The other day a group of us were at a restaurant. All of a sudden there was a child stomping his feet and stating he was not going to do what he was told. He made a big scene even after he was told that these are the rules and you have to follow them. It was quite surprising that people were watching this and not pointing out the wrongness of the behavior. Then everyone realized that it wasn’t a five-year-old but rather our president on TV stating he was not going to negotiate with Republicans about the debt ceiling. Frankly it was hard to tell the difference.
The president does have a point. The fact is that prior presidents have not been held hostage by Congress regarding the debt ceiling, so why should he? Well, prior presidents have not run up a deficit of $6 trillion dollars in four short years. Prior presidents collectively had run up only a little over $10 trillion collectively.
Then there is the other thing – Obama’s own previous position. We are sure you have read Senator Barack Obama’s commentary on raising the debt ceiling from March 16, 2006. We will not bore you will all the details; you can find it all online. Suffice it to say it was a full-throated attack on raising the debt ceiling and a statement he was voting not to do so. You can use the word hypocrite, but that would not be exactly fair to Obama. He has pulled a Gilda Radner and said “Never Mind.” So his attack against raising the debt ceiling did not really count.
And why should Obama apologize for excessive spending when he has so many leftist adherents making fun of those silly Republicans concerned about the annual deficit. One leading lefty, Katrina vanden Heuvel, stated in a recent column “This deficit obsession not only saps attention for our shameful health failures, but also contributes directly to them.” But she pales in comparison to the King himself – Paul Krugman. Krugman has written column after column belittling Republicans for their stupidity about deficits.
In a recent column Krugman again stated, “The budget deficit isn’t our biggest problem.” He went on, “It’s true that right now we have a large federal budget deficit. But that deficit is mainly because of a depressed economy. The deficit will come down as the economy recovers. Revenue will rise while some categories of spending (unemployment benefits) fall. Still will economic recovery be enough to stabilize the fiscal outlook? The answer is, pretty much.”
Well Mr. Obama, if Krugman is the economic guru and what he says is so, then why did you insist on raising taxes by $600 billion? By the way, why did you lie about it being a rich person’s tax? The only money you know you are going to get is reinstating the social security tax on all Americans. As always the brunt falls on the middle-class. It was the right thing to do, but do not tell Americans the money is coming from the big earners. And why is Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) (the new chair of the Senate Budget Committee) demanding $500 billion in new revenue? And why are there 13 new taxes falling on the backs of the American people as of January 13, 2013? And why is the universal plan from you and Congressional Democrats on replacing the Sequestration always talked about as needing a “balanced approach” between reductions in expenditures and tax increases?
Obviously, the answer is Krugman is dead wrong. The answer is Obama and his cohorts are seeking a permanent expansion of the federal government and the only way they could possibly balance the budget in their minds is with new tax dollars. That means more money running through the government in Washington’s hands and less through yours. More decisions will be made for you by nameless, faceless bureaucrats making fat salaries with ample benefit programs.
And yet instead of addressing any of this, the president in his State of the Union address proposes $83.4 billion more in expenditures.
This might not all be resolved by the budget process, but Congress has been negligent in not doing a budget and the White House has decried them for it. But we all know it is not Congress. The House (run by Republicans) has approved detailed budgets. But, Mr. President, your friend and confidant, Harry Reid (the Undertaker) has not brought a budget to the floor in four years. Now your own administration has passed on doing budgets. Your budget director announced you will once again be breaking the law by not submitting a budget by February 4th. We don’t know when it will come; but, really, why do we need a budget? It seems so trivial and it would just get in the way of spending whatever you want.
We can all understand your petulance now. Particularly after you told the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, that Washington does not have a spending problem. We were baffled until we read you said it was just a health-care problem. Now we understand, all we have to do is lop off $1 trillion annually of health care expense and there we go – everything is balanced.
If this column seems a little snarky and cynical, the question to you is how can it not be? We have a president who was just reelected by a majority of Americans that are either unwilling or unable to understand how dangerous his policies are to the long-term financial well-being of this country. We have a populace who seems to go along with him and blame Republicans for trying to hold his feet to the fire and fix this mess. We have a president who stomps his feet and says he does not want to recognize the other parts of our three-part co-equal government.
On this President’s Day, the only thing a rational person can conclude is: people we are …….