Mail
Magazine 24…
Obama
Ducks Responsibility for Washington’s
Spending Binge
by Emily Goff
In
a recent 60 Minutes interview, host Steve
Kroft primed President Obama with this statement: “Most Americans think
we’re
spending too much money.”
To
which Obama uttered a contemplative “Mm-hm.”
An
understatement, indeed. The nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office estimates that federal spending will reach
$3.56
trillion, or about 23 percent as a share of the economy, for fiscal
year (FY)
2012—well above the historical average of 20.2 percent. That
overspending,
combined with temporarily low revenues as a result of the recession,
has lead
to consistent $1 trillion-plus deficits for the past four years.
Did
the President address the spending
question? No. Instead, he waited for the next question about the
national debt,
which has increased 50 percent since he took office. Then came the
familiar
litany of why he’s not responsible for Washington’s overspending or the
country’s
abysmal fiscal situation:
When
I came into office, I inherited the
biggest deficit in our history. And over the last four years, the
deficit has
gone up, but ninety percent of that is as a consequence of two wars
that
weren’t paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren’t paid for, a
prescription drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst
economic
crisis since the Great Depression.
Hold
on. In FY 2007, well into the wars, and
after the tax cuts and the prescription drug plan were passed, the
deficit was
$160.7 billion. By FY 2008, it had reached $458.6 billion. The deficit
was
increasing as Obama came into office, mainly driven by the recession.
But his
Administration’s massive stimulus bill—“emergency actions” as he calls
it—exacerbated matters by sending spending into overdrive and led to a
$1.4
trillion deficit for FY 2009.
And
what good did these emergency actions do?
Obama continues to embrace big government, tax hikes, and failed
Keynesian
stimulus spending policies—packaged as a “balanced approach”—while
unemployment
still sits above 8 percent and Taxmageddon’s threat suffocates job
creation
prospects.
Obama
also dusted off a claim that The Heritage
Foundation and others have put to rest: that under his Administration,
the federal
government has grown “at a slower pace than at any time since Dwight
Eisenhower.”
That
claim doesn’t account for the stimulus
bill, which sent spending in 2009 to a record 25.2 percent of the
economy.
Total spending will slow in 2012 and over the next few years only
because
Republicans insisted on spending caps and cuts to accompany debt limit
hikes in
last year’s deal.
Further,
Obama continues to ignore the looming
entitlement program crisis. The Administration’s hollow words about
reform are
dwarfed by its push for tax hikes on job creators, even though we have
a
spending problem, not a revenue problem. Without reforms, entitlement
programs
will push spending to untenable levels and put undue pressure on vital
areas of
government such as national defense.
Mr.
President, Americans have little patience
for leaders who shirk responsibility and even less for those who fail
to
address the obvious—in this case, Washington’s spending addiction that
is
risking the American Dream for future generations. Yet, coming from a
President
who says not to worry right now about our $16 trillion debt, such
inaction and
abdication of responsibility come as no surprise.
Source:
blog.heritage.org
Read
the article, with chart, at Mail Magazine
24
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