.” Only 41 lawmakers who considered the treaty in 1999 remain in the Senate, Kimball said in a recent issue brief. Newer senators must be briefed on the matter, while the chamber as a whole must be informed of technical developments since 1999 that would promote entry into force. Politics plays a role in congressional policy debates and nuclear security will be a topic of discussion during the 2012 presidential election campaign, Kimball said. The White House is already taking heat over what Republicans say are inadequate attempts to rein in suspected proliferation activities in nations such as Iran and Syria (see GSN, March 30). Still, the Senate’s ratification last year of the U.S.-Russian New START nuclear arms control pact is cause for optimism about the test ban’s chances on Capitol Hill, Kimball said. Thirteen GOP senators voted in favor of the bilateral agreement. The two years it took Moscow and Washington to negotiate and approve New START “was relatively fast for a treaty,” according to Kimball. He said the administration should take whatever time is needed to see the test ban passed. “I would hope that the issue of the test ban treaty does not become a partisan political football because there is strong Republican support for the test ban treaty out there,” Kimball said. “If the treaty is not seriously considered by the Senate until after 2012, that will be because it took that much time to sort through the issues and to develop enough support to go ahead with the final stages of the ratification effort.” That plan, though, would hinge on Obama’s re-election. Should he be defeated next year, the pact would almost certainly remain frozen in place in Washington.

US Ratification Is Key To Prevent Global Prolif and Nuke War.

DAVIS 7. [Dr. Ian, Co-Executive Director of the British American Security Information Council, “Getting the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Back on Track” Huffington Post -- April 11]

This can't happen too soon. North Korea has marched through the open door with its first underground test of an atomic device. There is widespread agreement that the test has escalated tension in the region and raised the stakes in the stand-off with the United States. It could also destroy the prospects for the CTBT and open the floodgates to more nuclear-armed states. While we welcome the current agreement with Pyonyang which may ultimately eliminate the North Korean nuclear program, and lead to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, the details of implementation have yet to be worked out, and already, strong conservative opposition to the agreement is beginning to appear. The door to an alternative way forward is also still open, and the United States could seize the moral high ground by leading the world through it. If President Bush were to press the Senate to reconsider and support ratification of the treaty, it could be part of a far-reaching strategy for shoring up the North Korean agreement, peacefully tackling the Iranian nuclear program and for preventing a world with 40 or more nuclear powers. The North Korean and Iranian nuclear crises exemplify an increasing number of damaging developments that make it clear that the non-proliferation system needs to be strengthened and updated, not neglected or discarded. The international community must not only work together to develop more effective diplomatic approaches towards North Korea and Iran, but it must also apply stricter international safeguards on all nuclear programs, prevent the spread of uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, secure a global halt to the production of fissile material for weapons purposes, take new steps to reduce the number and role of nuclear weapons and achieve the entry into force of the CTBT. If, in 1963, at the height of the Cold War, the US, UK, and USSR could negotiate a limited test ban treaty. Why can't we ratify a comprehensive treaty now? Were we less threatened then? Are Iran and North Korea greater threats to the United States than was the USSR? The CTBT is vital to a system of security that does not rely on nuclear weapons. Its entry into force would put a cap on the nuclear age. Posturing for domestic politics and insisting on a macho attitude in international relations has dangerous long-term implications, both for America and the rest of the world. Since the Bush administration has come to power, global non-proliferation has gone into a holding pattern at best, a tailspin at worst. That can only lead to a world overpopulated with nuclear weapons and a nuclear war sooner or later. The consequences do not bear thinking about. So it is vital that CTBT supporters put the treaty back on the American and European political agenda and move to secure ratification by other key states.

***Impacts***

Impacts – Heg

Economic collapse causes global instability and nuclear war

Friedberg and Schoenfeld ‘8 (Aaron, Prof. Politics. And IR – Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, and Gabriel, Senior Editor of Commentary and Visiting Scholar – Witherspoon Institute, Wall Street Journal, “The Dangers of a Diminished America”, 10-21, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455074012352571.html)

Then there are the dolorous consequences of a potential collapse of the world's financial architecture. For decades now, Americans have enjoyed the advantages of being at the center of that system. The worldwide use of the dollar, and the stability of our economy, among other things, made it easier for us to run huge budget deficits, as we counted on foreigners to pick up the tab by buying dollar-denominated assets as a safe haven. Will this be possible in the future? Meanwhile, traditional foreign-policy challenges are multiplying. The threat from al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist affiliates has not been extinguished. Iran and North Korea are continuing on their bellicose paths, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are progressing smartly down the road to chaos. Russia's new militancy and China's seemingly relentless rise also give cause for concern. If America now tries to pull back from the world stage, it will leave a dangerous power vacuum. The stabilizing effects of our presence in Asia, our continuing commitment to Europe, and our position as defender of last resort for Middle East energy sources and supply lines could all be placed at risk. In such a scenario there are shades of the 1930s, when global trade and finance ground nearly to a halt, the peaceful democracies failed to cooperate, and aggressive powers led by the remorseless fanatics who rose up on the crest of economic disaster exploited their divisions. Today we run the risk that rogue states may choose to become ever more reckless with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of maximum vulnerability. The aftershocks of the financial crisis will almost certainly rock our principal strategic competitors even harder than they will rock us. The dramatic free fall of the Russian stock market has demonstrated the fragility of a state whose economic performance hinges on high oil prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps even more fragile, its economic growth depending heavily on foreign investment and access to foreign markets. Both will now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and perhaps even sparking unrest in a country where political legitimacy rests on progress in the long march to prosperity. None of this is good news if the authoritarian leaders of these countries seek to divert attention from internal travails with external adventures.

Impacts – Nuclear War

The current crisis risks nuclear conflicts in every region of the world.

Ferguson ‘9	(Niall, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, “The Axis of Upheaval,” Foreign Policy, February 16th, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/02/16/the_axis_of_upheaval)

The Bush years have of course revealed the perils of drawing facile parallels between the challenges of the present day and the great catastrophes of the 20th century. Nevertheless, there is reason to fear that the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression could have comparable consequences for the international system. For more than a decade, I pondered the question of why the 20th century was characterized by so much brutal upheaval. I pored over primary and secondary literature. I wrote more than 800 pages on the subject. And ultimately I concluded, in The War of the World, that three factors made the location and timing of lethal organized violence more or less predictable in the last century. The first factor was ethnic disintegration: Violence was worst in areas of mounting ethnic tension. The second factor was economic volatility: The greater the magnitude of economic shocks, the more likely conflict was. And the third factor was empires in decline: When structures of imperial rule crumbled, battles for political power were most bloody. In at least one of the world’s regions—the greater Middle East—two of these three factors have been present for some time: Ethnic conflict has been rife there for decades, and following the difficulties and disappointments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States already seems likely to begin winding down its quasi-imperial presence in the region. It likely still will. Now the third variable, economic volatility, has returned with a vengeance. U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s “Great Moderation”—the supposed decline of economic volatility that he hailed in a 2004 lecture—has been obliterated by a financial chain reaction, beginning in the U.S. subprime mortgage market, spreading through the banking system, reaching into the “shadow” system of credit based on securitization, and now triggering collapses in asset prices and economic activity around the world. After nearly a decade of unprecedented growth, the global economy will almost certainly sputter along in 2009, though probably not as much as it did in the early 1930s, because governments worldwide are frantically trying to repress this new depression. But no matter how low interest rates go or how high deficits rise, there will be a substantial increase in unemployment in most economies this year and a painful decline in incomes. Such economic pain nearly always has geopolitical consequences. Indeed, we can already see the first symptoms of the coming upheaval. In the essays that follow, Jeffrey Gettleman describes Somalia’s endless anarchy, Arkady Ostrovsky analyzes Russia’s new brand of aggression, and Sam Quinones explores Mexico’s drug-war-fueled misery. These, however, are just three case studies out of a possible nine or more. In Gaza, Israel has engaged in a bloody effort to weaken Hamas. But whatever was achieved militarily must be set against the damage Israel did to its international image by killing innocent civilians that Hamas fighters use as human shields. Perhaps more importantly, social and economic conditions in Gaza, which were already bad enough, are now abysmal. This situation is hardly likely to strengthen the forces of moderation among Palestinians. Worst of all, events in Gaza have fanned the flames of Islamist radicalism throughout the region—not least in Egypt. From Cairo to Riyadh, governments will now think twice before committing themselves to any new Middle East peace initiative. Iran, meanwhile, continues to support both Hamas and its Shiite counterpart in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and to pursue an alleged nuclear weapons program that Israelis legitimately see as a threat to their very existence. No one can say for sure what will happen next within Tehran’s complex political system, but it is likely that the radical faction around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be strengthened by the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. Economically, however, Iran is in a hole that will only deepen as oil prices fall further. Strategically, the country risks disaster by proceeding with its nuclear program, because even a purely Israeli air offensive would be hugely disruptive. All this risk ought to point in the direction of conciliation, even accommodation, with the United States. But with presidential elections in June, Ahmadinejad has little incentive to be moderate. On Iran’s eastern border, in Afghanistan, upheaval remains the disorder of the day. Fresh from the success of the “surge” in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, the new head of U.S. Central Command, is now grappling with the much more difficult problem of pacifying Afghanistan. The task is made especially difficult by the anarchy that prevails in neighboring Pakistan. India, meanwhile, accuses some in Pakistan of having had a hand in the Mumbai terrorist attacks of last November, spurring yet another South Asian war scare. Remember: The sabers they are rattling have nuclear tips. The democratic governments in Kabul and Islamabad are two of the weakest anywhere. Among the biggest risks the world faces this year is that one or both will break down amid escalating violence. Once again, the economic crisis is playing a crucial role. Pakistan’s small but politically powerful middle class has been slammed by the collapse of the country’s stock market. Meanwhile, a rising proportion of the country’s huge population of young men are staring unemployment in the face. It is not a recipe for political stability. This club is anything but exclusive. Candidate members include Indonesia, Thailand, and Turkey, where there are already signs that the economic crisis is exacerbating domestic political conflicts. And let us not forget the plague of piracy in Somalia, the renewed civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the continuing violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, and the heart of darkness that is Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe. The axis of upheaval has many members. And it’s a fairly safe bet that the roster will grow even longer this year. The problem is that, as in the 1930s, most countries are looking inward, grappling with the domestic consequences of the economic crisis and paying little attention to the wider world crisis. This is true even of the United States, which is now so preoccupied with its own economic problems that countering global upheaval looks like an expensive luxury. With the U.S. rate of GDP growth set to contract between 2 and 3 percentage points this year, and with the official unemployment rate likely to approach 10 percent, all attention in Washington will remain focused on a nearly $1 trillion stimulus package. Caution has been thrown to the wind by both the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The projected deficit for 2009 is already soaring above the trillion-dollar mark, more than 8 percent of GDP. Few commentators are asking what all this means for U.S. foreign policy. The answer is obvious: The resources available for policing the world are certain to be reduced for the foreseeable future. That will be especially true if foreign investors start demanding higher yields on the bonds they buy from the United States or simply begin dumping dollars in exchange for other currencies. Economic volatility, plus ethnic disintegration, plus an empire in decline: That combination is about the most lethal in geopolitics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval starts now.

***AFF SECTION***

Aff – Thumpers

Infrastructure bill thumps the DA

Wasson 5/12 (Erik, The Hill, "Hoeven predicts highway bill by June 30, with Keystone included," http://thehill.com/blogs/transportation-report/infrastructure/227021-hoeven-predicts-highway-bill-by-june-30-with-keystone-in,)

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) predicts that the House and Senate will agree on a long-term surface transportation bill by June 30, when current funding runs out. The member of a House-Senate highway bill conference committee also said signs point to a provision mandating the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline being included in the bill. The State Department this year rejected the oil pipeline running from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico after Congress tried to force it to make a decision. The stated reason was not enough time to consider the pipeline's merits. “I think we will pass Keystone as part of the highway bill,” Hoeven, who is a chief Senate proponent of Keystone, said, in an appearance on C-Span's "Newsmakers" airing Sunday. The highway bill conference committee met for the first time this week and publicly there was little sign of compromise. The senator noted that the House passed a highway bill with Keystone in it by a “veto proof” majority and said that Keystone has 58 senators in support. “Sen. Baucus has been very helpful,” he added. The House passed its highway bill, which authorizes programs through September on a 293-127 with support from 69 Democrats. Two senior Democrat leaders, Reps. James Clyburn (S.C.) and John Larson (Conn.), approved of the measure. Hoeven said that even if gas prices drop, pressure will remain on the White House to follow an all of the above energy strategy that includes Keystone.

Aff – Econ Down

Econ is down now – jobs numbers prove decline

Rasmus 5/8 (Jack, "US GDP Slowdown and Prospects for Recovery in 2012," http://truth-out.org/news/item/9001-us-gdp-slowdown-and-prospects-for-recovery-in-2012)

The jobs numbers for April and other economic data thus suggest a continuing slowdown of the US economy has begun in the current second quarter of 2012. That decline will likely continue further in the months immediately ahead, to possibly as low as 1.5% the second quarter, April-June 2012. The hot air trial balloon floated by the press and pundits this past winter - that the US economy was finally, after a third try in as many years, about to take off on a sustained growth path in 2012 - is thus once again about to deflate. The US economy remains mired in the stop-go trajectory that has characterized it since early 2009: short shallow rebounds punctuated by brief relapses and slowdowns - a condition and prediction this writer raised nearly three years ago with the publication of the work, Epic Recession, and reiterated last November with a latest work, Obama’s Economy: Recovery for the Few’, just published this April.

Optimistic predictions are wrong – the economic recovery has stopped

BIVENS ’12 – economist at the Economic Policy Institute; Ph.D., Economics, New School for Social Research (Josh, “

A happy (economic) 2012 is far from guaranteed”, January 3, http://www.epi.org/blog/happy-economic-2012-not-guaranteed/)

A couple of commentators have put forward reasons why 2012 might be a better-than-expected year for the economy. Matt Yglesias’ entry into the “happy days are here again” sweepstakes is a bit older, but it’s smarter than most and invokes an obscure, but important, economist of olde to make the point. Thus, it’s a good peg to use to remind people about the case for pessimism.

Yglesias’ post basically sums up multiplier-accelerator models of recovery – the idea that when recoveries begin, they will be self-sustaining and initial improvements in one sector of the economy will generate further increases in activity in other sectors (this reasoning also explains the dynamic of contractions, not just recoveries).

As Yglesias puts it:

“But every downward tick in the unemployment rate is another twentysomething moving out of his parents’ basement, stimulating a return to a more normal level of construction. Multifamily housing starts are already up 80 percent over the past year to accommodate the likely coming flood of renters, and there’ll be more to come once people have more cash in their pockets.

This increase in economic activity will boost state and local tax revenue and end the already slowing cycle of public sector layoffs. Re-employment in the construction, durable goods, and related transportation and warehousing functions will bolster income and push up spending on nondurables, restaurants, leisure and hospitality, and all the rest. Happy days, in other words, will be here again.”

This is indeed what recovery will look like when it comes. But there’s very little evidence that the process has started.

For one, “every downward tick in the unemployment rate” that we’ve seen over the past two years (i.e., since the unemployment rate peaked at 10.1 percent in Oct. 2009) has not represented somebody getting a job (and hence able to move towards independence and spending). Rather, it’s represented somebody dropping out (or choosing not to enter) the labor force. And even over the past year (since Nov. 2010), fully two-thirds of the decline in the unemployment rate was driven by a shrinking labor force and not by employment growth.

The best chart to show that a robust multiplier-accelerator process has yet to begin remains the difference between actual and potential GDP. The size of this gap is the progress that is being made (or not) towards recovery. The free-fall of this ratio that was the Great Recession has stopped, but so has the upward progress of the early part of the recovery (when, by the way, there was an actual boost to the recovery being provided by fiscal support, instead of the drag that will constitute the next year). Until one sees a rapid upward movement in the gap between actual and potential GDP (and, actually, until one sees this movement driven by improvements in actual rather than a deterioration in potential GDP), it seems awfully premature to think that a positive, self-reinforcing cumulative causation has set in or can be banked on for the coming year.

Aff – No link

No compromise until after election – plan doesn’t matter

Pianin 5/16 (Eric, The Fiscal Times, "Boehner to Dems: We Won’t Blink First on Debt Deal," http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/05/16/Boehner-to-Dems-We-Wont-Blink-First-on-Debt-Deal.aspx#page1)

A FINGER IN THE DIKE More likely, Congress will pass a number of stopgap measures to extend temporarily the tax cuts and possibly blunt the full impact of the automatic spending cuts on the Pentagon and some domestic programs in a lame-duck session immediately after the election. The Republicans, of course, have their eye on winning back control of the White House and Senate, and are unlikely to try to negotiate another “Grand Bargain” of deficit reduction and tax reform until after they know just how much power they will wield beginning in January. “I don’t think you will see a permanent resolution in a lame duck session,” Ryan explained. “I’m not sure that’s the appropriate place to do that. I think this election will largely be debated and fought and discussed over how to solve this problem. The people who win the election will have the obligation and mandate of the country to implement that solution. But I think in the lame duck you will see something to make sure we don’t have a train wreck.”

Aff – Link Turn – Keynes

Fast infrastructure spending is key to economic growth – their indicts don’t apply to infrastructure

Calhoun 4/29 (Joe, Alhambra Investment Partners' money management services, Weekly Economic & Market Review, http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2012/04/29/weekly-economic-market-review-26/)

Targeted, timely and temporary. That was the clarion call of the Keynesians during the debate over the stimulus plan enacted at the beginning of President Obama’s current term. Stimulus was reckoned to be most effective when these three principals were embraced. We all know now that timely wasn’t much of a consideration in the structure of the stimulus and even President Obama has acknowledged that there is no such thing as “shovel ready”. Even if the stimulus had been targeted at infrastructure and other projects with a theoretical long term investment return, getting it done in a timely manner is impossible unless you are Walmex and willing to grease a few palms. In any case, the spending wasn’t aimed at long term government investment (an oxymoron if ever one existed) with most of it spent on transfer payments to individuals or states. Never mind, the Keynesians told us; transferring cash from bond buyers to those more inclined to spend it would create a virtuous circle of higher spending that would somehow lead to sustained growth. And now, with the release of the recent GDP report, we find the flaw in this tripartite ponzi scheme. Having failed so miserably in the targeting and timeliness, our politicians succeeded in adhering only to the temporary part of the equation. The biggest drag on “growth” in the GDP report was the drop in government spending.

Infrastructure threads the needle to larger economic recovery

Greenwood 5/16 (Chris, Phoenix Independent Examiner, "Debt ceiling talks outline new GOP strategy for election," http://www.examiner.com/article/debt-ceiling-talks-outline-new-gop-strategy-for-election)

At this point, the "job creators" would have no more excuses as to why they have to move their factories to Malaysia or any other country for that matter. They would also have no more loopholes to profit from American business without the responsibility of the American society. I have stated over and over again that the fastest way back to black ink for this nation is job creation. Conservatives have cried over and over again that government doesn't really create jobs, but they know full well that government investment in projects that require private companies to hire creates jobs. Simple investment in infrastructure and alternative energy would begin the ball rolling the other direction. And I don't mean a package of incentives coupled with a package of tax cuts, which only ends up costing us more revenue.

Infrastructure spending is key to economic recovery – has a high money multiplier effect and increases aggregate demand

Fieldhouse 4/24 (Andrew, Economic Policy Institute, "Sequestration will slow the recovery and job growth, period," http://www.epi.org/blog/sequestration-slows-recovery-job-growth/)

These estimates reflect the impact of sequestration on total nonfarm payroll employment at the end of each fiscal year. They assume a fiscal multiplier of 1.4 for general government spending, which is Moody’s Analytics most recent public estimate of the government spending multiplier. While we use the same multiplier for all cuts, we’d guess that these likely slightly overstate the adverse economic impact resulting from defense spending cuts and understate job losses from domestic spending cuts. Budgetary programs for lower-income households in the discretionary budget—such as housing assistance and the special supplemental food program for women, infants, and children (WIC)—as well as infrastructure spending have particularly high multipliers. And to the extent that cuts to spending by the Department of Defense come from capital-intensive weapons acquisitions rather than reductions in personnel strength, the impact on employment would be milder. Regardless, any cuts in the near-term (unless they are ploughed into more spending somewhere else) are going to constitute a drag on the still-weak recovery. Cutting government spending reduces aggregate demand and worsens joblessness while the economy is running well below-potential output. Conservatives’ selective Keynesianism—which pops up in their advocacy for defense spending and tax cuts, among other priorities—applies to the rest of government spending and the national income and product accounts, too.

Aff – AT: Debt Ceiling

It’s inevitable – it’s just posturing

McCarter 5/17 (Joan, Daily KOS, "John Boehner's debt ceiling threats greeted with skepticism in Republican caucus," http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/17/1092448/-John-Boehner-s-debt-ceiling-threats-greeted-with-skepticism-in-Republican-caucus-)

Boehner's posturing has been greeted with a flat-out rejection from the White House and from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Boehner's chief rival, hasn't said anything, leaving Boeher hanging. Now the crazies in his own caucus, feeling burned from how the Budget Control Act played out, are (as always) disgruntled. In other words, business as usual for the bumbling speaker. In fact, Boehner seems so surprised at not being heralded as the conquering hero by his fellow Republicans, that he's now trying to downplay his threat, saying "the only ones who are talking about drama or brinkmanship are my Democrat colleagues across the aisle." Hmmm.... Let's look at what he told the President one more time. "I'm not going to allow a debt ceiling increase without doing something serious about the debt." No, no promise of drama and brinksmanship in that statement. Good luck walking this one back, Boehner.

Aff – Obama Loses

Romney will win – polls

Cassidy 5/15 (John, The New Yorker, "Romney Leads Obama in Latest Poll: How Bad Is It?," http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/05/romney-leads-obama-in-latest-poll.html)

In my neck of artisanal, hormone-free Brooklyn, the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, which shows Mitt Scissorhands leading “The First Gay President” by three points, landed with a nasty thud. “I can’t believe he might lose,” my wife said when she spotted the offending numbers on the Web. “People are really willing to vote for Mitt Romney? They hate Obama so much they’d vote for Romney?” Evidently so—not that you’d know it from a casual read of the print edition of today’s Times. The editors buried the lead in the fifteenth paragraph of a down-page story on A17. (I’ve got a helpful suggestion: if Romney’s ahead in next month’s poll, maybe it could go in the Metro section—the one that no longer exists.) Not surprisingly, conservative news sites made rather more of the story. Under the headline “Kaboom: Romney Leads Obama by 3 in New CBS/NYT Poll,” Guy Benson, the political editor of Townhall.com, pointed out several other noteworthy findings n the survey, including the facts that Romney leads Obama by two points among women (so much for the gender gap) and seven points among independents. Two thirds of the survey’s respondents said the economy was in “very bad” or “fairly bad” shape, and Obama’s favorability rating is still stuck in the mid-forties—at forty-five per cent, to be exact. To add insult to injury, the poll suggested the public is skeptical of Obama’s conversion to the cause of legalizing gay marriage. (This was the finding that the Times devoted most of its page A17 story to.) Sixty-seven per cent of respondents said they thought the President changed tack mostly for political reasons, and just sixteen per cent said his announcement would make them more likely to vote for him.

Romney will win – multiple warrants

Benson 5/15 (Guy, "Kaboom: Romney Leads Obama by 3 in New CBS/NYT Poll," http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2012/05/15/kaboom_romney_leads_obama_by_3_in_new_cbsnyt_poll)

All the usual May polling caveats apply, obviously -- but my oh my, there are some eye-opening numbers in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The topline number shows Romney leading The One 46-43 among registered voters (a very low number for an incumbent), but the internals hold even better morsels: (1) Romney leads among women by two points. This is a dramatic turnaround from even a few weeks ago, when the Left was singing the dopey "war on women" refrain from every rooftop. I guess it didn't really stick. Think Progress' Judd Legum tweeted that if Romney wins women in the fall, his margin of victory overall will be impressive. Indeed. Score one for stay-at-home moms, at least for the moment. (2) Indies side with Romney by seven points, and Romney is picking off more Democrats than Obama is Republicans. Perhaps the Obamacons who were bamboozled in 2008 aren't feeling especially forgiving this time 'round. Incidentally, who are those ten percent of Democrats who back Romney? Probably folks from places like West Virginia, and other members of Hillary's base last cycle. (3) This is a poll of registered, not likely, voters -- which means that Romney's edge is probably heftier within the latter pool. Republicans typically fare better among likely voters. (4) The sample for this poll is D+6. The 2008 partisan turnout breakdown was D+7 (37/32), so the NYT/CBS model predicts that the 2012 will be roughly the same as it was four years ago. Color me skeptical; the last presidential election was a perfect storm of awful for the GOP. In the 2010 midterms, the partisan split was exactly even (35/35). I think it's fair to say that a more realistic sample breakdown would tack a few points onto Romney's lead. (5) The president's decision to publicly support same-sex marriage looks like it's a small, but immediate, drag on his re-election chances. This issue may fade before the fall, but at the moment, Obama's "evolution" is hurting him. One in four voters report that Obama's call makes them less likely to support him in November, and only 38 percent support gay marriage overall. (Support for at least civil unions is significantly broader). Perhaps most damaging for Obama on this item is the cynicism with which people view his motives for changing his views. Yowza:

Aff – Warming D

Won’t cause extinction

NIPCC 11. Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. Surviving the unprecedented climate change of the IPCC. 8 March 2011. http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/mar/8mar2011a5.html

In a paper published in Systematics and Biodiversity, Willis et al. (2010) consider the IPCC (2007) "predicted climatic changes for the next century" -- i.e., their contentions that "global temperatures will increase by 2-4°C and possibly beyond, sea levels will rise (~1 m ± 0.5 m), and atmospheric CO2will increase by up to 1000 ppm" -- noting that it is "widely suggested that the magnitude and rate of these changes will result in many plants and animals going extinct," citing studies that suggest that "within the next century, over 35% of some biota will have gone extinct (Thomas et al., 2004; Solomon et al., 2007) and there will be extensive die-back of the tropical rainforest due to climate change (e.g. Huntingford et al., 2008)." On the other hand, they indicate that some biologists and climatologists have pointed out that "many of the predicted increases in climate have happened before, in terms of both magnitude and rate of change (e.g. Royer, 2008; Zachos et al., 2008), and yet biotic communities have remained remarkably resilient (Mayle and Power, 2008) and in some cases thrived (Svenning and Condit, 2008)." But they report that those who mention these things are often "placed in the 'climate-change denier' category," although the purpose for pointing out these facts is simply to present "a sound scientific basis for understanding biotic responses to the magnitudes and rates of climate change predicted for the future through using the vast data resource that we can exploit in fossil records." Going on to do just that, Willis et al. focus on "intervals in time in the fossil record when atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased up to 1200 ppm, temperatures in mid- to high-latitudes increased by greater than 4°C within 60 years, and sea levels rose by up to 3 m higher than present," describing studies of past biotic responses that indicate "the scale and impact of the magnitude and rate of such climate changes on biodiversity." And what emerges from those studies, as they describe it, "is evidence for rapid community turnover, migrations, development of novel ecosystems and thresholds from one stable ecosystem state to another." And, most importantly in this regard, they report "there is very little evidence for broad-scale extinctions due to a warming world." In concluding, the Norwegian, Swedish and UK researchers say that "based on such evidence we urge some caution in assuming broad-scale extinctions of species will occur due solely to climate changes of the magnitude and rate predicted for the next century," reiterating that "the fossil record indicates remarkable biotic resilience to wide amplitude fluctuations in climate."

And it’s not anthropogenic

Watson 9 (Steve, citing a report conducted by the Japan Society of Energy and Resources, the academic society representing scientists from the energy and resource fields, “Top Japanese Scientists: Warming Is Not Caused By Human Activity,” February 27th, http://www.infowars.com/top-japanese-scientists-warming-is-not-caused-by-human-activity/)

A major scientific report by leading Japanese academics concludes that global warming is not man-made and that the overall warming trend from the mid-part of the 20th Century onwards has now stopped. Unsurprisingly the report, which was released last month, has been completely ignored by the Western corporate media. The report was undertaken by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER), the academic society representing scientists from the energy and resource fields. The JSER acts as a government advisory panel, much like the International Panel on Climate Change did for the UN. The JSER’s findings provide a stark contrast to the IPCC’s, however, with only one out of five top researchers agreeing with the claim that recent warming has been accelerated by man-made carbon emissions. The government commissioned report criticizes computer climate modeling and also says that the US ground temperature data set, used to back up the man-made warming claims, is too myopic. In the last month, no major Western media outlet has covered the report, which prompted British based sci-tech website The Register to commission a translation of the document. Section one highlights the fact that Global Warming has ceased, noting that since 2001, the increase in global temperatures has halted, despite a continuing increase in CO2 emissions. The report then states that the recent warming the planet has experienced is primarily a recovery from the so called "Little Ice Age" that occurred from around 1400 through to 1800, and is part of a natural cycle. The researchers also conclude that global warming and the halting of the temperature rise are related to solar activity, a notion previously dismissed by the IPCC. "The hypothesis that the majority of global warming can be ascribed to the Greenhouse Effect is mistaken." the report’s introduction states. Kanya Kusano, Program Director and Group Leader for the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology (JAMSTEC) reiterates this point: "[The IPCC's] conclusion that from now on atmospheric temperatures are likely to show a continuous, monotonic increase, should be perceived as an unprovable hypothesis," Shunichi Akasofu, head of the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska, cites historical data to challenge the claim that very recent temperatures represent an anomaly: "We should be cautious, IPCC’s theory that atmospheric temperature has risen since 2000 in correspondence with CO2 is nothing but a hypothesis. " "Before anyone noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for truth… The opinion that great disaster will really happen must be broken." Akasofu concludes. The key passages of the translated report can be found here. The conclusions within the report dovetail with those of hundreds of Western scientists, who have been derided and even compared with holocaust deniers for challenging the so called "consensus" on global warming. The total lack of exposure that this major report has received is another example of how skewed coverage of climate change is toward one set of hypotheses. This serves the agenda to deliberately whip up mass hysteria on behalf of governments who are all too eager to introduce draconian taxation and control measures that won’t do anything to combat any form of warming, whether you believe it to be natural or man-made.

Aff – CTBT D

No impact to the CTBT – multiple warrants

Perry et al 9 (William J, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor at Stanford University, “America’s Strategic Posture The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States”, http://media.usip.org/reports/strat_posture_report.pdf.)

First, there is no demonstrated linkage between the absence of U.S. testing and non-proliferation. Indeed, South Africa and several other countries gave up nuclear weapons when the United States was testing, while India, Pakistan and North Korea proceeded with nuclear weapons programs after we ceased. Ratification would not dampen North Korea’s or Iran’s nuclear programs, and the CTBT would not prevent other countries from developing basic nuclear weapons because testing is unnecessary. Second, the United States would follow the letter of CTBT restrictions, although the treaty is unlikely ever to take effect. Entry into force would require many other countries to sign and ratify, including North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Israel, and Egypt—the probability of which is near zero. Consequently, the U.S. would be bound by restrictions that other key countries could ignore. Third, the treaty remarkably does not define a nuclear test. In practice this allows different interpretations of its prohibitions and asymmetrical restrictions. The strict U.S. interpretation precludes tests that produce nuclear yield. However, other countries with different interpretations could conduct tests with hundreds of tons of nuclear yield—allowing them to develop or advance nuclear capabilities with low-yield, enhanced radiation, and electro-magnetic-pulse. Apparently Russia and possibly China are conducting low yield tests. This is quite serious because Russian and Chinese doctrine highlights tactical nuclear warfighting. With no agreed definition, U.S. relative understanding of these capabilities would fall further behind over time and undermine our capability to deter tactical threats against allies. Fourth, the CTBT’s problems cannot be fixed by an agreement that all parties follow a zero-yield prohibition because it would be wholly unverifiable. Countries could still undertake significant undetected testing. The National Academy of Sciences concluded that underground nuclear explosions with yields up to 1 or 2 kilotons may be hidden. Consequently, even a “zero-yield” CTBT could not prevent countries from testing to develop new nuclear warfighting capabilities or improve existing capabilities. Fifth, the CTBT’s on-site verification provisions cannot fix these problems. Instead, they seem designed to preclude the possibility of inspections by requiring the approval of 30 members of the Executive Council when only 10 of its 51 members would be from North America and Western Europe. Worse yet, the CTBT allows each country to declare numerous sites with a total of 50 square kilometers out of bounds to on-site inspection. Sixth, maintaining a safe, reliable nuclear stockpile in the absence of testing entails real technical risks that cannot be eliminated by even the most sophisticated science-based program because full validation of these programs is likely to require testing over time. With nuclear arms reductions our confidence in each weapon becomes paramount, but CTBT ratification would foreclose means to that confidence. In short, under the CTBT, opponents could make improvements in their nuclear capabilities while U.S. ratification would preclude the testing that could help preserve the U.S. capability to deter them. Given these serious problems and very dubious benefits, the CTBT should not be ratified.

Aff – Econ D

No econ impact

Ferguson 6 (Niall, Professor of History – Harvard University, Foreign Affairs, 85(5), September / October, Lexis)

Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most familiar causal chain in modern historiography links the Great Depression to the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II. But that simple story leaves too much out. Nazi Germany started the war in Europe only after its economy had recovered. Not all the countries affected by the Great Depression were taken over by fascist regimes, nor did all such regimes start wars of aggression. In fact, no general relationship between economics and conflict is discernible for the century as a whole. Some wars came after periods of growth, others were the causes rather than the consequences of economic catastrophe, and some severe economic crises were not followed by wars.