Rep. Charles Rangel's recent comments about President Barack Obama's budget exemplify the liberal ruling class's Beltway arrogance and blind faith in an ideology that compels it to press on the accelerator as we head for the cliff toward the nation's financial ruin.
How else do you explain the administration's and Congress' seeming indifference to the inevitably bankrupting consequences of their profligacy; their disguising a $1 trillion political patronage bill as an economic stimulus package when only 23 percent of it is arguably stimulative in the short term; and their audacity in forcing (and rewarding) banks to make uncreditworthy loans, pressuring Freddie and Fannie to "securitize" them, encouraging AIG and others to traffic in "derivatives," and then punishing all of them instead of taking the blame themselves? They are the ones who created this havoc and then refused to take corrective regulatory action when warned of the impending financial disaster.
Chris Wallace, the host of "Fox News Sunday," asked Rangel whether he was troubled by Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obama's deficits will be $2.3 trillion higher than the already-astronomical White House projections.
"I am more impressed," said Rangel, "with the fact that Obama is looking for a better-educated and a healthy -- a stronger work force, going into a new green economy, that this has to show that America can get off the ground with the deficit and move to where we were under the Clinton administration -- drawing a strong surplus. The only way for us to get out of this is to change our way of living in this country, and that's the direction in which the Obama budget is going, and I strongly support it."
When Rangel says we need to "change our way of living in this country," he does not mean that the solution to our unsustainable budgets is to tighten our federal belt and curtail government intervention in the market.
What he's really saying is, "We liberals are going to do what we've been itching to do for decades, and even though our policies will place greater burdens on the economy, retard economic growth, and cause the debt and deficits to further explode, we'll end up with a surplus anyway because we are so doggone virtuous with our liberal compassion that fate will have to reward us."
Does anyone really believe that greater federal control over education replete with liberals' priority for indoctrination over academics, the environment -- with its onerous cap and trade requirements -- and health care will stimulate the economy and reduce our deficits?
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