President Obama established a bipartisan debt-reduction commission — and then ignored its findings, which called for unpopular reductions in entitlements and across-the-board spending cuts. His first two budgets led to the largest deficits in U.S. history. The ensuing $3 trillion in red ink gave rise to the Tea Party movement and led to the largest midterm defeat of the Democratic party in the House of Representatives since 1938.
No matter. The president has proposed a new budget with an even larger $1.6 trillion deficit. That record federal borrowing prompted columnist Charles Krauthammer to describe it as a Louis XV indulgence, an allusion to the wild royal spending that brought about the French Revolution. Even Newsweek editor-at-large Evan Thomas, who once gushed that Obama stood “above the world” as some “sort of God,” called the president’s new budget a “profile in cowardice.” After Obama leaves office, a perfect storm of rising international interest rates, an anemic dollar, and panic on the part of foreign lenders may force an end to this unhinged American rush to borrow and blow what it has not earned.
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Gas prices in many parts of the country are nearing $4 a gallon; it could get even worse as unrest spreads throughout the oil-exporting Middle East. Yet the Obama administration once again seems to see no crisis. It has curtailed new leases for offshore oil exploration for seven years and exempted thousands of acres in the West from new drilling. It will not reconsider opening up small areas of Alaska with known large oil reserves.
Instead, the administration in 2009 pushed cap-and-trade legislation through the House on the dubious proposition that, in times of unusually cold American winters, the planet is warming up. Accordingly, the administration would like to tax further the already high price of fossil fuels rather than go all out to look for more. Yet importing more oil from abroad and growing more subsidized biofuels at home will lead to a disastrous trifecta of borrowing even more money, ensuring greater global pollution, and causing higher world food prices.
Obamacare — the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — was pushed through the Senate in 2009 through backroom deal-making and special perks for fence-sitting senators. The premise was that it would save both patients and the nation billions of dollars. But updated estimates now suggest that the takeover of health care will cost the country about $2 trillion over the next decade while disrupting and making more costly existing health plans.
That worry may explain why the administration has quietly granted waivers from its own “affordable” plan to some 700 organizations covering 2 million workers — 40 percent of them union members. Long after the president has left office, everyone else who is not so privileged to be exempted will have to live with the consequence of a cumbersome and costly new federal health bureau.
The president just weighed in on the Wisconsin budget deadlock, suggesting that Gov. Scott Walker was out to punish public-sector unions rather than figure out a way to close a $3 billion state deficit. But unlike the federal government, Walker cannot print money, and he cannot so easily raise taxes without losing residents who might flee to lower-tax states. That the president wants unions to know he is on their side is clear; that he cares how the people of Wisconsin are going to pay for sky-high public-employee wages, benefits, and health care is not so evident.
In these lean times of nearly 10 percent unemployment and rapid hikes in gas and food prices, the president has chastised “fat cat” Wall Street bankers, the wealthy who jet to the Super Bowl, and those who junket to Las Vegas, and in general suggested that strapped American families might wish to “sacrifice” and “put off a vacation.” But in “let them eat cake” style, the first family seems tone-deaf to the potential symbolism of postponing its own exclusive vacations. Michelle Obama just returned from skiing at an elite Vail, Colo., resort. Last summer, in Marie Antoinette fashion, she jetted to Costa del Sol in Spain for a costly Mediterranean vacation. The rich playground at Martha’s Vineyard, not Camp David, seems now to be the favorite presidential recession-era getaway spot.
Shortly after Barack Obama leaves office, we are all going to have to eat cake. Then a less eloquent president will have to balance budgets, pay off trillions in new debt, develop more energy, come up with a sane health-care policy, and in symbolic fashion have the first family share the sacrifice of a more mundane lifestyle.
The simplest explanation for all that is Obama--his past, his behavior towards foreign thugs, his utter fiscal irresponsibility--is that he is deliberately trying to weaken America, to transform us into a helpless socialist giant. Why aren't millions of Americans demonstrating against this in Washington?
And the clumsy, cynical, and politically calculated way he and Geithner introduced their budget -- putting virtually everything on the table and daring Republicans to take something off -- adds an Eddie Haskell dimension to his Louis XV side.
The answers are: we are too busy working to keep our families' heads above water, we are afraid we might lose our jobs if we take time to protest at the cess pool known as washington, and finally our "elected" officials will not listen.
I think we are at the cusp of revolution here at home. When we do come and demonstrate, watch out.
Obama will be known as the president who could not handle the trappings of power and fame. A spendthrift politician who almost mastered the art of the political lie. The lie that everyone recognizes as untrue, but the truth is so mundane and discouraging... the Emperor has such Beautiful Clothes, doesn't he?
He is sort-of like the Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen of presidents: "I've got mine, I want more, I can handle it, and I deserve it."
Dt. Robert: Unfortunately my union boss (spousal unit) will not allow me, or pay me to take a couple days off to go to DC. Something about milk for the children!!
I for one, do not believe that anything this administration does is haphazard or unintentional. It seems to me that they are on a path to sytematically weaken and dismantle this Country. They are killing the fishing industry, agriculture, energy. They have taken over the auto industry. Funneled billions of dollars to union, directly and indirectly. Thrown Israel to the wolves, emasculated our nuclear defenses, encouraged the MB in the Middle East. Weakened our currency. These things don't "just happen".
I do believe the sleeping bear is awakening from a long slumber and hopefully will become more involved in what is really happening in this Country. If so, there may just be hope.
Clever use of words - social security termed an "entitlement" - so as to make gullible Americans think it is similar to welfare and other public aide that hasn't been earned. But social security is NOT an "entitlement". It is funded by workers and employers - not the government.
However, government mismanagement - not Baby Boomer retirement - is responsible for the mess that social security is in - and both parties are to blame. Any "surplus" of money collected for a calendar year (for the SS program) was placed in the government's general fund as "repayable loans." And guess what happened to the trillions of dollars of SS money there? Like anything that goes into the general fund, the money was never acccounted for, let alone repaid.
After Obama, we are not going to have a deluge, but a Soviet-style collapse. Within just the next few years, Washington will run out of money and the whole welfare state will be swept away.
Obama (The Unions) will lose in Wisconsin. And they will lose in Indiana, Ohio, NJ and other states with Republican Governors. The Governors either win or end their own careers and they know it.
As trends go, this is the most dangerous trend the Democrats have seen in decades, because it is only the money, which has allowed them to hold power.
I am with Texan59 - very little or nothing this administration does is haphazard or unintentional. However, I don't think their direct intention is collapse of the country, although that will certainly be the result. He is building his constituency base - all those who live off government handouts. Auto workers, you owe me because you have a job. Public sector unions extorting money from taxpayers to fund the Democratic Party, I'm here to defend you, now you vote for me. Uninsured who choose not to purchase insurance, I'm expanding the Medicaid roles for you, so vote for me. It's one big Ponzi scheme. Just this week, his reversal on DOMA, only to solidify support within the gay community, upon whom he will put the squeeze next election. Who's left holding the bag? Who has to clean up the mess? The rapidly dwindling minority who go to work everyday, pay their bills, take care of their kids, contribute to their communities. Unfortunately, we're rapidly being outnumbered by those with their hands out and their sense of responsibility and pride in this nation non-existent, and it worries me for this next election.
I am not willing to make one big assumption upon which the whole article rests, that Obama intends to leave office at the end of his constitutional term(s).
Conservatives who complain about President Obama's behavior are failing to see the world through his eyes. He is happy with the status quo ex ante and will fight to preserve it.
First, he wants the federal government to spend approximately $3.7 Trillion from 10/01/2011 through 09/30/2012. This spending disproportionately benefits government employees and clients of the welfare state. The only potential risk from insisting on such high levels of spending that could materialize during the next two years is that there will be a sudden loss of confidence in the U.S. government's ability to pay its debts which would ignite inflation. President Obama correctly see that this is unlikely to happen before election day 2012. From his standpoint, how does he politically benefit from anything that would reduce the level of federal spending?
Second, the federal government will collect somewhere around $2.1 Trillion of taxes from 10/01/2011 through 09/30/2012. Again, Obama correctly recognizes that a big tax increase will harm the economy and a tax compromise with GOP makes him look more moderate. From his standpoint, why should he make Americans pay for the level of government spending the Democrats insist we have for the next two years?
People who talk about President Obama's failure to lead us in budget cuts are talking as if they think President Obama should act like a conservative. He is a political liberal and does not care what happens to anyone who is not part of his political coalition. Once you understand this fact, all of President Obama's actions make sense.
If we want to see an end to wasteful and dishonest spending by government and those we place within it, end the automatic withholding of taxes from paychecks. Require a quarterly check to be cut and sent to the IRS by each wage earner, just as many small businesses must do. Let workers grasp just how much they lose to the government and see just how poorly it is managed. If nothing else, I think we'd see a demand that Social Security be reformed if not eliminated from citizens.
It is time to say what needs to be said. Obama is incapable of leading the country.
He is simply not a serious person, most recently exemplified by his budget, Libya response and Wisconsin stance.
When a non serious person is in a leadership role from which he cannot be removed the best course of action is to ignore him and do what must be done. Our country and times demand leadership.
Very simple really. Obama wants the destruction of this country. He is little more than a puppet for forces much stronger than Obama. Our country is doomed as a beacon of freedom unless the people awaken from their slumber, even then is it likely too late.
@DON MOSELY
And whom is he a puppet of? I am not a fan at all, but I put forth that most Republicans are also puppets. Their masters are big (as in multinational) business.
To summarise, the Dems are the party of the professional victims and the Repubs of the wealthy. No one stands up for the working and middle classes.
I thought I would never live to see the day that an elected official that received the salutations of Cesaer, the weeping of followers that believed he walked on water; an awarded peacemaker without lifting a finger to achieve peace; a nation that put so much hope on one human to put things right, could get it so wrong. How many fools does it take to make up a public?
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort
Lord, what fools these mortals be - William Shakespeare
Let's hope that it's not too late to reverse the damage before the whole country implodes into one big sink hole.
