Call Him Irresponsible

By Alan Caruba

Is it just me or does President Obama look and sound more desperate with every passing day? He thought he could fool all of the people all of the time and it turns out that he can’t.

Mark your calendar for Saturday, September 12, 2009. That’s when a Washington, D.C. protest march is planned. Led by FreedomWorks, their website says they will be joined by many other national co-sponsors such as the National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Tax Reform, Young America’s Foundation, and Tea Party Patriots, to name just a few.

This is why the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

I doubt that President Obama will be among the speakers that day, although he has been out on the stump of late trying to convince Americans that things will improve if the government is given control over the nation’s health system. He’s already nationalized part of the auto industry, a major insurance company, banks, and probably little Bobby’s lemonade stand in front of his home.

Obama’s relentless assault on the private sector of the nation’s economy can be seen in the following percentages of the Gross Domestic Product: Healthcare represents 17%, energy is 9.8%, and financial services are 8% of GDP. These are the sectors that have been targeted for takeover by the Obama administration. It adds up to 35% of GDP!

In May, columnist Robert Samuelson, writing in Investor’s Business Daily, asked “Just how much government debt does a president have to endorse before he’s labeled ‘irresponsible’?”

“From 2010 to 2019,” wrote Samuelson, “Obama projects annual deficits totaling $7.1 trillion; that’s atop the $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009”, adding that “By various estimates, Obama’s health plan might cost $1.2 trillion over a decade; he has budgeted only $635 billion.”

Deficits are the annual gap between government’s spending and its tax revenues. The debt is the total borrowing caused by past deficits. As confidence in the U.S. dollar and the credit of the United States decreases, the amount of interest on borrowing will increase.

While it is true that the federal government has run deficits in all but five years, the debt has always remained below fifty percent of GDP.

I submit that NOTHING Obama says about deficits or debt can be trusted and his pet project, the horrid “Cap-and-Trade” program, a tax on energy use—electricity—that will drive up utility rates for all Americans. It will reduce the amount of money consumers will have for their other needs. It will drive manufacturing to other nations.

Cap-and-Trade, a carbon tax, is based on the utterly FALSE assertion that CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions contribute to a “global warming” this is NOT happening.

Obama’s proposed healthcare reform is a nightmare. There is no such thing as free healthcare. It is financially unsustainable. This has already been demonstrated in Massachusetts. Utah has just passed a program to institute rationing of healthcare options.

The “entitlement” programs the government instituted in the last century are already facing major financial stress. Social Security will grow by between one and two million new beneficiaries from 2008 to 2032, up from 500,000 a year in the 1990s. The government taxes its benefits. It is not, as originally planned, a “voluntary” program.

More than one million people a year will join Medicare as of 2011 when the first Baby Boomer turns 65.

Nor has the government set aside money to pay military and civil servant pensions or health care for retirees. These unfunded obligations have increased an average of $300 billion since 2003 and now amount to $5.3 trillion.

Because of President Obama’s budgets and the Democrat-controlled Congress, the nation will be faced with trillion dollar deficits for the foreseeable future. It will destroy jobs that will move to other nations and leave future generations with huge financial burdens.

As the Associated Press reported on July 14, “The federal deficit has topped $1 trillion for the first time ever and could grow to nearly $2 trillion by this fall, intensifying fears about higher interest rates, inflation and the strength of the U.S. dollar.”

The GOVERNMENT has done this to us. Obama has exponentially increased the problem.

Only a major reduction in the size of the federal government can provide any remedy. I suggest it begin by ending the Education and Energy Departments, along with the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s a start.