The Obama Administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has requested all federal agencies to cut their FY2014 budgets by 5%. Not too surprisingly, these “cuts” are being heralded as an example of new, fiscal prudence by every Democrat seeking office. If only. What the President is conveniently forgetting is that these cuts, if actually implemented, will only impact discretionary spending, and avoid the much bigger and more problematic entitlement spending that is the primary cause of our economic problems.The president’s Simpson-Bowles commission told him more than a year ago that entitlement spending was the problem, but Obama and all other Democrat office seekers continue to ignore the facts. Worse yet, they continue to champion policies that will further erode our economy, pile on even more debt, and throttle the engine of growth and innovation.
Clearly, the White House doesn’t understand, and doesn’t care, that federal spending is bloated and can’t continue to grow at the pace urged by Team Obama. Instead, Obama continues his curious set of campaign stops where he consistently promises different interests groups more than the government can possible deliver.
Barack Obama seems to believe he has an infinite supply of goodies and benefits to shower upon his favorite constituents, for which no one ever will have to pay. And yet, the president’s merry, 2012 election campaign carnival continues, with a never-ending stream of unfulfillable promises, economic delusions, and further government support for bad habits and cultural rot.
The White House refuses to understand that every additional dollar our country borrows comes at a cost to our own weakened economy, our own weakened political clout and ultimately strains the economies of the other nations who buy our bonds and loan us money.
Nor does Obama understand that our debt has grown too high to be long sustained and annually running a $1 trillion dollar deficit is reckless. Instead, Obama is fully and completely focused on winning his next election. Obama’s campaign strategy consists of buying votes by promising the impossible, then taking money from one group of Americans to give to others.
In what will likely figure as the most irresponsible administration in the nation’s history, Democrat leaders in the White House and in congress have decided to ignore common sense and, instead, indulge their every pseudo-philanthropic whim—providing largess and preferences through expanded entitlements, all at the expense of the nation’s future economic viability.
Team Obama is equally inept at encouraging economic growth and innovation. Interestingly, this past week was National Small Business Week, which went largely unheralded by the Obama White House. Not too surprising, since the Obama Administration has been hostile to business from day one, and has been especially hostile to small business.
Why? Because a vibrant, small business community creates jobs. Private sector jobs grow the economy. A vibrant economy means affluence, and affluence means choices—which is what America is all about. But, Dems don’t get it.
The president’s lackluster speech, nominally giving the nod to risk takers and innovators, touts the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, a piece of legislation which might be more appropriately called the Small Business Strangulation Act, since the number of reporting requirements--not to mention their intrusiveness into the intellectual property and proprietary information of businesses--made the proposed government-backed loans unattractive as a business expansion option. Drafted by bureaucrats, the Small Business Jobs Act has been a failure. (Witness--continuing 8+% unemployment for the past three years).
Team Obama does not understand that access to capital is not the only factor in growing a business. Small business owners need regulatory freedom to innovate and an environment of predictability and opportunity that encourages a small business to expand—all of this is best created by less (not more) government interference.
President Obama seems determined to eliminate options for American independence and innovation and increase Americans’ dependency on the government. This, in turn, increases the size of government.
Democrats don’t understand that a small government will operate more efficiently, and at less cost, on behalf of the American people. Instead, with each new rule implemented by Team Obama, and each new piece of legislation, additional government entities are created that must be funded with more and more taxpayer dollars.
What is essential--a strong defense, a strong currency, low taxes, less regulation and policies that encourage the growth of free enterprise—can be accomplished better with a limited, rather than a bloated government.
Democrats, especially Obama, talk poignantly about WTF (Winning the Future). But the Democrats’ political pablum is all lip service.
Burdensome taxes to pay for bloated federal spending have crushed the rosy future of our nation’s youth. Democrats, led by Barack Obama, have resorted to manufactured conundrums, diatribes on student loans and access to birth control, to successfully divert the attention of inexperienced college students from the trillions of dollars of growing federal and public debt which they, as the nation’s future generation of workers (if they can somehow get a job), will be required to repay.
Democrats don’t seem to care that entitlement spending has ballooned out of control because so many of those receiving the entitlements vote Democrat. Promising an ever-expanding roster of federal entitlements is the only way that Democrats can garner the votes necessary to stay in office.
If Democrats cut off the federal entitlement spigot, the votes would dry up. Taxpayer dollars, in the hands of Team Obama, are the biggest source of “get-out-the-vote-money” and it’s completely legal (albeit unethical).
Unfortunately, the American taxpayer is a shrinking base, doomed to extinction under current Democrat ideology. Democrats have grandiose social engineering-philanthropic ideas that always seem to require someone else to foot the bill, so Democrats have no compunction about raising the debt ceiling, and raising tax rates to increase the amount of money the federal government can spend.
What Americans taxpayers have learned--from the wasteful spending scandals at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), from the scandals with the Secret Service, from the revelation that almost ever federal agency in the executive branch, as well as the legislative and the judicial branches of government have indulged in self-aggrandizing, over-the-top conferences, at which members of government, public servants, were themselves the major recipients of the largesse--is that their taxpayer dollars are being wasted.
Team Obama has created, within the government, a culture of excess and indulgence, wherein public service has become self-serving rather than serving the people of this country. That’s not the American way.
Almost 180 years ago, Alexis de Toqueville wrote: ““Americans are taught from birth that they must overcome life’s woes and impediments on their own. Social authority makes them mistrustful and anxious, and they rely upon its power only when they cannot do without it”.
America is a grand country, achieved through great dreams, built through hard work, innovation, frugality and self-reliance. These are the characteristics that make America the envy of the world. These are the characteristics that Democrats fear. Something sure smells bad in Washington—methinks it’s Obama’s economic cowpies.
Lurita Doan
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