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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:
- A test of a leader is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
- 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/
Let's talk about the national debt today from both a hypocrisy and leadership perspective. As most people know, unless the political class agrees to some sort of financial plan in the next week or so it is highly possible that the United States' Federal government will start defaulting on the massive debt levels it has created over the past decades, a trend that has violently accelerated in the past three years.
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.
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/
