Abject Failure Of Obama’s Presidency – Part 2

Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.  ~Samuel Johnson

On Monday, I introduced you to William J. H. Boetcker, a Presbyterian minister, who, in 1942. wrote a pamphlet that included 10 well-thought-out statements written by Boetcker himselfon democracy. In that article, I claimed that Obama’s actions appear to work against each of the 10 tenets. 

In the coming days, we’ll be taking a deeper look at each of those tenets and illustrate how Obama’s leadership counters each one. Today, we’ll start with: 

Tenet #1: You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. 

America’s economy is in critical condition, rapidly approaching the necessity for life support. While many of us claim to be aware of this, they really don’t know just how critical things are. According to Richard Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas:  

I have been scanning the horizon for danger signals even as we continue working to recover from the recent turmoil. In the distance, I see a frightful storm brewing in the form of untethered government debt. I choose the words—“frightful storm”—deliberately to avoid hyperbole. Unless we take steps to deal with it, the long-term fiscal situation of the federal government will be unimaginably more devastating to our economic prosperity than the subprime debacle and the recent debauching of credit markets that we are now working so hard to correct.   

 He’s talking about the fact that in 2000, under a Democratic President and a Republican Congress, the two branches of our government combined to produce a fiscal surplus of $238 billion. It didn’t last long, however, and much of that blame can be put at the feet of the Bush administration, for whom the term “Deficit Spending” seemed to have no meaning.

Of course, the attacks of September 11, 2001, played a large part in subsequent financial and economic decision, but clearly America needed to get control of its spending. And that is precisely what Obama would have you believe with his message of “Change!” during his campaign.  Looking at his actions, however, we find just the opposite:  

    

 According to Heritage.org:  

“Not only does President Obama’s budget fail to reduce deficits “overnight”, his budget actually moves them in the opposite direction. President Obama’s budget would:   

• Permanently expand the federal government by nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over 2007 pre-recession levels;
• Borrow 42 cents for each dollar spent in 2010;
• Leave permanent deficits that top $1 trillion in as late as 2020;

The chart above compares the President’s budget deficit projections to the Congressional Budget Office’s budget deficit projections under current law. In other words, the policy changes embodied in President Obama’s 2011 Budget puts our country $2.5 trillion deeper in debt by 2020 than it other wise would be if current law were left unchanged.  

Now the President is apparently arguing that his trillions of dollars in additional deficit spending are needed to “invest in areas that will determine our economic success in this new century.”  

This statement goes to the core of the fundamental difference between leftists and conservatives in this country: liberals believe economic growth comes from wise investments by government experts; conservatives believe that economic growth stems from  millions of Americans having the freedom to make their own economic decisions everyday.   

Since taking office, Barack Obama has consistently referred to “the mess left behind by the Bush administration” when referring to the economy. Yet in the mere 15 months of his administration, he has spent (or committed to spending)  far more than the entire Bush administration’s expenditures of his two terms (8 years), including all monies spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And there is no end in site if both Cap and Trade and Universal Healthcare become reality. 

And that’s the good news.

Collectively, including projections for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the financial obligations of this country actually projects out into well over a HUNDRED TRILLION DOLLARS. Putting this in perspective, each one of America’s 300 million men, women and children personally owe approximately $350,000 each. And that would be if we were to pay off this debt today. Cick on the above link to see an amazing (and appalling) real-time display of America’s indebtedness.

Without massive cutbacks in entitlements, the country cannot sustain this and will be bankrupt before the end of this decade. Just how soon is anyone’s guess. While this is not Obama’s doing (it’s an accumulative effect of entitlements run amok which neither party has bothered to get under control), he either doesn’t recognize the reality of the situation or worse, he does.

The numbers don’t lie.  It’s just that nobody bothered to acknowledge the iceberg dead ahead of our ship of state). A President who was true to his oath of office would be looking for ways to turn the ship of state from the path of the iceburg.

Instead, at a time when we need true leadship to help avoid fiscal meltdown, President Obama is running “full speed ahead” as if the iceburg wasn’t there.  Either way, he’s continuing to spend at an alamring rate as if there’s no limit on what America can spend. He is either the world’s dumbest leader, or the most underhanded. Either way, he is breaking his oath of office every day and threatening – truly threatening – democracy as we know it.

“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. ”

There is no middle road on this.

Gerry Ashley