What will happen if that should occur is open to debate but it will likely not be pretty. Given that the Federal government spends $1.40 for every dollar it collects in taxes, the most immediate impact is a likely 30% decrease in what the political class has to spend on government programs which will likely result in disruptions to government services and payments.
But it did not have to get to this point. Anyone in Washington with first grade math skills could have figured out a year or more ago that this crisis was coming. That is when the political class should have started talking about a coherent, integrated, strategic way to get spending under control. Outside of crisis mode, months ahead of the crisis. This is not a debate about what to name a new post office, it is a debate that will likely negatively impact the lives of just about every American and it should have been taken much more seriously.
But the political class, including the most powerful figure within that class, Barack Obama, never got around to the crisis until just weeks before D-day. Not only did the politicians start late but they cannot even get close agreeing on how to solve the crisis. The biggest obstacle is the fact that Obama is insisting that any agreement to cut the budget and raise the debt limit must include big tax increases on businesses and wealthier Americans. Republicans are insisting on only spending cuts with no tax increases before they will agree on raising the debt limit.
Which brings us to the hypocrisy part of today's post title. Consider a generic yet accurate definition of what hypocrisy is:
Hypocrisy: an act or instance of falseness.
In the light of this definition, now consider some direct Barack Obama quotes from the past few years starting with his position when the Bush administration in 2006 needed to raise the debt limit during his second term in office and Obama was still an Illinois Senator:
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."
So, in 2006, raising the debt limit was a failure in leadership according to the morals and standards of Obama. But now Obama wants to raise the debt limit. How is doing the exact same thing that Bush did not be a failure in leadership? How could that be a failure in leadership in 2006 but not 2011? Same issue, same person, different viewpoints. Which one is a falsehood?
Incidentally, in 2007 and in 2008, when the Senate voted to increase the limit by $850 billion and $800 billion respectively, Obama did not even bother to vote. How and why would a Senator avoid voting on these two important votes, votes that again could have affected just about every American? Hardly a leadership approach to his responsibilities.
But the hypocrisy continues. In August 2009 when Obama was in Indiana to promote his economic stimulus plan, he was being interviewed by NBC’s Chuck Todd. Todd fielded a question from a local citizen, Scott Ferguson: “Explain how raising taxes on anyone during a deep recession is going to help with the economy.”
Obama's response: “First of all, he’s right. Normally, you don’t raise taxes in a recession, which is why we haven’t and why we’ve instead cut taxes. So I guess what I’d say to Scott is – his economics are right. You don’t raise taxes in a recession. We haven’t raised taxes in a recession.”
"We have not proposed a tax hike for the wealthy that would take effect in the middle of a recession. Even the proposals that have come out of Congress – which by the way were different from the proposals I put forward – still wouldn’t kick in until after the recession was over. So he’s absolutely right, the last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just suck up – take more demand out of the economy and put business further in a hole.”
So, is this even more Obama hypocrisy? While we are not "officially" in a recession, it certainly feels like one. Official unemployment is high and rising, underemployment is much higher and rising, average wages recently dropped again, a major leading indicator is trending downward, job creation is minimal, and the housing industry is still in the dumps.
Two years ago Obama correctly understood that raising taxes for any American, wealthy or not wealthy, is a stupid economic policy to follow in bad economic times, "it is the last thing you want to do." Now, in order to get Republicans to agree to spending cuts in return for support on raising the debt ceiling during a very bad economic time, he is insisting on raising taxes for wealthy Americans and businesses.
But the examples of hypocrisy just keep on rolling in. Back last fall when Obama and the Republicans agreed not to let the Bush tax cuts lapse, keeping the tax rates the same, Obama was again supporting the strategy of letting American citizens and businesses keep more of their wealth. Consider his words at that time:
“Millions of entrepreneurs who have been waiting to invest in their businesses will receive new tax incentives to help them expand, buy new equipment or make upgrades – freeing up other money to hire new workers.”
Thus, late last year it was a good idea for businesses to keep more of their profits and invest them to help the economy. Nine short months later is a bad idea since Obama wants to raises taxes on the same people that he wanted them to keep their money and invest in the economy. Hypocrisy again.
These words are not from Republicans, Fox News, Tea Party people or Rush Limbaugh. They are Obama's own words. The only way they make sense from when they were stated to today is that the President is an incredible hypocrite, willing to say anything at anytime to make political points for himself. They are called acts of falsehood, it is called hypocrisy. It is also pathetic for a so-called leader.
Enough abut hypocrisy, I think the above quotes prove the point of what type of person the President is. Let's move on to leadership. I always thought the following quote from Arnold Glasow captured a the essence of what a true leader is:
"One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency."
Failing to raise the debt limit and failure to get out-of-control spending under control is certainly now an emergency. Back in the fall of last year the President's own debt reduction commission, after much hard work over most of the 2010 calendar year presented the President with a detailed, non-partisan, coherent plan for reducing government spending.
At the time of the plan's completion, the Democrats controlled the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. A leader would have taken that plan, ran with it, convinced his Democratic friends in the Congress to pass it, without needing Republican support, and the debt crisis we are weeks away from would have never become an emergency.
All it would have taken is a little leadership and fortitude for the President to tell the American people that government had to tighten tighten up spending and shown how HIS commission had the right plan to do it. Heck, if he wanted to be a total weasel, he could have blamed the deficit reduction commission to avoid any personal blame and any political fallout.
The President missed that opportunity to avoid an emergency but he had other chances. Earlier this year he submitted his budget plans to Congress for review. His plans did nothing to control spending. In fact, if that original Presidential budget had been approved, it was projected to add at least another $9 TRILLION to the national debt, or about $80,000 worth of debt for every American household.
This budget was rejected by the Senate by a unanimous vote of 97-0. Even his Democratic friends in the Senate knew that his budget plan was a disaster. Thus, rather than start the discussion constructively towards reducing spending many months ago, the President chose to pass the buck again, missing another chance to avoid the current emergency.
As the potential for an emergency got closer and closer, the President avoided all contact with this issue, leaving Joe Biden and six members of Congress only a couple of months to tackle a problem that a his full Presidential commission took almost a year to wrestle to the ground.
In those months, the President was no where to be found relative to this emerging emergency, spending time touring the world, having tea with the queen, and blaming Congress for the impasse on the debt ceiling issue. Rather than giving credit and taking blame, the behavior of a good leader, Obama was doing just the opposite in order to politically protect his own selfish interests.
At least three instances where a true leader could have recognized the problem before it became an emergency and in each instance, the President failed to step up and perform. It is now obvious that his only priority is to get re-elected in 2012, the country's financial and economic welfare be damned. His positions on taxes, spending, and the debt limit are so incredibly and so obviously hypocritical. His failure at leadership so blatant and destructive.
The truly pathetic thing about this whole emergency is the tax increases he is proposing, removing oil company loopholes, taxing corporate jet owners, taxing the rich, etc., his hypocritical demands that are holding up a solution to the emergency, are infinitesimal in the whole picture of out-of-control spending. They are simply ploys to energize his base and prove he is tough on corporations and rich people, they would have nothing to do with fixing this fiscal emergency.
Using some simple math, we will review these cheap political ploys and their insignificance tomorrow when we will see the hypocrisy continue from what is turning out to be one of the worst and most destructive Presidencies of all time.
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