Posted by
Patrick Henry on Saturday, July 09, 2011 11:08:06 PM
Barack Obama has stated repeatedly since the beginning of his campaign for the presidency
that he wants to fundamentally transform America. But such a simple statement of intent
conceals far more than it reveals, for the changes he has pursued and the results we have
reaped are light years distant from those for which 2008 voters hoped.
Today, the nation stands on the edge of the fiscal abyss, days away from defaulting on its
debt, if Obama is to be believed. What he wants now, like everything else he has wanted,
is simply another tool to continue implementing the disastrous changes that have stalled
the nation's economy into indefinite recession, created a 9.2% unemployment rate, with
millions more underemployed or having given up looking for work at all, and an off-the-
charts misery index in which home foreclosures and bank defaults continue apace and
unfunded mandates from the federal government (HHS, EPA, DHS) both infringe
personal liberty and force states to slash budgets to the bone just to survive.
Currently, the national debt stands at 14.3 trillion dollars and climbing. Obama wants
to grow it. To do that, he needs congress to increase the federal debt ceiling. He seems
not to understand that most people are far past what he wants, and growing extremely
concerned about what America needs.
Obama's spending has increased the national debt at 6.6 times the rate of his
predecessor, George W. Bush, who was anything but frugal. Democrats complain
that so much of the budget is tied up in Medicare, Social Security and National Defense
that these are to blame for the problem. But consider that no additional revenue has
been put into these programs under Obama. What has grown disproportionately is
Obama's discretionary spending. Nearly a trillion was poured into a stimulus that failed
to stimulate, billions more into the TARP bail-out for banks, and yet billions more into
bail-outs for General Motors and Chrysler, "green" energy that is still a gleam in Obama's
eye and yet another boondoggle healthcare entitlement popularly known as ObamaCare.
One need only look around at the dismal economic and employment situation to see what
all of that additional spending has brought us to.
To make matters worse, Obama has even suggested taking an axe to Social Security
and Medicare as an alternative to giving up more of his discretionary "transformation"
funding. (Few deny that these entitlements must be revised in order to be sustainable
for the long term. But only fools think it can be done correctly in an 11th hour backroom
deal).
But the frosting on the cake is that Obama is demanding tax increases to offset his
spending reductions. Note that the original gambit was budget cuts for a ceiling increase.
But now Obama wants both tax increases AND a ceiling hike in exchange for phantom
cuts, some of which will not materialize for years, if ever.
In the breech stands the Republican House of Representatives, notably the Tea Party
freshman class. They have adamantly stood for zero tax increases during this recession,
and cuts that go deeper than the amount of any limit increase. Only they can now prevent
Obama from completing his catastrophic change agenda unfettered. Let us pray that
enough of them retain the courage of their convictions to say NO. No more taxes, no
more spending, and deep cuts for a small ceiling increase. In this case compromise would
be a plain tragedy.