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Townhall...
America’s Financial
Restoration vs. Obama’s Ideology
By David Limbaugh
7/19/2011
There is an overarching reason we can’t move toward a balanced budget,
which underscores why we face ongoing stalemates over debt ceilings and
continuing resolutions: President Obama doesn’t want to balance the
budget.
I don’t say this out of extremism or to be gratuitously controversial
or even provocative. It’s just that his words and actions lead to the
inescapable conclusion that he is unwilling to curb his appetite for
big government. In the absence of any such restraint, our alarming
budget trajectory cannot be reversed. The debt ceiling may be the last
clear chance before the 2012 elections to force meaningful budgetary
reforms.
Obama’s recalcitrance is rooted in his ideology. He has been working
all his adult life toward the moment that he could transform America
into a fairer place. He’s not about to allow an existential threat to
the nation get in the way of his obsession.
Perhaps he wishes he’d acceded to the presidency when our debt picture
was less calamitous. Then he might have more leeway to work his
despotic magic. Then again, probably not; without the mainly
Democratic-caused housing crisis falling into his lap just in the nick
of time, he might not have been elected, much less positioned to make
the ludicrous demand that we spend nearly $1 trillion more to
“stimulate” ourselves out of debt. Alinskyite revolutionaries feed on
crises, real and perceived.
Obama fundamentally rejects the American ideals of economic liberty and
equality of opportunity. He’s determined to use government to
redistribute and equalize incomes (and wealth, truth be told), and
neither the Constitution nor catastrophic debt consequences will deter
him.
He doesn’t even appear worried about the debt itself, only the hassle
he’s getting from Republicans who are getting in the way of his
spending and tax hikes. When most Americans are worried sick over our
nation’s finances, Obama is lecturing us about people who “keep
hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income that (they) don’t
need,” as if the chief executive were the grand arbiter of income
distribution. The Heritage Foundation reports that Obama is “creating a
new ‘poverty’ measure that deliberately severs all connection between
‘poverty’ and actual deprivation.” His “goal is to measure income
‘inequality,’ not poverty -- giving the President public relations
ammunition for his ‘spread-the-wealth’ agenda.” Just so ... just so.
There’s more. Obama is fond of invoking false consensuses in support of
his policies, but there truly is widespread agreement that raising
taxes during very tough economic times would impede recovery. Obama
himself gave voice to that very axiom in 2009, saying, “The last thing
you want to do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession, because
that would just suck up, take more demand out of the economy.”
But now, perhaps realizing he might not get another chance to coerce
the Congress into hiking taxes (as a matter of “fairness”), he’s
holding the debt ceiling hostage to his demands.
Worst of all is Obama’s resistance to entitlement reforms. At a time
when everyone acknowledges that our current entitlement programs are
unsustainable, Obama refuses to offer a specific plan to reform them
and adamantly opposes credible Republican plans to do so.
Also, Obama rarely speaks with any urgency about spending cuts; his
emphasis is always that we can’t unduly cut programs for “folks” who
rely on them, flagrantly turning on its head the JFK maxim, “Ask not
what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
While Republicans are pleading with Obama to join them on Rep. Paul
Ryan’s plan to cut spending and reform entitlements, Obama is clinging
to his demand for the high-speed rail boondoggle. When health care
costs are soaring and revised scoring of Obamacare reveals just how
prohibitively costly it will be, Obama holds on to it like a life raft
and pushes the rest of us off. It will destroy access, quality and
cost, but he will not betray his ideology.
Just as his party abrogated its duty to propose a congressional budget
for 800 days, Obama refuses to provide specifics for cutting spending
and just tells us what he won’t do. You can read the transcripts from
his most recent two pressers and find no specifics.
As recently as 2010, Obama’s budget more than doubled the national debt
and pushed the fiscal year 2011 deficit to a record high of $1.6
trillion with record spending, which exceeded $3.8 trillion. His FY
2012 budget again called for doubling the national debt in five years
and tripling it in 10 years -- again without even addressing
entitlements.
It’s simple, really. We have to have structural entitlement reform,
major spending cuts and no tax increase-retardants on economic growth
to reverse our current course toward national bankruptcy, but Obama
steadfastly remains on the wrong side of all these solutions.
Read it at Townhall
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