Stephen’s Posterous

Karl Rove, a former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, writes in his weekly editorial article in The Wall Street Journal that the polls are turning against President Barack Obama’s health-care plan as well as his political agenda.

Mr. Rove extracts some statistics that shows that those who strongly disapprove of the president’s approach on health care now outnumber those who strongly approve by 33% to 25%. And 49% of independents disapprove of the president’s approach, up from 30% in April 2009.

Those who strongly disapprove now outnumber those who strongly approve of his handling of the economy by 35% to 29%, and of deficits, 38% to 19%, and of unemployment, 31% to 26%.

The Gallup showed Mr. Obama’s personal approval was 55%, down from more than 60% a few weeks ago and lower than the 56% George W. Bush had at this point in his first term. Mr. Rove says that the polls are crumbling because of a flood of bad news about Mr. Obama’s health-care proposals.

A July 17, 2009, study by the Lewin Group projects that if the House bill becomes law, 83.4 million people will lose private insurance as employers drop their plans.

Democratic governors from Colorado, Tennessee, New Mexico and Washington joined GOP colleagues at the National Governors Association summer meeting to challenge the Obama administration on plans to shift millions of families into Medicaid.

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Elmendorf said in a July 17, 2009, letter that the House’s health-care bill would result in a “net increase in the federal budget deficit of $239 billion” over 10 years. Mr. Rove says that this is a low-ball estimate because it assumes that Congress will increase taxes by $583 billion over the next decade.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel says he’ll pay for the Obama health proposal by raising taxes on Americans making $280,000 a year or $350,000 for couples.

Mr. Rove ends by writing:

Democratic leaders, including the president, are now backing away from a vote on health care before August. But that’s not likely to decrease voter angst. Americans for Prosperity and others are already organizing voters to attend public meetings with members of Congress this summer. My guess is that members of Congress are about to hear a lot from their voters on the government takeover of health care, new energy taxes, the failed stimulus, record deficits, and growing joblessness.

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Karl Rove, former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, writes in his weekly editorial column this week in The Wall Street Journal that if Democrats enact a public-option health-insurance program, America is on its way to becoming a European-style welfare state. To prevent this from happening, he offers five arguments that the GOP must make.

First, this program is not necessary. A government plan is not needed to guarantee competition's benefits. There are currently 1,300 companies selling health insurance plans.

Second, this program will undercut private insurers and pass the bill to taxpayers and health providers as it does now with Medicare, which pays hospitals 71% and doctors 81% of what private insurers pay. The government passes the rest to providers and families not covered by government programs, which is a forced subsidy. According to a recent study by Milliman Inc., families pay about $1,800 more a year for someone else's health care as a result.

Third, government-run health insurance would force most Americans into the government plan. The Lewin Group estimates 70% of people with private insurance, about 120 million Americans, would quickly lose what they now get from private companies and be forced into the government program.

Fourth, the program is too expensive. The cost of Medicare, the purest form of a government-run public choice for seniors, will start exceeding its payroll-tax trust fund in 2017. Medicare and Medicaid cost much more than estimated when they were adopted because there is no competition for these government-run insurance programs.

Fifth, the program puts government firmly in the middle of the relationship between patients and their doctors.

Mr. Rove ends by stating:

The public option is just phony. It's a bait-and-switch tactic meant to reassure people that the president's goals are less radical than they are. Mr. Obama's real aim, as some candid Democrats admit, is a single-payer, government-run health-care system.

Health care desperately needs far-reaching reforms that put patients and their doctors in charge, bring the benefits of competition and market forces to bear, and ensure access to affordable and portable health care for every American. Republicans have plans to achieve this, and they must make their case for reform in every available forum.

Defeating the public option should be a top priority for the GOP this year. Otherwise, our nation will be changed in damaging ways almost impossible to reverse.

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Karl Rove, former Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush, writes that President Obama's decisions will eventually lead to higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher taxes, sluggish growth, and a jobless recovery.

The Labor Department is expected to report unemployment over 8 percent with 200,000 more jobs lost in May 2009. Congressional Budget Director Douglas W. Elmendorf predicts that unemployment will continue rising into the second half of next year and peak above 10%.

Mr. Rove says that President Obama describes job losses as job gains. The President does this by estimating how many jobs are saved because of his Stimulus Package. The Labor Department does not collect data on jobs saved. Mr. Rove calls this President Obama's, "Clairvoyant ability to estimate."

However, the former National Economic Council Director Keith Hennessey said on his blog that the stimulus will be ineffective because the additional economic growth it spurs will come six to nine months later than it could have. This is due to the fact that only $185 billion of the Stimulus Package will be spent this fiscal year.

Also, much of the Stimulus Package has been saved, not spent, since the national savings rate has risen from 0% to around 5%.

Mr. Rove says for the Stimulus Package to be more effective, it should have been front-loaded into this fiscal year. He thinks that President Obama's Team idea that each dollar spent for the Stimulus Package translates into a dollar-and-a-half in growth is fiction. The costs of stimulus reduces future growth.

Mr. Rove writes:

No country has ever spent itself to prosperity. The price of stimulus has to be paid sometime.

The real improvements in the economy are the result of the expanded money supply by the Fed and the U.S. Treasury helping the financial sector.

Mr. Rove believes that the Fed's actions are risky. Easy money and expansionary policies are not sustainable. Inflation may be just around the corner unless the government can collect the money back. He also belives that government will likely hamper private investment because the government will need a lot of capital to finance its debt.

Mr. Rove writes:

It is becoming clear that the economy is now the top issue. Mr. Obama's presidency may well rise or fall on it. The economy will be his responsibility long before next year's elections. Americans may give him a chance to turn things around, but voters can turn unforgiving very quickly if promised jobs don't materialize.

Mr. Rove says that Obama's honeymoon allowed him to push for the largest expansion of the government in U.S. History.

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Karl Rove, former Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush, writes in his weekly editorial in the Wall Street Journal on May 27, 2009, that both President Barack Obama and the Republicans get something they want from the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor.

Mr. Rove says that Mr. Obama nominates someone who has "empathy." Someone who will temper the court's decisions with a concern for the downtrodden, the powerless and the voiceless.

Mr. Rove writes:

"Empathy" is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.

There is a certain irony in a President who routinely praises America's commitment to "the rule of law" but who picks Supreme Court nominees for their readiness to discard the rule of law whenever emotion moves them.

Mr. Obama's pick also allows him to placate Hispanic groups who'd complained of his failure to appoint more high profile Latinos to his administration.

Mr. Rove says that President Obama will gain political points from Latinos as GOP senators oppose a Latina. He also says that the Sotomayor nomination also provides Republicans with some advantages as they can make their concerns about having a judge who will strictly interpret the Constitution and apply the law as written. The American public supports this.

Mr. Rove writes:

Mr. Obama understands the danger of heralding Judge Sotomayor as the liberal activist she is, so his spinners are intent on selling her as a moderate. The problem is that she described herself as liberal before becoming a judge, and fair-minded observers find her on the left of the federal bench.

Republicans also get a nominee who likes showing off and whose YouTube moments and Google insights cause people to wince. There are likely to be more revelations like Stuart Taylor's find last Saturday of this Sotomayor gem in a speech at Berkeley: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Invert the placement of "Latina woman" and "white male" and have a conservative say it: A career would be finished.

Mr. Rove does point out that both President Obama and the GOP are denied things in this nomination. The GOP doesn't get an easy target as Ms. Sotomayor has a compelling personal story that is attractive for cable, celebrity magazines and tabloids. And President Obama will not get a new leader on the Supreme Court.

The media has quickly adopted the story line that Republicans will damage themselves with Hispanics if they oppose Ms. Sotomayor, but Mr. Rove doesn't think this is an issue. However, the GOP must treat Ms. Sotomayor with kid gloves compared to how the Democrats treated John Roberts or Samuel Alito. Mr. Rove says that the GOP must make measured arguments against her views and philosophy, using her own words and actions.

Mr. Rove ends with writing:

Mr. Obama won't get a new leader on the Supreme Court. Ms. Sotomayor does not appear to be a consensus builder whose persuasive abilities would allow her to flip a 4-5 decision to a 5-4 decision. She is likely to be just another reliable liberal vote, much as Justice Souter was, only without his gloomy silences and withdrawn nature.

While the next two to four months of maneuverings and hearings may provide more insights into the views of Mr. Obama's pick, barring an unforeseen development -- not unheard of in Supreme Court nominations -- Judge Sotomayor will become the second Hispanic (Benjamin Cardozo was Sephardic) and third woman confirmed to the Supreme Court. Democrats will win the vote, but Republicans can win the argument by making a clear case against the judicial activism she represents. 

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Karl Rove writes in his weekly editorial in the Wall Street Journal that President Obama inherited a set of national-security policies that he rejected during the campaign but now embraces as president. Mr. Rove calls this a "stunning and welcome about-face."

Mr. Rove writes:

For example, President Obama kept George W. Bush's military tribunals for terror detainees after calling them an "enormous failure" and a "legal black hole." His campaign claimed last summer that "court systems . . . are capable of convicting terrorists." Upon entering office, he found out they aren't.

He insisted in an interview with NBC in 2007 that Congress mandate "consequences" for "a failure to meet various benchmarks and milestones" on aid to Iraq. Earlier this month he fought off legislatively mandated benchmarks in the $97 billion funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama agreed on April 23 to American Civil Liberties Union demands to release investigative photos of detainee abuse. Now's he reversed himself. Pentagon officials apparently convinced him that releasing the photos would increase the risk to U.S. troops and civilian personnel.

Mr. Rove writes that throughout Obama's presidential campaign, he excoriated Mr. Bush's counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, insisting it could not succeed, and he promised to end the Iraq war by withdrawing all troops by March 2009. But as President, President Obama has set a slower pace of a drawdown Iraq and still plans to leave 50,000 troops there while also applying a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan  .

Mr. Rove calls these reversals praiseworthy as President Obama realizes that the realities of governing trump the realities of campaigning. But Mr. Obama is also reversing himself on the domestic front and possibly causing more harm than good.

Mr. Rove writes:

Mr. Obama campaigned on "responsible fiscal policies," arguing in a speech on the Senate floor in 2006 that the "rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy." In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he pledged to "go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work." Even now, he says he'll "cut the deficit . . . by half by the end of his first term in office" and is "rooting out waste and abuse" in the budget.

However, Mr. Obama's fiscally conservative words are betrayed by his liberal actions. He offers an orgy of spending and a bacchanal of debt. His budget plans a 25% increase in the federal government's share of the GDP, a doubling of the national debt in five years, and a near tripling of it in 10 years.

On health care, Mr. Obama's election ads decried "government-run health care" as "extreme," saying it would lead to "higher costs." Now he is promoting a plan that would result in a de facto government-run health-care system. Even the Washington Post questions it, saying, "It is difficult to imagine . . . benefits from a government-run system."

Mr. Rove says that Mr. Obama's flip-flops on national security have been wise, but on the domestic front they have been harmful. He says that we have learned something about Mr. Obama and that is that what animated him during the campaign is what historian Forrest McDonald once called "the projection of appealing images."

Mr. Rove says that all politicians want to project an appealing image, but Mr. McDonalds warns when an appealing image "becomes a self-sustaining end unto itself."

Mr. Rove concludes:

Mr. Obama's appealing campaign images turned out to have been fleeting. He ran hard to the left on national security to win the nomination, only to discover the campaign commitments he made were shallow and at odds with America's security interests.

Mr. Obama ran hard to the center on economic issues to win the general election. He has since discovered his campaign commitments were obstacles to ramming through the most ideologically liberal economic agenda since the Great Society.

Mr. Obama either had very little grasp of what governing would involve or, if he did, he used words meant to mislead the public. Neither option is particularly encouraging. America now has a president quite different from the person who advertised himself for the job last year. Over time, those things can catch up to a politician.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

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In his weekly commentary in the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove, former Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush, wrote that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appears not be truthful about her knowledge of the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs).

Mr. Rove writes:

Here's what we know. On Sept. 4, 2002, less than a year after 9/11, the CIA briefed Rep. Porter Goss, then House Intelligence Committee chairman, and Mrs. Pelosi, then the committee's ranking Democrat, on EITs including waterboarding. They were the first members of Congress to be informed.

In December 2007, Mrs. Pelosi admitted that she attended the briefing, but she wouldn't comment for the record about precisely what she was told. At the time the Washington Post spoke with a "congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter" and summarized that person's comments this way: "The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time."

When questions were raised last month about these statements, Mrs. Pelosi insisted at a news conference that "We were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." Mrs. Pelosi also claimed that the CIA "did not tell us they were using that, flat out. And any, any contention to the contrary is simply not true." She had earlier said on TV, "I can say flat-out, they never told us that these enhanced interrogations were being used."

Mr. Rove writes that CIA director Leon Panett and Rep. Porter Goss have both disputed Mrs. Pelosi's account. He also states that Michael Sheehy, Mrs. Pelosi's top aide on the Intelligence Committee at the time and later her national security adviser, not only attended the September 2002 meeting but was also briefed by the CIA on EITs on Feb. 5, 2003, and told about a videotape of Zubaydah being waterboarded.

The question Mr. Rove asks is whether the Speaker of the House is lying about what she knows and when she knew it, and and whether the Democrats will do anything about it.

Mr. Rove continues:

If Mrs. Pelosi considers the enhanced interrogation techniques to be torture, didn't she have a responsibility to complain at the time, introduce legislation to end the practices, or attempt to deny funding for the CIA's use of them? If she knew what was going on and did nothing, does that make her an accessory to a crime of torture, as many Democrats are calling enhanced interrogation?

Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy wants an independent investigation of Bush administration officials. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers feels the Justice Department should investigate and prosecute anyone who violated laws against committing torture. Are these and other similarly minded Democrats willing to have Mrs. Pelosi thrown into their stew of torture conspirators as an accomplice?

Mr. Rove thinks it's clear that after the 9/11 attacks, Mrs. Pelosi was briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques, agreed with what was being done, and even pressed the CIA to do more. He believes that Mrs. Pelosi decided to use enhanced interrogation as an issue to attack Republicans when the political winds shifted.

On another note, the Wall Street Journal wrote in their editorial about President's Obama reversal of now seeking to block the release of photographs collected as part of military accusations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The editorial states that President Obama took the advice of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his leading generals that the photos would complicate their efforts to win over Muslim allies for America's antiterror mission.

The Wall Street Journal writes:

Mr. Obama's change of heart was quickly denounced as akin to the "stonewalling tactics and opaque policies of the Bush administration" (the ACLU) and for "reneging on its legal obligation to release the torture photos" (Amnesty International). The President is learning, albeit slowly, that secrecy has its uses in wartime, and that the real goal of his allies on the left is to make it harder for the U.S. to defend itself.

From Karl Rove, former Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush

While officials in the Obama White House dismissed yesterday's "100 Days" anniversary as a "Hallmark Holiday," they understood it was what sociologist Daniel J. Boorstin called a "pseudo-event." By that, Boorstin meant an occasion that is not spontaneous but planned for the purpose of being reported -- an event that is important because someone says so, not because it is.

What happens in a president's first 100 days rarely characterizes the arc of the 1,361 that follow. Jimmy Carter had a very good first 100 days. Bill Clinton did not.

Still, a president would rather start well than poorly -- and Mr. Obama has a job approval of 63%. That leaves him tied with Mr. Carter, one point ahead of George W. Bush, and behind only Ronald Reagan's 67%. Four of the past six presidents had approval ratings that ranged between 62% and 67%, a statistically insignificant spread.

Mr. Obama is popular because he is a historic figure, has an attractive personality, has passed key legislation, and receives adoring press coverage.

However, there are cautionary signs. Mr. Obama's policies are less popular than his personality, the pace of polarization with Republicans has proceeded faster than ever in history, and independents are thinking more like Republicans on the issues and less like Democrats.

The first 100 days can reveal a pattern of behavior that comes to characterize a presidency. In this respect, there are two emerging habits of Team Obama worth watching.

One is the gap between what Mr. Obama said he would do and what he is doing. His administration is emphasizing in its official 100 days talking points steps he has taken to "deliver on the change he promised." During the campaign, Mr. Obama denounced the $2.3 trillion added to the national debt on Mr. Bush's watch as "deficits as far as the eye can see."

But Mr. Obama's budget adds $9.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. What happened to Obama the deficit hawk?

From Mr. Obama's Denver acceptance speech through the campaign, Mr. Obama did not publicly utter the phrase "universal health care." Instead, his campaign ran ads attacking "government-run health care" as "extreme." Now Mr. Obama is asking, as he did at a townhall meeting last month, "Why not do a universal health care system like the European countries?" Maybe because he was elected by intimating that would be "extreme"?

Another emphasis in the Obama 100 days talking points is that the president is a decisive leader. However, Mr. Obama is enormously deferential to Democrats in Congress and has outsourced formulation of key policies to them. He appears largely ambivalent about the contents of important legislation, satisfied to simply sign someone else's bill.

On the $787 billion stimulus package, he specified less than a quarter of the bill's spending and let House Appropriations Chairman Dave Obey decide the rest.

On cap and trade, Mr. Obama is comfortable to let Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey write that legislation with virtually no White House guidance. On health care, the White House is providing very little detail. Mr. Obama tees up an issue, but leaves its execution to congressional Democrats.

This leadership style may be a carryover from his Senate years, when he was unusually detached from the substance of legislation. Mr. Obama's focus on broad descriptions of a goal will produce laws, but handing over control of the process may produce deeply flawed products.

The stimulus bill turned into a liberal spending wish list that will retard, not hasten, recovery. Already, with mounting job losses the gap between the 3.675 million jobs he said he would create or protect in his first two years and the number of actual jobs in the economy has risen to nearly five million. Reaching his job target now requires creating 249,400 new jobs a month for the next 20 months. Democrats will not fare well in next year's elections if there is a yawning Obama "job gap."

Democratic congressional leaders are ecstatic about Mr. Obama's willingness to outsource major legislation to them. They thrive on sausage making and, with the president's popularity high, they appreciate that his strengths are not their strengths. Yet Mr. Obama clearly did not gain their respect for his legislative abilities during his Senate years.

Mr. Obama is a great face for the Democratic Party. He is its best salesman and most persuasive advocate. But he is beginning to leave the impression that he is more concerned with the aesthetics of policy rather than its contents.

In the long run, substance and consequences define a presidency more than signing ceremonies and photo-ops. In his first 100 days, Mr. Obama has put the fate of his presidency in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He may come to regret that decision.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

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From Karl Rove, former Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush

President Barack Obama has finished the second leg of his international confession tour. In less than 100 days, he has apologized on three continents for what he views as the sins of America and his predecessors.

Mr. Obama told the French (the French!) that America "has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward Europe. In Prague, he said America has "a moral responsibility to act" on arms control because only the U.S. had "used a nuclear weapon."

In London, he said that decisions about the world financial system were no longer made by "just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy" -- as if that were a bad thing. And in Latin America, he said the U.S. had not "pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors" because we "failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas."

By confessing our nation's sins, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that Mr. Obama has "changed the image of America around the world" and made the U.S. "safer and stronger." As evidence, Mr. Gibbs pointed to the absence of protesters during the Summit of the Americas this past weekend.

That's now the test of success? Anti-American protesters are a remarkably unreliable indicator of a president's wisdom. Ronald Reagan drew hundreds of thousands of protesters by deploying Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe. Those missiles helped win the Cold War.

There is something ungracious in Mr. Obama criticizing his predecessors, including most recently John F. Kennedy. ("I'm grateful that President [Daniel] Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old," Mr. Obama said after the Nicaraguan delivered a 52-minute anti-American tirade that touched on the Bay of Pigs.) Mr. Obama acts as if no past president -- except maybe Abraham Lincoln -- possesses his wisdom.

Mr. Obama was asked in Europe if he believes in American exceptionalism. He said he did -- in the same way that "the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism." That's another way of saying, "No."

Mr. Obama makes it seem as though there is moral equivalence between America and its adversaries and assumes that if he confesses America's sins, other nations will confess theirs and change. But he won no confessions (let alone change) from the leaders of Venezuela, Nicaragua or Russia. He apologized for America and our adversaries rejoiced. Fidel Castro isn't easing up on Cuban repression, but he is preparing to take advantage of Mr. Obama's policy shifts.

When a president desires personal popularity, he can lose focus on vital American interests. It's early, but with little to show for the confessions, David Axelrod of Team Obama was compelled to say this week that the president planted, cultivated and will harvest "very, very valuable" returns later. Like what?

Meanwhile, the desire for popularity has led Mr. Obama to embrace bad policies. Blaming America for the world financial crisis led him to give into European demands for crackdowns on tax havens and hedge funds. Neither had much to do with the credit crisis.

Saying that America's relationship with Russia "has been allowed to drift" led the president to push for arms negotiations. But that draws attention away from America's real problems with Russia: its invasion of Georgia last summer, its bullying of Ukraine, its refusal to join in pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, and its threats of retaliation against the Poles, Balts and Czechs for standing with the U.S. on missile defense.

Mr. Obama is downplaying the threats we face. He takes comfort in thinking that Venezuela has a defense budget that "is probably 1/600th" of America's -- it's actually 1/215th -- but that hasn't kept Mr. Chávez from supporting narcoterrorists waging war on Colombia (a key U.S. ally) or giving petrodollars to anti-American regimes. Venezuela isn't likely to attack the U.S., but it is capable of harming American interests.

Henry Kissinger wrote in his memoir "Years of Renewal": "The great statesmen of the past saw themselves as heroes who took on the burden of their societies' painful journey from the familiar to the as yet unknown. The modern politician is less interested in being a hero than a superstar.

Heroes walk alone; stars derive their status from approbation. Heroes are defined by inner values; stars by consensus. When a candidate's views are forged in focus groups and ratified by television anchorpersons, insecurity and superficiality become congenital."

A superstar, not a statesman, today leads our country. That may win short-term applause from foreign audiences, but do little for what should be the chief foreign policy preoccupation of any U.S. president: advancing America's long-term interests.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush. Karl writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is now writing a book to be published by Simon & Schuster. Visit Mr. Rove on the web at Rove.com.

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From Karl Rove, former Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush

Yesterday was Tax Day, and it was marked by large numbers of Americans turning out for an estimated 2,000 tea parties across the country. This movement is significant.

In 1978, California voters enacted Prop. 13 in reaction to steep property taxes. That marked the start of a tax-cutting movement that culminated in Ronald Reagan slashing high national income taxes in the 1980s. Now Americans are reacting to runaway government spending that they were not told about before last year's election, and which Americans are growing to resent.

Derided by elitists as phony, the tea-party movement is spontaneous, decentralized, frequently amateurish and sometimes shrill. If it has a father it is CNBC's Rick Santelli, who called for holding a tea party in Chicago on July 4.

Yesterday's gatherings were made up of people who may never meet again. There's no central collection point for email addresses. But the concerns driving people to tea parties are real, growing and powerful. Politicians ignore them at their peril.

One concern is the rise of state and local taxes. New York and California passed multibillion-dollar tax increases this year. Other states are considering significant tax hikes or have enacted tax increases in recent years. The many tax and fee increases enacted or under consideration is angering voters.

If that anger persists, it may give Republicans a leg up in the 38 gubernatorial elections over the next two years, as well as in key state legislative races that will determine which party redraws congressional and state legislative districts after the 2010 census. Expect voters to hear a lot about jobs being created in low-tax states in the coming years.

But the center of the debate is in Washington, not the states. The fear of future federal tax hikes is fueling the tea-party movement.

This is an important development. In 2008, voters were less worried about taxes than they had been in previous elections. Why? Because the 15 years between President Bill Clinton's 1993 tax hike and Barack Obama's increase in cigarette taxes in February was the longest stretch in U.S. history without a federal tax increase.

President George W. Bush's tax cuts also cut 13 million people on the lower-end of the income scale from the income tax rolls, people who don't pay taxes aren't worried about the tax burden.

So far, Mr. Obama has decided to let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 and avoid forcing Democrats to take a tough vote. But the tea parties reveal how hard it will be for the president to hide the Democrats' tax-and-spend tendencies from voters.

Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25% while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives.

It hasn't gotten a ton of attention, but people are fed up with the complexity of their tax code and ready to do something about it. The Tax Foundation's 2009 Annual Tax Attitudes, which was conducted Feb. 18-27, by Harris, shows us that many Americans are willing to trade popular deductions for lower rates and a simpler code.

There's also been a flurry of interest among Americans in replacing the current system with a national sales tax or a flat tax.

The open question is whether Republicans will be boosted by the nascent tea-party movement. House Republicans smartly offered a proposed spending plan this year that would freeze nondefense discretionary spending, suspend earmarks for five years, and reform entitlements. But cutting spending won't be enough. Taxes matter and will matter more in the coming years.

The 2009 Tax Foundation survey found that Americans believe that taxes should, on average, take just 15.6% of a person's wages. And 88% of Americans in the same poll believe that there should be a cap on all federal, state, and local taxes of 29% or less, there is still a constituency out there that will favor tax cutting politicians.

But to tap into that constituency Republicans will have to link lower taxes to money in voters' pockets, and economic growth and jobs. They must explain why the GOP approach will lead to greater prosperity. Such arguments are not self-executing. They require leaders to make them, time and again, as Reagan once did.

Some liberals believe that the recession has made tax-and-spend issues passé. But political movements are often a reaction against aggressive overreach by those in power.

Mr. Obama's response to the financial crisis, a government power grab and budget explosion, has put spending and taxes back on the front burner. The tea parties are an early manifestation of that. More is sure to follow.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush. Karl writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is now writing a book to be published by Simon & Schuster.

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From Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for President George W. Bush

If you thought Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme was bad, wait until you hear about the inverted pyramid scheme the federal government is working on. While Mr. Madoff preyed on people who trusted him with their money, the federal government has everyone's money, and the implications of its actions are worse.

Picture an upside-down pyramid with its narrow tip at the bottom and its base on top. The only way the pyramid can stand is by spinning fast enough or by having a wide enough tip so it won't fall down.

The federal version of this spinning top is the tax code; the government collects its money almost entirely from the people at the narrow tip and then gives it to the people at the wider side. So long as the pyramid spins, the system can work. If it slows down enough, it falls.

It's also what's called redistribution of income, and it is getting out of hand.

A very small number of taxpayers, the 10% of the country that makes more than $92,400 a year, pay 72.4% of the nation's income taxes. They're the tip of the triangle that's supporting virtually everyone and everything. Their burden keeps getting heavier.

As a result of the 2001 tax cuts enacted by a bipartisan Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, the share of taxes paid by the top 10% increased to 72.8% in 2005 from 67.8% in 2001, according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Contrary to the myth that Mr. Bush cut taxes only for the wealthy, the 2001 tax cut reduced taxes for every income-tax payer in the country. He reduced the bottom tax rate to 10% from 15% and increased the refundable child tax credit to $1,000 from $500 per child, both cuts that President Barack Obama says we should keep.

In so doing, millions of lower income taxpayers were removed from the tax rolls, shifting the remaining burden to those at the top, even after their taxes were cut.

According to the CBO, those who made less than $44,300 in 2001, 60% of the country, paid a paltry 3.3% of all income taxes. By 2005, almost all of them were excused from paying any income tax. They paid less than 1% of the income tax burden. Their share shrank even when taking into account the payroll tax.

In 2001, the bottom 60% paid 16.3% of all taxes; by 2005 their share was down to 14.3%. All the while, this large group of voters made 25.8% of the nation's income.

When you make almost 26% of the income and you pay only 0.6% of the income tax, that's a good deal, courtesy of those who do pay income taxes. For the bottom 40%, the redistribution deal is even better.

In 2001, these 43 million Americans, who earn less than $30,500, made 13.5% of the nation's income but paid no income tax. Instead, they received checks from their taxpaying neighbors worth $16.3 billion. By 2005, those checks totaled $33.3 billion.

Today, Mr. Obama and many congressional Democrats want the "wealthy" to pay even more so there is more money for them to redistribute. The president says he wants the wealthy to pay their "fair share." Who can argue with that? But he never defines what that means.

Is it fair for 10% to pay 70% of the income tax? Does he believe they should pay 75%, or 95%, or does fairness mean they should pay it all? It's clever politics to speak like that, but it is risky policy.

Mr. Obama is adding to this trend with his "Make Work Pay" tax cut that means almost 50% of the country will no longer pay any income taxes, up from a little over 40% today. A certain amount of income redistribution in a capitalistic society is healthy, but this goes too far.

The economic and moral problem is that when 50% of the country gets benefits without paying for them and an increasingly smaller number of taxpayers foot the bill, the spinning triangle will no longer be able to support itself.

Eventually, it will spin so slowly that it falls down, especially when the economy is contracting and the number of wealthy taxpayers is in sharp decline.

In addition to exempting almost 50% of the country from income taxes, today nearly every other social cause is given a loophole or a preference in the tax code. Want to buy a hybrid vehicle? You get a tax break. Do you own a solar water heater? You get a credit. Want to give to charity? You get a deduction. Own a house?

There's another tax deduction for you. How about college savings, certain medical costs, and retirement savings? Yes, yes, and of course yes. Did you move, pay alimony, or "provide housing to a Midwestern displaced individual"? More deductions, credits and exemptions there too, if you qualify.

Everyone now has a sacred cow in the tax code. For my money, the most sacred thing of all is our country and its growth, but the sacred cows have turned into a pack of wolves. On both the spending and the tax side, the wolves are devouring our children's future.

Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) wants to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the president's budget, but that's small potatoes given the size of the deficit. The debt problem is so big and hopeless, Congress's normal nips and tucks won't work. Something more fundamental needs to happen.

It's time to create an Economic Growth Code whose purpose is to fix and grow the economy, not redistribute massive amounts of wealth. A new tax code that creates growth and reforms our entitlement system is the only way to dig our way out of the hole we're in.

Under an Economic Growth Code, everyone in American would pay income taxes, everyone. Such a system would be designed to foster broad-based growth for all, in contrast to the loophole-ridden system we have today. Not only is the current code flawed from top to bottom, it is used by politicians to divide the public along class lines and fails to promote prosperity.

Growth is the key to keeping the pyramid spinning, and to keep spinning the pyramid's tip needs to be broadened. Otherwise a country that was raised to believe that national bankruptcy happened elsewhere may have to think again. Given the state of the economy and trillion-dollar deficits projected as far as the eye can see, we need to return to an era of more conservative, fiscal discipline.

Congress should start by refusing to go along with Mr. Obama's promise to cut taxes for 95% of the country. With the government running an almost $2 trillion deficit, no one should have their taxes cut, no one. Given the size of the deficit, fiscal responsibility demands nothing less.

Republicans in Congress need to develop their own version of an Economic Growth Code, an alternative tax code that directly targets the current mess and helps us to grow our way out of it. Republicans should not doodle in the margins; they should use their minority status to launch the next big movement in policy and politics. Nothing creates revenue like growth and that's where Republicans should make their mark.

I favor the abolition of all Social Security, Medicare and estate taxes. In their place, we should create a simple income tax system that has no deductions or credits at all. The result would be a progressive, multitiered income tax in which everyone pays.

The bottom 50% won't be excused from paying the cost of government and top earners will no longer have the loopholes they're used to. The middle-class, whose wages have stagnated, will benefit from economic growth. Social Security and Medicare will be funded from income taxes, ending the myth that these programs are supported through government trust funds and payroll taxes.

The tax base will broaden dramatically, allowing rates to fall and helping to foster what's most important, economic growth.

I'd also create a mechanism so tax rates go up or down for everyone, no more dividing the country by lowering taxes for some or raising them only for others. A revenue system whose purpose is to pay the government's bills should apply fairly to one and all. If Congress wants to raise or cut taxes, it should do so for everyone.

Another benefit is that such a system will create an environment in which spending programs receive the scrutiny they deserve. It's funny what happens when everyone pays the bills; Americans may want less spending so they can pay fewer bills.

Ari Fleischer is President of Ari Fleischer Communications.

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