Today we watched President Obama outline his plans for reducing the deficit by $4B over 12 years and we got something different from him for a change, the truth. Gone was the “Change We Can Believe In” and replacing it the hard core leftist Democrat demagoguery and class warfare we have seen since the New Deal. His solution “framework” is to tax the rich otherwise senior citizens will go without healthcare and food. It is all the fault of the Bush tax cuts, which he didn’t mind so much 5 months ago when he signed an extension or his trillion dollar stimulus pork fest. No, the president has seen the way to economic salvation and it is Tax and Spend. Welcome home to leftist land Mister President.
In President Obama’s wonderful world increasing taxes has no negative effect on growth, something he has discovered since he decided in December that extending the Bush tax cuts was essential to maintaining the recovery. He is going to cut an additional $400B from defense, 3 weeks after starting America’s third war in the Middle East. How to make the other cuts? According to The Politico a senior administration official stated “The exact design of that we’d have to work out, obviously.” Working it out is a fine idea, we recommend it strongly.
Ironically the president himself set up a Commission of Deficit Reduction, however when they came back with bipartisan recommendations as to how to reduce the deficit, he chose not to embrace a single recommendation they made. It seems President Obama prefers to live in his imaginary world where economic realities are optional and his Hope is enough. When that fails, he turns to the old democrat standby of class warfare.
The President also set as the official target of leftist attack Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and his dramatic plan to balance the budget by cutting $6 trillion over 10 years, $2 trillion more than the President two years sooner. I have to admit I have concerns over the Ryan plan, especially over the achievability of the cuts in discretionary non-entitlement spending. Yet Representative Ryan is the first person in almost 2 decades to have the courage to put forward a plan which faces the reality of entitlement spending the need to constrain it. Ryan’s plan surly will evolve over time, but he has taken the first real step forward to realistic restraint in Washington.
So the battle over fiscal responsibility is joined and we can only hope that this will be the foundation of the 2012 campaign. The choice will be clear between fiscal responsibility and democrat fear mongering. The American people will have a choice and the future will be dependent on that choice.
A Conservative's Musings on All Things Political 