Time To Get Tough Part 2

Our country is hungry for real tax reform. That's why we should implement the 1-5-10-15 income tax plan. Let China, OPEC, and others pay the tax, not us. It's about time . . . and they have all the money.

I believe the government already takes enough of your hard-earned money. Obama thinks the opposite. If we want jobs in America, we need to enact my five-part tax policy: kill the death tax, lower the tax rates on capital gains and dividends, eliminate corporate taxes in order to create more American jobs, mandate a 15 percent tax for outsourcing jobs and a 20 percent tax for importing goods, and enact the 1-5-10-15 income tax plan.

Government needs to stop pick-pocketing your wallet. Every time it does, it slows growth and kills jobs. It's also immoral. We need to get back to doing what we know works. President Reagan had it right: lower taxes produce more freedom and opportunity for all. Everyone knows that-except in Was.h.i.+ngton. It's time we send the politicians a big message loud and clear. As Senator Everett Dirksen once said, "When they feel the heat they'll see the light." It's time we turn up the heat.

FIVE.

A GOVERNMENT WE CAN AFFORD.

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.1 -President Gerald Ford Every day, your government takes in $6 billion in revenue and spends $10 billion. That means every day the federal government has to borrow $4 billion more than it has.2 To state the obvious, if any business operated the way the government does, it would go under. But in the absurd world of Was.h.i.+ngton, politicians just kick the can down the road and shrug. There's just one problem: the can has finally hit a $15 trillion debt wall. For the first time since the founding of the Republic, we've lost our AAA credit rating, and now even our enemy China is having second thoughts about lending us money to bankroll Barack Obama's endless spending spree.

Americans understand that the U.S. has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. In September 2011, Gallup asked Americans how much money they think the federal government wastes. On average, citizens put the figure at 51 cents out of every dollar. That's probably being too kind.

We need more grown-ups in Was.h.i.+ngton, people who will shoot straight and level with the American people about our nation's top budget busters. The biggest slices of the budgetary pie are eaten up by Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Social Security makes up 20 percent of the budget ($707 billion). Medicare and Federal Medicaid account for 22 percent of the budget ($724 billion). As everyone knows, health-care costs are skyrocketing, and Medicaid has ma.s.sively expanded its role in the health-care system. When Medicaid was created in 1965, only one in fifty citizens used the program. Today, it's one in six Americans.

Save Social Security and Medicaid

Social Security faces a similar problem. Soon there will be more people inside the cart than there are pulling the cart. Right now, 53 million people collect Social Security benefits that average $1,067 a month. In seventy-five years, that number will jump to 122 million, roughly one out of every four citizens.3 That's why, with 77 million baby boomers set to retire and begin collecting benefits, these two programs-a combined 42 percent of the U.S. budget-are in danger of becoming insolvent. We can't let that happen.

Now I know there are some Republicans who would be just fine with allowing these programs to wither and die on the vine. The way they see it, Social Security and Medicare are wasteful "ent.i.tlement programs." But people who think this way need to rethink their position. It's not unreasonable for people who paid into a system for decades to expect to get their money's worth-that's not an "ent.i.tlement," that's honoring a deal. We as a society must also make an ironclad commitment to providing a safety net for those who can't make one for themselves. At least that was President Reagan's stance. On April 20, 1983, Reagan signed a bill to preserve Social Security. At that bill signing, the president said words every Republican should heed: This bill demonstrates for all time our nation's ironclad commitment to Social Security. It a.s.sures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half a century ago. It a.s.sures those who are still working that they, too, have a pact with the future. From this day forward, they have one pledge that they will get their fair share of benefits when they retire.4 President Reagan had it right: Social Security is here to stay. To be sure, we must reform it, root out the fraud, make it more efficient, and ensure that the program is solvent beyond the Baby Boomers. But to listen to some Republicans vilify a system that's been around for over seventy-six years and that taxpayers have paid into for decades makes me think they should go back and watch President Reagan's speech again.

Same goes for Medicare. Again, people have lived up to their end of the bargain and paid into the program in good faith. Of course they believe they're "ent.i.tled" to receive the benefits they paid for-they are!

The question is, how do we pay for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security when costs are ballooning and deficits are soaring? Here again, both sides fumble the ball badly. Democrats pretend that the answer is raising taxes. But anyone with a brain knows all that will do is kill economic growth. That's the exact opposite of what needs to happen. Economic growth is the secret to making the entire pie grow larger. When that happens, millions of new workers will become new taxpayers and revenues will rise. As Senator Marco Rubio of Florida put it: "Let's stop talking about new taxes and start talking about creating new taxpayers, which basically means jobs."5 And that's what economic growth will do.

But many Republicans also miss the mark. They pretend we can just nibble around the edges by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse and somehow magically make these programs solvent and pay off our ma.s.sive $15 trillion debt. Neither side is being totally honest.

Our country doesn't need cowardice, it needs courage. Here's the first part of the solution: our leaders need to get tough with the big players like China and OPEC that are ripping us off so we can recapture hundreds of billions of dollars to pay our bills, take care of our people, and get us on a path toward serious debt reduction. We must take care of our own people-we must make our country strong and rich again so that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will no longer be thought of as a problem. We must save these programs through strength, power, and wealth.

As I explained earlier, China takes us for $300 billion a year, and OPEC is even worse. Was.h.i.+ngton is so busy squabbling over peanuts that they're completely missing the mountains of money staring them in the face. Obama and Republicans spent weeks bickering over $60 billion of spending cuts in the president's budget. Excuse me, but we have a $15 trillion debt. We need to get serious and get tough with the big rip-off artists who abuse this country regularly. If we do that first, the remaining cuts and reforms we need to make will be substantially smaller, more manageable, and much less painful.

Stop and think about it: even just leveling the playing field with China for a decade would be the equivalent of one-fifth of our national debt (and would have been one-third of our debt had we not elected the community organizer). You add in several hundred billion a year from putting OPEC in line, hundreds of billions from negotiating properly with the many other countries that are ripping us off, root out the hundreds of billions of incredible fraud that occur every year (more on that later), and now we have a debt problem America can manage-one where we can attack waste and abuse and whittle down the remaining debt to get our fiscal house in order. So that's the first step: bringing home the hundreds of billions of dollars that the petro thugs at OPEC and our enemy China steal from us every single year-and then go after all of the others.

Next, we need a president who realizes that your money belongs to you, not him. A real president should take pride in saving and spending your money wisely, not funneling it to his cronies and political backers in the form of so-called "stimulus." But unfortunately, that's not the kind of president we currently have in the Oval Office. This guy wouldn't save the American taxpayer $100 million if it landed on his front doorstep. I should know. I tried to make a $100 million gift to the United States government, but Barack Obama wouldn't even return my phone call.

My $100 Million Gift to the U.S. Goes Uncollected

If you want a small example of just how uninterested your government is in saving and spending your money wisely, read on. One day I was watching television and I saw that President Obama was hosting a dinner for various leaders at the White House. But every time they had one of these events, I noticed that they put up an old, broken, rotten-looking tent out on the White House grounds that they probably paid some local guy a fortune for every time they needed it. That's no way for America to host important meetings and dinners with world leaders and dignitaries. We should project our nation's power and beauty with a proper facility and ballroom. If there's one thing I know how to build, it's a grand ballroom. At my private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, I built what many consider to be the single greatest ballroom in the world . . . but I own many beautiful and very successful ballrooms.

So I called up the White House and they put me on with President Obama's top senior strategist, David Axelrod. We had a very nice conversation, and I told David that "I will build you, free of charge, one of the great ballrooms of the world so that the president and all future American presidents can host events at the White House in a proper manner. To do it to the highest standards, it will cost anywhere from $50 to $100 million. I will cover the expenses and give the ballroom to the U.S. government as a gift. What I will do is I will hire the top ten vying architects in the world-I hope they'll be American architects, but I'll hire the best, whoever they are. We'll then have a review committee set up. We'll pick the architect that everybody agrees on, because it's a little delicate in that it's the White House we're talking about. And I will build the greatest ballroom there is, even better than the Mar-a-Lago ballroom, so that Americans can be proud when our presidents host world leaders on the White House grounds."

"Wow," Axelrod said. "That's very interesting." He then said he would talk it over and get back to me. No one ever called back. And that's what's wrong with this country. When Rush Limbaugh invited me to come on his show I told him that story, and Rush said that they probably didn't get back to me because I'm a lifelong Republican. Rush is probably right, but I'm sure it is just the way business is done in Was.h.i.+ngton, billions of dollars are squandered and people just don't care. I really thought David would take me up on my offer but it is not too late. My offer still stands. If someone wants to give America-a nation that is flat broke-a nice gift, you call them back, regardless of what party they belong to. It's just one small example of how the Obama administration isn't fiscally wise and certainly doesn't care about taking advantage of ways to give Americans the most for less. To the Obama administration, saving money isn't the point-expanding government and spending more taxpayers' dollars is. Sometimes they call it "investment" or "stimulus," but a lot of it is sheer unadulterated waste.

We need a dealmaker in the White House, who knows how to think innovatively and make smart deals.

As an example, in a fairly recent well-doc.u.mented Florida deal, I purchased a house in Palm Beach at a bankruptcy sale (sadly, a very rich man lost everything) for $41 million and everybody thought I was crazy. But I knew better. It was a great parcel of land fronting the ocean-and a short time later I sold it to a Russian for approximately $100 million. Had I listened to all the geniuses I wouldn't have made that deal. It's all about seeing the unseen. This is the kind of thinking we need to turn this country around-and fast.

We also need someone who can save money through common sense. When I opened Trump National Golf Club at Rancho Palos Verdes in Los Angeles, I was immediately told that I would need to build a new and costly ballroom. The current ballroom was gorgeous, but it only sat 200 people and we were losing business because people needed a larger s.p.a.ce for their events. Building a new ballroom would take years to get approval and permits (since it's on the Pacific Ocean), and cost about $5 million. I took one look at the ballroom and saw immediately what needed to be done. The problem wasn't the size of the room, it was the size of the chairs. They were huge, heavy, and unwieldy. We didn't need a bigger ballroom, we needed smaller chairs! So I had them replaced with high-end, smaller chairs. I then had our people sell the old chairs and got more money for them than the cost of the new chairs. In the end, the ballroom went from seating 200 people to seating 320 people. Our visitors got the s.p.a.ce they desired, and I spared everyone the ha.s.sle of years of construction and $5 million of expense. It's amazing what you can accomplish with a little common sense.

Was.h.i.+ngton Wastes Your Money

To have a government we can afford we need to eliminate the tremendous waste clogging the system. Almost every week a new story comes out reporting another gross example of government waste. The GAO reports that every year the federal government spends billions of dollars on dozens of wasteful overlapping programs. One simple fix-streamlining and consolidating 2,100 data centers-would save $200 billion over the next decade.6 Another example of federal government incompetence with your money: over the last five years, the Office of Personnel Management sent out $601 million in retirement benefits to people who are dead!7 The list of insane federal expenditures is almost endless: in 2010, $700,000 of your tax dollars went to research cow burps, $600,000 was spent on creating a wolf video game, and $250,000 was spent to research Internet romance. 8 And of course who can forget the $1,442,515 that the National Inst.i.tutes of Health has allocated to be spent from 2008 to 2012 to study male prost.i.tutes in Vietnam.9 On and on it goes. Your hard-earned money blown on ridiculous junk as far as the eye can see.

Obama doesn't respect the fact that the money he wastes belongs to us. He thinks that the wealth you create belongs to the government. That's why he doesn't care whether it gets wasted or mismanaged. I, on the other hand, think wasting money is offensive and foolish. That's why I make lots of money-I manage projects tightly and put a premium on efficiency.

Case in point: the Wollman Ice Skating Rink in Central Park. My apartment in Trump Tower overlooks the skating rink, which is more than an acre in size, making it the largest man-made ice skating rink in the United States. For seven straight years, the rink was closed on account of New York City's management fiasco. The city of New York wasted seven years and $21 million and was still unable to get the rink open-it was a political nightmare and a great embarra.s.sment to the city.

Essentially, all this bureaucracy and wasting of taxpayers' money really got to me, so I asked to take over the project and even put up the construction money myself. Furthermore, I said that if the project went over budget, I would personally pick up the overruns. I told the city I would have Wollman Rink finished in six months. I was wrong. I did it in four. And I only spent $1.8 million-and a big portion of that was demolis.h.i.+ng all of the incompetent work that was done before I took over. Am I an expert in building ice skating rinks? No, I build luxury towers, hotels, clubs, etc. But I've never forgotten what my father used to tell me. He said, "Know everything you can about what you're doing." So I went out and found the best ice skating rink builder in America and then managed the details to a successful completion. To this day, it remains a case study in many of the leading business schools on private versus government projects. Better still, Wollman Rink provides thousands of children, families, and visitors to our great city a wonderful experience that brings lots of smiles and great memories. That's what can happen when you actually work to save, not waste, money.

Crack Down on Ma.s.sive Fraud

Beyond eliminating the wasteful spending, we need to get tough in cracking down on the hundreds of billions of dollars we lose from the ma.s.sive fraud committed in government programs every year. The FBI estimates that Medicare fraud alone costs you the taxpayer between $70 billion and $234 billion every single year!10 Typically, this fraud involves fake billing scams. For example, in September 2011, officials uncovered a Medicare fraud ring involving 91 individuals charged with filing $295 million in phony billings.11 In 2010, Medicare paid out more than $35 million to 118 "phantom" medical clinics that were allegedly created by criminal gangs as part of a reimburs.e.m.e.nt racket. As 60 Minutes revealed, South Florida has become "ground zero" for Medicare fraud because so many elderly people live there. It's become so bad down there that law enforcement says Medicare crimes have now replaced cocaine as the number one criminal enterprise in South Florida.12 Now stop and do the math. If the FBI's top estimates are correct, that's $2,340,000,000 in Medicare fraud over a decade-or 16 percent of America's entire national debt! And by the way, we haven't even started with Obamacare yet-a trillion dollar government boondoggle sure to unleash unbelievable corruption and criminality on the American taxpayer.

Then there's the disability racket. Did you know that one out of every twenty people in America now claims disability? That adds up to $170 billion a year in disability checks. Between 2005 and 2009, it is estimated that $25 billion were eaten up in fraudulent Social Security Disability Insurance filings.13 Then there's the $116 million in fraud from the Low-Income Home Energy a.s.sistance Program.14 And the $112 million the Internal Revenue Service doled out in tax refunds to prisoners who filed fraudulent tax returns. On and on, scam after scam it goes . . . as always, taxpayers are the ones getting stiffed.

Negotiate Smarter

A lot of Republicans I know look at all this waste, fraud, and abuse and wonder why the GOP hasn't been better at reforming the system and getting America's fiscal house in order. Well, the sad truth is some Republicans in Congress are clueless when it comes to negotiation. Now I know this will ruffle some of my fellow conservatives' feathers, but I'm going to say it anyway. I'm sure Congressman Paul Ryan is a nice guy, but I can tell you this much: he is one lousy poker player. In an effort to talk about how he would balance the budget and rein in Was.h.i.+ngton's spending addiction, he came out with his plan to overhaul Medicare. It was an absolutely unbelievable blunder . . . I'm talking about his total lack of negotiating skills.

Congressman Ryan and the Republicans committed two fatal errors. First, anyone who knows anything about negotiation knows that you always make the other guy go first. Republicans should have waited the president out and forced him to go first in naming where cuts would come from and how he planned to get the budget under control and protect America's credit rating. But he didn't. Instead, Congressman Ryan committed a major mistake. He went out and put a huge target on Republicans while Obama sat back and let the GOP commit political suicide. The second mistake Ryan made was that he scared the heck out of seniors. Like it or not, the majority of seniors love Medicare. And I like it for them. When you start talking in ways that make older Americans nervous, it's bad politics.

So what did the Democrats do? They turned Paul Ryan and his Medicare proposal into a punching bag, and Republicans lost a special congressional election in upstate New York that they should have won handily. The Democratic candidate, Kathy Hochul, bludgeoned her Republican opponent Jane Corwin with a Mediscare campaign of TV ads that featured an old lady in a wheelchair being shoved off a cliff. The ad explained that the reason grandma was being tossed over the ledge was because of "Paul Ryan and his friends in Congress." Unfair? You bet. Good politics? Absolutely. The GOP needs to learn how to get tough and out-negotiate Obama and his big spending allies in Was.h.i.+ngton. They also need to learn the art of using the right tone and language.

That's certainly the case when it comes to the debate surrounding how best to fix and save Social Security. Conservatives have to be smart in the way we speak. Using crazy language that terrifies seniors accomplishes nothing. It simply hands Democrats another weapon with which to demonize Republicans as heartless and stingy. Again, when someone has worked for forty years and seen the government deduct 6 percent out of each of the 480 paychecks they received over those years, it's perfectly understandable that they would want the money they are owed. It's only fair.

So the first thing we need to remind seniors is that their Social Security is safe, secure, and will not be touched in any way whatsoever. Period. We have the funds to pay them the money they are due, and we will. Then, we need to look at the next seventy-five years and address the projected $5.3 trillion shortfall. The Democrats' solution is the same solution they have for everything-tax, tax, tax. Just one problem: it doesn't work! All that ends up happening is the government big spenders raid the Social Security trust funds and blow the dough on junk programs we don't need. Bottom line: raising taxes to sh.o.r.e up the funding gap isn't the way to give America a government it can afford, but making the economy strong again is.

The Solution

So what should we do? The first thing we need to realize is that, thanks to advancements in medicine and health, Americans live and work longer than in the days when Social Security began. In fact, since Social Security was created in 1935, Americans' life expectancy has increased to seventy-eight, up 26 percent, whereas the retirement age to receive full benefits has only gone up only 3 percent, to sixty-seven.15 Today people work well into their seventies, which is absolutely wonderful. So if we slowly increased the full retirement age to even just seventy, one-third of the $5.3 trillion shortfall would be eliminated right away. And don't do it now, do it in the future.16 The fastest way we can start saving Social Security is to get Americans back to work. More citizens earning a paycheck means more workers paying into the system. It also means that we will save on the explosion of unemployment benefits we've seen under Barack Obama. For example, extended unemployment benefits in just the next two years will cost American taxpayers $34 billion.17 If the goal is getting our deficits and debt under control, the quickest road to get there is to spark economic growth and let job creators do what they do best-create jobs.

The final part of restoring fiscal sanity to America is the most obvious, and that's to control Obama-style runaway spending. It's hard for most folks to wrap their minds around just how out-of-step and radical this president truly is when it comes to spending. Here's how the Wall Street Journal tried to paint the picture: As for the deficit, CBO [the Congressional Budget Office] shows that over the first three years of the Obama Presidency, 2009-2011, the federal government will borrow an estimated $3.7 trillion. That is more than the entire acc.u.mulated national debt for the first 225 years of U.S. history. By 2019, the interest payments on this debt will be larger than the budget for education, roads and all other nondefense discretionary spending.18 The economic idiocy of this presidency has been truly astounding. And that's why America desperately needs a president who understands and appreciates the businesses and entrepreneurs that create opportunity and jobs. But Obama spits in the face of job creators every chance he gets. Just look at the absurd tactics the Obama administration unleashed on Gibson Guitars. They raided the guitar company factories to see if they were using certain types of wood that Obama doesn't want them to use. Is this seriously how we want America to operate? Allowing the federal government to treat businesses like drug dealers because someone may have filled an order improperly is ridiculous. It's also a terrible misuse of limited resources. The fact that it only took three years for this guy to blow a hole in the national debt that's equivalent to the debt accrued in 225 years of American history shows just how radical and outside the mainstream Barack Obama is.

That said, let me be clear: I was very, very critical of President George W. Bush. I thought he betrayed his principles of fiscal conservatism by spending excessively. Furthermore, I thought that his mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina was horrible, and I questioned his judgment in launching the war in Iraq that cost us trillions in dollars and, worse, thousands in lives. But President Bush's spending excesses were nothing compared to Obama's. In just three years, Obama has exploded our debt so that we have to borrow $4 billion every day. By comparison, under President George W. Bush, over all eight years in office, that figure was $1.6 billion a day.19 Not great, but a lot better.

Of course, anyone who was paying attention in 2008 should have known that Obama wasn't interested in debt and deficit reduction. But the fact that he completely ignored his own debt commission's findings in the Bowles-Simpson Report proves that this president has no shame and has no intention of slowing down his spending spree. Every American, regardless of party, needs to think long and hard about what another four years of Barack Obama would mean to the national debt and the solvency of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If he had no shame in adding more to the national debt in three years than almost all other United States presidents combined, can you imagine the kind of damage he would do if given another four years without the worry of reelection? It's a horrifying thought for anyone who loves our country and wants to see her survive and thrive again.

Look, here's the deal: Barack Obama has been a total disaster. He has spent this country into the ground and destroyed jobs and economic growth. If something isn't done soon, programs Americans depend on, like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, are going to go up in flames. It doesn't have to be this way. We can return America to her former greatness if we get tough and act smart.

It starts with China and OPEC. The hundreds of billions of dollars they steal from us each year must end right away. We need a president with a t.i.tanium spine who will stand up to these shakedown artists and demand that they get their greedy hands out of our pockets effective immediately. That one action alone will result in a windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars to help us pay down our debt and meet our commitments. Next, we enforce a zero-tolerance policy for the kind of brainless government waste that we've all become far too accustomed to from Was.h.i.+ngton. That means we streamline our systems and end the waste. Third, we go after the criminals and con artists who are defrauding taxpayers of $243 billion every year in Medicare fraud and billions more in other kinds of fraud, such as the disability racket. Sitting back while these crooks steal from hard-working people and rob deserving Americans of the benefits they paid for is vile. We must prosecute these thugs to the fullest extent of the law and recoup the hundreds of billions they take from us year in and year out. Fourth, we must save Social Security through economic success. Fifth, we need to put Americans back to work and kick the community organizer out of office so we can instill some fiscal sanity in Was.h.i.+ngton.

We do those five things and we will pa.s.s along to our kids and grandkids not only a government they can afford, but also one they can be proud of.

SIX.

STRENGTHEN AMERICAN MUSCLE.

There is a rank due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.1 -President George Was.h.i.+ngton Your civil liberties mean nothing if you're dead. That's why the single most important function of the federal government is national defense.

Our Founding Fathers got it. They understood that nothing good in life-religious freedom, economic freedom, freedom of speech-can be enjoyed if people fear for their physical safety. But unfortunately, we live in a dangerous world that's getting more dangerous by the day. China is in the midst of a ma.s.sive military buildup and the creation of cyber-warfare weapons capable of bringing America to its knees. Russia is rising. Iran, which funds terrorists all over the world, is inching closer to the creation of an operational nuclear weapon. Pakistan has been exposed as the nation that harbored Osama bin Laden next to its equivalent of West Point, and its intelligence agency is a.s.sisting the Haqqani Network, a terrorist group more dangerous than al Qaeda. Afghanistan is still a mess and a terrorist hotbed. Syria is on the verge of civil war, and Libya is already engaged in one. And of course, there are always the certifiably insane dictators of Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea.

In short, national security threats are everywhere and growing. That's why I have so much admiration and respect for the 2.4 million men and women of our Armed Forces. Every single day, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines wake up, put on a uniform, and honor their solemn pledge to defend America against our enemies. They know their lives are on the line, but they love America so much they're willing to die for her. That's a level of commitment most civilians will never experience-most of us don't have jobs that require a willingness to die for our fellow citizens. In fact, I believe we owe our veterans more than we could ever repay them. That's why I was honored to play a major role in the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission to honor our warriors with a proper memorial and help them land jobs. I put up over a million dollars to see to it that the effort was a success. I was so moved and proud to be a.s.sociated with the project, because our heroes deserve the very best.

America deserves a commander in chief who respects the challenges and realities our Armed Forces face in our dangerous world. Specifically, our military deserves the best equipment, the best training, and the best weapons. They also deserve to be paid well for the dangerous and heroic work they do. They more than earn it.

If history teaches us anything, it's that strong nations require strong leaders with clearly defined national security principles. Realities change at warp speed; international events can turn on a dime. The 9-11 terrorist attacks, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the Arab Spring-all these happened in the blink of an eye. A president can't always predict where the next national security "fire" will erupt, but he can and must have a steady and reliable compa.s.s to guide his decisions. Citizens need to know the values and principles their president will rely on to lead America through whatever unknown threats lie over the horizon. I believe that any credible American foreign policy doctrine should be defined by at least seven core principles: 1. American interests come first. Always. No apologies.

2. Maximum firepower and military preparedness.

3. Only go to war to win.

4. Stay loyal to your friends and suspicious of your enemies.

5. Keep the technological sword razor sharp.

6. See the unseen. Prepare for threats before they materialize.

7. Respect and support our present and past warriors.

Sadly, President Obama has undermined each of these core principles. First, no sooner had he been sworn into office than he went on an apology tour to the Arab world. Did you know that the very first interview Obama gave as president was with the Arabic news channel Al Arabiya?2 I've got news for President Obama: America is not what's wrong with the world. I don't believe we need to apologize for being hated by Islamic radical terrorists who hate our religion, hate our freedom, and hate that we extend human rights to women. Second, even as Obama's blown trillions of our tax dollars on his "stimulus" schemes, he's proposed cutting $400 billion from our defense budget. Third, by announcing the time and date for withdrawal in Afghanistan and not clearly defining our objectives in Libya's civil war, Obama has completely blown it, making it virtually impossible for us to define what victory is and achieve it. Fourth, the president sold out our dear friend and ally Israel. He's also thrown other allies, like Poland and the Czech Republic, under the bus by bowing to Russian demands that we not build missile defenses to protect our friends. Fifth, by slas.h.i.+ng military budgets Obama has threatened our ability to keep our technological edge in weapons systems. Sixth, Obama has been caught flatfooted by China's development of the J-20 fighter jet, something his administration didn't think would happen for years to come. And finally, by raiding the defense budget to pay for his failed social programs, Obama continues to weaken our ability to honor our present and past warriors.

When our military and intelligence officers located Osama bin Laden, right smack in the middle of Pakistan, they went to the president to inform him and asked whether or not he should be taken out by a missile or in a raid (either solution being okay). The only other option would have been to let him be. Well, Obama had a decision a make. We have bin Laden-do we leave him alone? I can't believe that anybody sitting in the Oval Office would have said, "Let's do nothing." So he really had only one choice to make: kill him with a missile or kill him in a raid. He made the decision, either of which would have been okay, and Osama bin Laden is dead.

It's wonderful that we got him, but what sane person would have decided otherwise? Why does Obama get so much credit? I know that's not politically correct to say, but if somebody can explain that to me, I would be very grateful. Our military deserves all the credit, not Obama.

Obama's violations of these seven principles are bad enough, but they are much worse when you consider the epic foreign policy failures he has committed in his first three years in office. Most Americans have been so focused on all of Barack Obama's economic failures and the disastrous effects of the Obama economy that they haven't had the time to pay close attention to how much he's screwed up America's national security. But a closer look uncovers some alarming realities.

A commander in chief has to possess the right instincts. That's one of the biggest problems with Obama: his national security instincts are almost always wrong. On the campaign trail in 2008, Obama promised he would shut down the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Then he got elected president, met the grown-ups in the military and intelligence worlds, and was forced to come to grips with the reality that Guantanamo serves a purpose, just as President George W. Bush and Vice President d.i.c.k Cheney maintained all along.

Then there was Obama's foolish instinct to treat terrorists as criminals (instead of the enemy combatants they are), giving them civilian trials rather than military tribunals. As everyone knows, civilian trials don't give prosecutors the lat.i.tude they need to put away dangerous terrorists and keep the country safe. But Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, thought otherwise. That is, until reality smacked them in the face again. Case in point was the painful education Obama got when Ahmed Ghailani was acquitted of more than 224 counts of murder in a civilian court for his part in the U.S. emba.s.sy bombings in Africa. "It was a near disaster," said Texas Republican Congressman Lamar Smith. "If Ghailani had been acquitted of just one more count, he would have been considered innocent of these heinous crimes."3 The blunder was reminiscent of Obama and Holder's asinine foot-dragging on whether to hold the trial of 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City of all places. Why Obama and Eric Holder would want to give one of America's biggest enemies a public relations platform and the biggest media megaphone in the world at the site of the Twin Tower terrorist attacks is beyond comprehension. But after a year of b.u.mbling and tons of international humiliation, Obama and Holder finally decided to do what every clear-thinking American wanted to do in the first place, which was to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at Guantanamo.

Then there is Obama's recent decision to gut the U.S. military by cutting $400 billion from our defense budget, a figure more than double what then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates identified as being prudent. Now here's Obama, a guy who never met a spending bill he doesn't love and one who has blown through more deficit spending than all presidents in 225 years combined. But when it comes to funding our troops and giving them the equipment, training, and support they need, Obama is MIA. As former Defense Secretary Gates said when he heard about his boss's brainless decision, such a move would degrade "force structure and military capability."4 Here's the deal: when your secretary of defense tells you that your proposed cuts will erode America's military capability, you pay attention. But not Obama. He thinks he knows how to run the military better than the guns in the fight. He's wrong. The reason conservatives support a strong and well-funded military is because they know that all freedoms flow from national security. That's why we need a new president. It's also why we need to get tough in foreign policy to deal with the threats and challenges America faces from rival and enemy nations.

CHINA.