Democrats love their political stunts. A week or two ago we were subjected to one such legislative gimmick, a war surtax.

Arguing it is unfair to continue to pass the cost of the war in Iraq to future generations, three senior House Democrats Tuesday offered a long-shot plan to raise taxes to pay for the $150 billion bill for the war in 2008.

At the same time, one of the Democrats, Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, announced he would delay action on the White House’s war request for next year, saying he refuses “to continue the status quo.”

The tax plan, unveiled by Obey and Reps. John Murtha, D-Pa., and Jim McGovern, D-Mass., would require low- and middle-income taxpayers to add 2 percent to their tax bill. Wealthier people would add a 12 to 15 percent surcharge, Obey said.

Sponsors of the tax plan appeared more interested in making a point ? getting people to focus on the cost of the war ? than offering it as a serious proposal.

If a surtax is an appropriate way to get people to focus on costs, I have a few proposals. We’ve got mandatory spending, on things like welfare, medicare, medicaid and social security, which are simply burgeoning out of control. In the future they will completely overshadow the rest of the federal budget. Even defense isn’t going to come close to the expense of running the welfare state. These charts from Heritage’s “Federal Revenue and Spending: A Book of Charts” illustrates what costs we really need to concern ourselves with.

I’m sure you also notice the exponential growth in interest which is projected to occur. The reason for that is simple. As entitlement programs explode the federal budget, the deficit is going to grow right along with them. As a percentage of GDP, the deficit is currently projected to take off before 2020.

This rapid growth is going to be fueled entirely by the growth in entitlement spending. So in the previous chart, the interest payments can also be attributed to our welfare state programs.

Given all this, when will democrats propose a nanny-state surcharge to highlight these unsustainable costs?

Need any more be said?

I sure can’t tell the difference.

The Republican plan to privatize Social Security could cause huge debt for decades, a Democratic candidate seeking a House seat in Iowa, a state with a high concentration of elderly residents, said Saturday.

“If the Republican plan is allowed to pass, future generations both here and across the country will be saddled with decades of debt and no guaranteed retirement security,” Bruce Braley said in the Democrats’ weekly radio address. . .

The article is about as biased as they came. AP never questions any of the Braley’s assertions, and never once offers a Republican rebuttal. In fact, they used his words so often they had to say “Braley said” five times in the article, and used “he said” twice more. That’s seven quotations for the Democrat candidate, and none for Republicans, in an article that is less than 400 words. The “article” is really little more than Democrat talking points.

How hard would it be for AP to do a little research? How long would it take to uncover the fact that President Clinton’s Social Security Advisory Committee recommended a personal account option? How hard would it be for AP to show the real problems of Social Security, such as retiring baby boomers being paid for by subsequent generations that saw much lower birth rates (which means less workers to pay their checks) or longer life expentancy.

It’s not hard to see why this article is so biased. It says so right in the article.

Braley, 48, a lawyer from Waterloo, faces Republican Mike Whalen in the contest to fill the seat being vacated by Republican Rep. Jim Nussle, who is running for governor. The race is considered one of the more competitive in the country.

A competitive race for a Republican seat, it’s not surprising that the media is pulling out all the stops and shilling for the Democratic candidate in order to help in their quest to gain power in ‘06. AP is without shame.

Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler from NY showed us recently that the democrats are not going to deviate from their standard playbook of fear and scaremongering on the issue of Social Security. Comments from the Congressional record February 16, 2006:

[I]n the President’s budget he asks for a few hundred million dollars over the next few years for the cost of privatizing Social Security. When he was here at the State of the Union address, he commented that Congress rejected his proposals to privatize Social Security. All the Democrats to his surprise got up and cheered, because we think it is a terrible idea to privatize Social Security.

To do to Social Security what they are doing to the pension system, eliminating private pensions and making people depend only on 401(k)s, we think is a terrible idea. What the President telegraphed, by putting in his budget the money to pay for the cost of privatizing Social Security, is that if the Republicans retain control of Congress in this election, they are going to try it again.

They will privatize Social Security if the Republicans control Congress again next year. If anybody thinks that privatizing Social Security is a bad idea, that we should not destroy Social Security, you better vote Democratic this year.

You’ve heard it here, folks. If you vote Republican, Social Security will be destroyed! Vote for us, the Democrats. We’d rather just watch the system go bankrupt.