Over at Downsizing the Federal Government, we focused on the following issues this past week:

• The child tax credit started out as a Republican effort to distort the tax code in a socially conservative manner, and it has now morphed into a large welfare program. As for the earned income tax credit, any program that hands out one-quarter of its spending erroneously and fraudulently is grossly unfair to the taxpayers who are footing the bills.
• The electorate — and reporters covering the president’s “jobs plan” — should understand that subsidies to state and local government have gone through the roof since 2000.
• The wonderful thing about this newly discovered feature of ObamaCare is that states don’t have to wait for Congress to act. They can reduce federal spending simply by not creating a health insurance exchange.
• President Obama’s job speech was full of bad ideas.
• We should place fewer demands on our troops and recognize that our spending and our foreign policy discourage other countries from doing more. Declaring military spending off limits before the Supercommittee even begins its work reveals a shocking unwillingness to reconsider the roles and missions that drive military spending.

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