Thursday’s jobless numbers and Wednesday’s CBO report are beyond ominous and present a direct challenge to the rationale for Barack Obama’s presidency.
Before President Obama took office, he vilified President Bush for adding $4 trillion to our nation’s debt as “unpatriotic.” If Bush’s spending over the course of two terms was “unpatriotic,” Obama adding nearly $5.3 trillion to the national debt in half this time is not only “unpatriotic,” it’s also hypocritical. It displays an utter disregard for financial health of this country.
Obama pledged to cut the deficit in half by 2012, but instead has increased spending so rapidly that our nation has surpassed the $16 trillion threshold. He and his ObamaClones in the Senate continue to call for even more liberal deficit spending.
Senate Democrats have enabled Obama by refusing to produce a budget for over three years. This is a complete dereliction of duty on the part of Majority Leader Harry Reid. The Senate is mandated to produce a budget but has failed to do so for almost the entire time Obama has been in office.
Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia expressed rare honesty in saying he was at a loss to explain why his fellow Democrats have gone along with this. The former governor even said if he had done this while governor of his state, he would’ve been impeached.
It’s an absolute disgrace that the last time the Senate passed a budget was on April 29, 2009. Since this resolution—which aimed to cut the deficit by two-thirds by 2014—the deficit has increased by $4.8 trillion.
Obama and his enablers in the Senate refuse to do their jobs and idly stand by as our nation teeters on the fiscal cliff. The American people not only deserve to know how the politicians in Washington are spending their tax dollars, they also deserve representatives who do the job they were elected to do.
Do we need more evidence that Obama doesn’t take fiscal responsibility seriously? His last budget proposal was shot down by both Democrats and Republicans in both houses of Congress: 414-0 in the House of Representatives and 99-0 in the Senate. When was the last time—if ever—you had a national, unanimous repudiation of this magnitude?
Both Obama and Reid must be held accountable for failing to do their jobs. The same goes for other enablers in the Senate such as Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) – all of whom are up for re-election this year.
Additionally, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine (D-Va.) is running for the Senate in Virginia, and he has continually supported all of Obama’s policies which have driven our country deeper in debt. Mr. Kaine needs to answer for this if he wants the voters to support him. He is not exempt.
Obama declared that Stimulus One (a trillion dollars of taxpayer money) would get the economy back on track. It was a miserable failure. When that didn’t work, he threw more tax dollars at more failed projects in Stimulus Two.
Back in February 2009, Obama said that as president he would be held accountable. He said that if the economy didn’t recover in three years, his presidency would be a “one-term proposition.”
Come November, the American people will remember Obama’s proclamation. They will also remember that this administration has engaged in the most reckless deficit spending in history which has grown the federal debt over $16 trillion.
At some point, the public’s patience will wear out unless Obama changes his spending ways and both he and his party begin to take this problem seriously. Don’t bet on this. You’ll be as successful as Obama and the Democrats have been lately.
Brent Bozell is chairman and CEO of ForAmerica.org, the largest online conservative army in America with 2.5 million supporters.
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