President Obama and The National Debt - Never Missing An Opportunity To Miss An Opportunity

The nasty rhetoric still continues to flow from Democrats one week after the President signed the inadequate debt ceiling agreement last Tuesday. Over the past week, honest Americans who are alarmed by the skyrocketing and outrageous debt costs, that have increased about $6 TRILLION since the Democrats took over Congress in 2007 and the White House in 2009, have been branded extremists and terrorists by high ranking Democratic politicians, falsely asserting that somehow these concerned Americans held the economy and the nation hostage.

These are not new tactics for Americans that have had differing opinions over Obama's policies in the past. For those of us that opposed Obama Care, for reasons that are becoming more and more obvious with every passing week, we were branded as racists (Democratic Congress Representatives Rangel, Jordan, Grayson) and un-American (Pelosi). In other areas, Americans were determined to be knuckle dragging Neanderthals (Grayson again) and a__h____s (V. Jones, a White House czar). With one exception, the recent terrorist accusation of Democratic Congressman Mike Doyle (and possibly Vice President Joe Biden), the President has refused to step in and call a halt to the divisive name calling.

But if you look at the history of the debt ceiling fiasco, it really is the President's missteps that led the country to the brink of disaster over the past few weeks. Looking at the history of the whole out-of-control spending issue, only once in his career has the President not miss the opportunity to miss an opportunity:

- The only time when he did not miss an opportunity to get Federal government spending under control was in 2006. During one of the times that the Bush administration went to Congress to raise the debt ceiling, Obama correctly branded such actions as a "failure in leadership." He voted against raising the debt limit back then, the only time he got it right.

- While he did not vote to support one of the Bush administration's debt ceiling raising efforts, he did not even bother to vote two other times when Bush needed relief from the ceiling, indicating that the issue was not even important enough for him to show up and vote and make a statement against out-of-control Federal spending.

- But his indifference gets worse. According to a CNN report on April 20, 2009, the President gathered his confirmed Cabinet heads and challenged them to come up with $100 million in budget cuts within 90 days. At that time, he stated that the Federal government has "a confidence gap when it comes to the American people" and "we've got to earn their trust. They've got to feel confident that their dollars are being spent wisely."

Thus, the President obviously realized over two years ago that there was a credibility issue and a spending issue with Federal spending. However, $100 million is hardly worth the effort except to be the first, very, very small step to fixing a gigantic problem. $100 million turned out to be .003% of the Federal budget he proposed later in the spring of 2009. To put it in household terms, a .003% reduction in income of a household earning $50,000 a year comes out to $1.36 or about the cost one Sunday newspaper. Hardly enough to have any kind of significant impact.

This number gets even smaller when you consider that within the first year or so of Obama taking office, the Federal payroll grew by over 200,000 people. If you assume that the annual weighted cost of each of those new Federal hires is about $100,000 (wages, benefits,  retirement costs, etc.), than those 200,000 new hires added about $20 billion of annual costs to the Federal budget. This turns out to be  200 times what Obama asked his cabinet to find, dwarfing his request relative to the expense of the new government employees.

The details of this effort were also pretty feeble. Included in the article were samples of the cuts including: the Department of Education increasing the ratio of Department employees sharing each printer, Homeland Security's plan to save money by purchasing office supplies in bulk, and the Department of Veteran Affairs using video conferencing to cut down on travel costs.

In the private sector and elsewhere in reality, these types of actions usually are occuring every day as a regular business practice. Only in the Federal government do they become worthy of Presidential attention and pride.

- Don't get me wrong, saving $100 million is welcomed. But there was very little follow up to this initial effort. A follow up July 27, 2009 article from CNN reported that Obama's Cabinet Secretaries had come back from the initial meeting with $243 million in savings. This is the equivalent of saving less than .007% of overall government spending, or the equivalent of about two Sunday newspapers for a household earning $50,000 a year.

Again, saving $243 million is a very nice, very small start. Administration quotes in the article showed they had some kind of inkling that cutting spending was a good idea:

• "These savings reflect the President's belief that even small savings can add up," said Obama's Budget Director Peter Orszag.
• Orszag went on to say that the White House would continue to work "to identify further savings as part of the 2011 budget process...(which will) start to instill a culture of cost savings and care when it comes to using taxpayer dollars."

The words are big, the targets are so small. And the irony of the whole to-do about the administration being sensitive to wasteful spending, I could find no evidence anywhere where these cuts were actually made. Given all the press they gave to finding a few hundred million dollars, it is very suspicious that they never hyped how well they did in implementing their minor changes. Given the integrity track record of this administration I would bet that even these small changes never got implemented to any degree that was promised.

- The Washington Post reported on May 7, 2009 that the Obama administration was "scouring the Federal budget , line by line, for savings." The Post article said that this scouring came up with $17 billion in potential savings, or .5% of the budget the President was proposing for the following fiscal year.

Certainly better than $243 million but far short of what the country needs to remain solvent. $17 billion comes out to less than two days worth of this year's Federal spending rate. The administration defended the small amount, claiming in 2009 that the $17 million "is just a start to a broader effort to cut spending and rein in a skyrocketing budget deficit, which is projected at $1.7 TRILLION this year." To the best of my knowledge, not only did these cuts not become reality, but no further cuts also came forth and became reality.

- After these somewhat meager and half hearted attempts at significant budget reductions, the President established a bipartisan committee to logically and sensibly reduce out-of-control government spending. The National Commission On Fiscal Responsibility and Reform diligently went about their work and by the end of 2010 had developed a comprehensive and detailed blueprint to fairly and substantially reduce government spending and debt.

This effort would have been a great way for Obama to step up to significant cuts. He could blame the commission and use their courage and analyses to finally get significant Federal government cuts underway. However, rather than take the Commission's work and run with it, he basically ignored the Commission's entire effort.

When Obama's cohorts, Pelosi and Reid, set up review requirements that basically prevented any of the Commission's findings ever seeing the light of day in Congress, the President refused to step in and support his own Commission's findings. Thus, another opportunity was missed to get real spending controls in place.

- Fast forward ahead to the spring of 2011, when the President submitted his long term, ten year budget to Congress for review. This would have been the perfect time to start reining in the out-of-control Federal spending, the beginning of the government budget process. Rather than step out and lead, Obama missed another opportunity to lead, submitting a business as usual budget that would add at least another $9 TRILLION to the nation's oppressive debt load.

Thus, starting many years ago:

• When the President essentially blew off the critical votes on raising the debt limits during the Bush administration
• To asking for a pittance of Cabinet department savings while the same departments were hiring thousands and thousands of new employees at a cost far exceeding the President's meager targets
• To the President proposing larger, but still very tiny spending reductions in government operations
• To the ignoring his own debt reduction commission's comprehensive plan to logically and sensibly reduce government
• To extending his leadership void in the spring by not proposing any real reductions in wasteful government spending, the President never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Although he talked the right words on out-of-control spending, his actions always came up small and ineffective.

Which brings us to July, 2011 and the debt ceiling debacle. By not leading and taking advantage of the numerous historical opportunities to start the serious debate and discussion on reducing spending, he allowed a perfect storm to come together. Rather than just debating the debt ceiling issue, we ended up mixing three debates together: debt ceiling raising, Federal government spending reductions, and the obsolete and counterproductive U.S. tax system.

It is no surprise what happened when you realize that the President's lack of leadership on the spending issue resulted in the fiasco, vicious name calling, and pain of the debt ceiling agreement. The American political class has great difficulty getting the right solution to a single, simple problem, they had no chance at coming up with an adult, coherent solution when these three types of issues are so intertwined.

Thus, rather than calling concerned citizens extremists and terrorists, citizens that are scared and outraged about the country's onerous debt problems, those in the Democratic Party might want to consider how the leader of their party never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity to have an adult conversation and problem solving approach to this critical problem.

These missed opportunities are the real causes why the stock market is currently losing another 500 points today and why the nation's credit rating is no longer Triple A rated. Consider two appropriate quotes: 

1. A test of a leader is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency. 
2. Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. 

The debt ceiling issue did not have to become an emergency. If the President had recognized and acted on the problem years ago, when he had the opportunities, before it became an emergency and had not failed to plan the country's financial path, the teeth gnashing and name calling may have been avoided. Guilty on both counts, missed opportunities galore.  

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/