Epic Hypocrisy
Ok kids, it’s time for a pop quiz! No looking at your neighbor’s paper.
Question: After successfully wrangling a debt laden, pork bloated $780 billion spending package through congress, with literally tens of billions of dollars worth of pet projects and ear marks, how do you switch the focus of the American taxpayer who will foot the bill for it all from outrageous government spending to something else?
Answer: Have the unmitigated stones to schedule a “fiscal responsibility summit”.
Before even putting his name on the bottom line to sign into law the largest government boondoggle in the county’s history, that is exactly what the new president is doing.
The president actively lobbied both houses of congress and the American people for support to get this near one trillion dollar spending package approved. This will bring the country’s annual budget deficit to $2 trillion. Having just completed his campaign to approve the only plan that could actually make ethanol look like a good idea, he is now informing congress of his concerns about unnecessary spending. Perhaps the president’s next book could be titled “The Audacity of Audacity”.
This level of hypocrisy is like Tom Daschle giving tax advice to Tim 1040 Geithner.
The public relations plan seems clear. The new president and Democrat controlled House and Senate have included all their pet pork projects into the non-budgeted “stimulus” package. The president can now make a public appeal for budgetary restraint and will claim to be making progress by balancing a budget stripped of all the items that will be paid for anyway by this near one trillion dollar spending spree.
The president’s call for bipartisan input on his new push for fiscal responsibility is as transparent as was his praise for John McCann while he scratched his nose with his middle finger. This move is calculated to allow Democrats and centrists to claim the president is truly looking for a middle of the road, all inclusive, economic policy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even an abbreviated look at this president’s past voting record, as slim as it is, will make clear that this is the most liberal president in the nation’s history. If you’re going to be a liberal at least have the honesty to claim your affiliation and the courage to defend it.
But predictably the tactic is working so far, at least at home. Already many in his adoring media cabal are calling for Republicans to abandon all that they stand in for economic restraint and jump head first into the new “New Deal”.
Reams are being written and reported on how Republicans are making a futile attempt at partisan resistance without ever once considering that this spending package is truly a bad deal for taxpayers and will prove to be totally ineffective at stimulating anything but heart strings of the Democratic faithful.
With this new fiscal responsibility summit Obama is trying to maintain his “everyman” image by deceiving some Americans into believing that he truly understands and feels their pain. But in the worst economic meltdown since World War II a spending package that contains tens of billions of dollars for such items as new space shuttles, global warming research and habitat reclamation for the Southern California titmouse it is hard to convince conservatives that he understands how to act when economic times are tight.
The collapse of the credit markets was ignited by a Democrat effort to include welfare into the mortgage market. When those folks who should have never been given credit in the first place defaulted on their home loans it caused home prices to plummet and brought the entire global credit market to its knees. Banks around the world that invested in the American debt bonds suddenly found their investments worthless and their clients panicked and outraged. Are we now to believe that we can overcome this misguided attempt to make home ownership a constitutional right by spending more on welfare and meaningless projects while allowing the national debt to surpass $2 trillion?
This president and his band of merry tax delinquents can put on all the dog and pony shows they want. While the American voter, who was looking for hope, may be temporarily buffaloed the rest of the world will not. In order for America to entice foreign investment with that level of outrageous debt, interest rates on Treasury bonds will need to be increased causing even greater harm to an already wounded economy.
If the president truly wants fiscal restraint and bipartisan support he will need to follow a long held principle of economic truth.
It may take money to make money, but you can’t spend your way out of being broke.
