Spending is a Democrat's Addiction

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure." --Senator Barack Hussein Obama, March, 2006

Political Spendaholics

As The White House and Congress battle the clock to avert what the mainstream media refers to as "a catastrophic default", the lies and the demagoguery fly with wild abandon, never once second-guessed by the media. No, that media takes as gospel the words of Obama and gleefully regurgitates them over "news" broadcasts. The State-run Media is firing on all cylinders, to be sure. (I still wonder why the likes of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward have as yet become sufficiently enraged at the sullying of their profession.)

 For starters, the President of the United States stating on national television that he can't guarantee that Social Security checks would go out was one of the most outrageous things he could have said. It was a blatant attempt to frighten seniors into accepting his furthering of our destruction through economic collapse. Each month the federal government receipts of tax revenues far outpaces outlays for Social Security, so if those checks don't go out, it's because Obama decided to punish the elderly for not getting his way.

There will be plenty of revenues to "meet our obligations", both in entitlement programs and the interest on our debt. What may be strained is our ability to continue funding for research into the mating habits of Alaskan halibut or construction of turtle tunnels under highways, to name a few examples. We will, however, not default on our obligations, unless the guys conducting the aforementioned activities decide that their grant money was promised and file suit. Good luck with that, boys and girls, but there is no reasonable excuse for Grandma not getting her Social Security check.

Obama continues to portray himself as above the political bickering, claiming to have the interests of the country in mind rather than brinkmanship or personal interest. He also says that he is willing to negotiate with Republicans, and that Speaker Boehner was inflexible in walking away from talks on Friday night.

But as Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck revealed on Saturday in an emailed statement before the meetings that day, the President is clearly interested in the 2012 elections. Buck wrote:

“Last night the president said, ‘the only bottom line that I have is that we have to extend this debt ceiling through the next election'. Now, we do not know what size or shape a final package will take, but it would be terribly unfortunate if the president was willing to veto a debt limit increase simply because the timetable prescribed would not be the ideal one for his reelection campaign.”

Playing for Keeps

Obama has said this on more than one occasion, and not one media pundit has grasped it. One can only imagine the howls of outrage from the media and the Left -- pardon the redundancy -- if a Republican had made any such statement in regard to such a grave issue.

Aside from the political posturing, however, is the fact that Obama and his Democrat cohorts in Congress exhibit an innate inability to curb spending of our money. Not only are they incapable of restraint, they are now demanding more from us, insisting that taxes be raised. Obama said the other night that he's "done well", and can afford higher taxes. That's great for him, but I still don't see him volunteering to pay more. The IRS would certainly not refuse a large check from Barack and Michelle, nor from any other rich Liberal who complains about "low taxes" on the wealthy.

Democrats simply cannot be trusted with our money, and their incessant desire to seize more of it should be alarming to every American -- at least those of us who actually pay them. In his first term as President, Ronald Reagan agreed to raise taxes based on the Democrats' promise to cut spending. Those cuts never came, and Reagan didn't fall for the ruse a second time. Then George H. W. Bush suffered defeat in his second term election because of his famous "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge that he reneged on with the same false promise from Democrats.

Today, the Democrats have been battling to eliminate the "Bush tax cuts", claiming that "they weren't paid for", a phrase all too familiar in Congressional-speak. But Democrats -- who traditionally portray themselves as the fiscally responsible party -- continually attempt to fix that which isn't broken.

In 2003, the headlines were about Bush's "massive" deficit and the harm it would wreak on our grandchildren. But with the passage of the second tax cut that year, the economy began to improve. From the AP in 2007 (notably the second-to-last year that Bush enjoyed a Republican-controlled House):

The federal deficit is running sharply lower through the first eight months of this budget year as growth in revenues continues to outpace the growth in spending. 

The Treasury Department said that the deficit through May totaled $148.5 billion, down 34.6 percent from the same period a year ago. 

For the 2007 budget year, which ends on Sept. 30, the Congressional Budget Office is projecting a federal deficit of $177 billion. That would be down 28.7 percent from last year's imbalance of $248.2 billion, which had been the lowest deficit in four years.

2003 was the worst of the Bush years, with a $455 billion deficit, which both the Democrats and media claimed was catastrophic. Each year of Obama, though, has seen deficits of a trillion dollars more than Bush's, and now they want to raise the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion more.

And Obama wants it to last until after the 2012 elections so the problem doesn't impede his possible reelection. Since the math indicates that four more years of Obama would equate to at least $60 trillion in more deficits. That, my friends, would be catastrophic.

Sphere: Related Content