Part 2, The Obama Administration: Many Promises Made, No Promises Broken

Yesterday, we reviewed six major promises that Presdent Obama made prior coming into office. Part of that review included the fact that he has failed miserably in attaining and executing any of those promises. From not closing Gitmo to wasting over $800 billion on a failed stimulus program to failed economic polices to very little government transparency, this administration has been just one failure after another.

Today, we will look at the other four failed promises, as outlined in a fine report by the Independent Journal Review and expanded with my comments and observations. Tomorrow, we will finish up this failed promises discussion with other major screwups that the Independent Journal Report work did not cover.

 
7. Line by Line to Cut Waste

"Every dollar I’ve proposed, I’ve proposed an additional cut that it matches. To give an example, we spend $15 billion a year on subsidies to insurance companies. It doesn’t help seniors get better. It’s a giveaway. I want to go through the federal budget line by line, programs that don’t work, we cut."

And yet President Obama complained about the mere $85 billion he proposed in annual cuts, out of the $3.75 trillion in government spending (just over a measly 2% of total spending), like it's the end of the world.

And he obviously did not go through the Federal budget line by line, matching new spending with comparable spending cuts. We know that deficit spending has exploded to over a TRILLION dollars every year he has been in office and if he had gone through the Federal budget line by line, there is no way he, as a rational person, could have justified just this small sample of wasteful spending:

• A USAID development program in Morocco included pottery classes that was funded using American taxpayer wealth.
• Despite skyrocketing national debt, the Federal government is spending $947,000 via NASA to study what food astronauts could eat on Mars, by simulating a Mars outpost at a barren location in Hawaii. When and if this research might be needed is far, far off in the future if ever.
• A $325,000 government grant was used to create a robot squirrel to study how squirrels and rattlesnakes interact. What makes this expenditure doubly bad is that apparently the American taxpayer has already funded a similar program in the past, making this study doubly unnecessary and wasteful.
• The USDA gave a $300,000 grant to a caviar producer in Idaho for marketing purposes. How big of a market there is for caviar in Idaho, both from a production and consumption perspective?
• The American taxpayer paid out $3.3 million to bail out a local Arkansas tourist boat company that was going out of business.
• The Department of Transportation gave an Alaskan tribe millions to start a ferry business that competes with existing private ferry services. Apparently, these other private businesses, who never asked for or received a government handout, are now struggling to survive in the face of this government subsidized ferry service.
• The Federal government wastes almost $2 billion annually in maintenance fees for grant accounts that are either expired or empty of funds, all because the Department never got around to closing out the unneeded accounts.
• State officials used a Federal stimulus grant to purchase massive, overpowered routers that are too big and unnecessary for rural schools, libraries, and government offices, wasting $24 million in the process.
• The National Science Foundation spent $516,000 on a research program that created a computer game simulating a high school “Prom Night” and the week leading up to the prom night.

This is just an extremely small sample of the tens of thousands of ways the Federal government wastefully and frivolously spend taxpayer money. Many other examples can be found at the following links:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/wastebook-2012-wasteful-federal.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/wastebook-2012-wasteful-federal.html

You will never get spending under control when you are paying for prom night game development and robotic squirrels and after more than four years in office, there is little chance this administration will “go through the Federal budget line by line, programs that don’t work, we cut."

8. Cut the Deficit in Half

"And that's why today I'm pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office. This will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we've long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay -- and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control."

$6 trillion in total deficits later from the Obama administration makes this statement seem pretty ludicrous. Consider the annual Federal government deficits over the past decade or so, as documented on the White House’s own budget website (double click for a larger view):

As you can see from the White House numbers, annual Federal government deficits were actually decreasing during the second half of the Bush administration. They skyrocketed once the Democrats and Obama took office. In fact, during the Obama administration some MONTHLY Federal government budget deficits were larger than some of Bush’s ANNUAL budget deficits.

Thus, this promise of cutting deficit spending in half by Obama is a travesty and his outrageous spending will likely “leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay.”

9. Pledge Not To Raise Taxes on Middle Class

"And I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase – not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital-gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” Another promise severely missed.

Obama raised payroll taxes under the fiscal cliff deal, Obama Care will become the biggest middle class tax increase in decades in many ways, this administration raised cigarette taxes which likely affected the less wealthy in this country since they are more likely to smoke, and the hidden tax of exponentially expanding overregulation in this country is making businesses pass on the cost of regulation to consumers, the most of which are in the middle class.

10. Obama Care Would Lower Healthcare Costs, Reduce Premiums, Keep Your Doctor, etc., etc. This promise is so unfilled it is tough to find a place to start:

• Obama Care is already costing more than two times original estimates that were put forth by Democrats when the legislation was approved.
• Obama Care will add trillions of dollars to our national debt, requiring higher taxes on everyone to pay for it.
• Obama Care is increasing health insurance premiums an average of 30% this year alone.
• Obama Care is causing six in ten doctors to say they will retire early rather than deal with the hassle of the legislation.
• Obama Care is not creating a wealth of new jobs as promised. If anything, Obama Care is suppressing hiring of new employees, suppressing business expansion, and suppressing the hours current employees work each week.
• Obama Care will get result in universal health care coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, that estimated upwards of ten million citizens will still not have health care coverage ten years from now.
• Obama Care will cause about seven million Americans to lose their current health care insurance coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office. This kills another promise of the President who boldly stated that if you like your current health care insurance, you can keep it. Seven million Americans will shortly find out the fallacy of that promise.
• Recently even Congressional supporters of the legislation have openly admitted that Obama Care will be an operational and financial  “train wreck” and that a lot more money is needed if it is ever to get off the ground, far more taxpayer wealth than originally hyped and planned for.

Missing on all cylinders, this mess called Obama Care.

Obscene deficit spending, obscene wasteful spending, obscene taxation oppression, and the disaster that is Obama Care, horrific performance by this administration. Shaping up as one of the worst Presidential administrations ever, with the remaining broken promises being covered tomorrow.

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:

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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

Bonus Post: Eight Days Of Logic and Sanity That Prove No American Should Pay Another Penny In Taxes - Protecting Our Kids and Schools

Over the past eight posts we have gone through an extensive list of why no American, rich or poor, should pay another cent in taxes of the Federal government, given how wasteful, inefficient, and criminally infested most government programs are. Our final post on Friday showed how to reduce our staggering $16 TRILLION national debt by a healthy $9 TRILLION over the next decade or so with minimal pain to most Americans AND no increase in taxes.

Well, we thought that would be our last post in this series, a series that shows how ridiculous, stupid, and divisive President Obama has been in these fiscal cliff negotiations. Yesterday, I came across a website post from the Independent Journal Review that listed out the 22 worst expenditure of taxpayer wealth in 2012 which requires an additional post in this series:

http://www.ijreview.com/2012/12/26278-22-of-the-worst-government-expenditures-of-2012/23/

We have covered many of these atrocious wastes of money in previous posts, based on sound research into other news sources, so I believe that most of these are legitimate, actual wastes of taxpayer wealth from 2012.

I would like to review these 22 instances of waste today with two objectives in mind:

1) Reinforce the proof we laid out over the past week of posts that we need to cut overspending by the Federal government, not raise taxes on any American.

2) Consider what these unneeded expenses could have done to prevent the tragic school shooting in Connecticut.

Thus, the Independent Journal Review’s vote for the worst Federal spending in 2012:

1. Tax loopholes for the National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL) and Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) – professional sports leagues that generate billions of dollars annually in profits pay nothing in Federal income taxes($91 million worth of taxes)
2. Moroccan pottery classes (part of a $27 million grant from U.S. Agency for International Development)
3. Efforts to promote caviar consumption and production ($300,000)
4. The building of a robotic squirrel named “RoboSquirrel”- part of a $325,000 grant from the National Science Foundation
5. Promotion of specialty shampoo and other beauty products for cats and dogs ($505,000)
6. Corporate welfare for the world’s largest snack food producer, PepsiCo Inc. ($1.3 million)
7. Government-funded study on how golfers might benefit from using their imagination, envisioning the hole is bigger than it actually is ($350,000)
8. “Prom Week,” a video game that allows taxpayers to relive prom night ($516,000)
9. Oklahoma’s layover boondoggle, a scarcely used airport in Oklahoma receiving nearly half-a-million in taxpayer dollars only to transfer funds elsewhere in the state ($450,000)
10. The 2012 Alabama Watermelon Queen tour, paid for in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “to promote the consumption of Alabama’s watermelon through appearances of the Alabama Watermelon Queen at various events and locations” ($25,000)
11. Out-of-this-world Martian – $947,000 – NASA is studying what food astronauts could eat on Mars by simulating a Mars outpost at a barren location in Hawaii
12. ObamaPhones’ – $1.5 billion. Enrollment in the Lifeline program has skyrocketed as people sign up to get free cell phone for which they qualify if they are on federal tested programs
13. Speed reading faces – $30,000. NSF funds used to study whether people can determine a person’s sexual orientation with just a glance.
14. Fighting obesity with giant graffiti carrots – $13,000. Anti-obesity funds pay for a giant graffiti mural focused on sustainability.
15. Another bridge to nowhere – $520,000. A covered bridge in Ohio that is not used by cars or tied to any walking or bike trail will be rehabilitated with federal funds
16. Free bus rides for Super Bowl attendees – $142,419. A Department of Transportation grant paid for free bus rides during the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis. Average prices for Super Bowl tickets are around $3,000
17. Movie theater field trip to see “Red Tails” – $57,000. Federal education funds were misused in Texas to send fifth-grade boys to a movie theater to see “Red Tails” (girls were left behind).
18. Self-reflection video game using Henry David Thoreau’s 1845 writings – $40,000. National Endowment for the Humanities funding pays for video game simulating Thoreau’s experience at Walden Pond.
19. U.S. Iraqi police State Department training program burns through hundreds of millions, crashes in flames – $400.2 million. State Dept’s Iraq police training program has failed miserably, according the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. No objectives were created, and classes did not help Iraqis at all. The State Department will hand over to the Iraqis several building projects that ended up being unnecessary
20. The streetcar named No Desire – $35.6 million. Federal transportation money will help build a trolley in St. Louis that has been called the “Streetcar Named No Desire” by one local. It duplicates existing light rail and public transportation, some say.
21. Sidewalks to nowhere anger local citizens – $1.1 million. Department of Transportation funds are used for “sidewalks to nowhere” in Florida and Michigan that have local citizens angered. In Florida, the sidewalk was a “safe route to school” that was still unsafe. In Michigan, Federal requirements forced a county to make sidewalk ramps at an intersection without sidewalks.
22. Congressional salaries total almost $100 million. Seems like they should be able to get something done for that much money? Especially since these people will work only 13 Fridays in 2012 and worked less than three weeks in the three months leading up to the November elections.

These 22 wasteful spending expenses total $2,160,420,419. Let’s do some simple math, in light of the Connecticut school shootings:

• According to the Federal government, there 132,183 private and public schools in this country up through high school. (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84)
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average police officer in this country earns about $55,000 a year.
• If we decided to place an armed, trained police officer in every school in America, the annual cost would be about $7.3 billion a year.
• If we could somehow magically redirect the above wasteful spending away from these trivial expenses to funding protection for our kids in school, we would be able to put a trained, armed police officer in 30% of the nation’s schools. ($7.3 billion in police officer costs divided into the $2.16 billion in spending on the 22 projects/program listed above.)
• Thus, if we could find another 50 or so other, similarly wasteful Federal government spending instances (something that would be extremely easy to do), we could annually put a trained, armed police officer in EVERY U.S. school, without raising taxes on any American.
• Another approach would be to magically redirect the $2.16 billion to protecting 30% of our schools and charge every American household just $.85 a month in taxes to cover the other 70% of schools.
• Still another approach is to consider the fact that the U.S. has needlessly deployed over 130,000 troops in Europe, Japan, and South Korea. Rather than using taxpayer money to defend Seoul, Tokyo, and Paris, maybe it is time to maybe it is time to use that taxpayer money to defend our kids within the confines of this country.

The bottom line is that, as nation, we have the wealth and ability today to more fully protect our kids in their schools without killing any vital Federal program or project, without going through the fruitless and divisive political debate of gun control, and without raising taxes on any American.

We have the ability… but we probably do not have the politicians with the courage to do so. We could have done the same thing after the Columbine school killings, the same types of wasteful spending were going on that year also but the political class did not redirect wasteful spending then either. Unless we decide to hold our politicians’ feet to the fire, our kids will continue to be under protected, the Federal government will continue to spend our tax wealth on totally inane and unnecessary expenditures, and in the coming years when the next maniac goes wild, we will wring our hands and wonder why nothing was done.

If you do not want history to repeat itself, may I suggest you make a call to your politicians and start insisting that we can actually magically redirect wasteful spending to start protecting our kids and stop worrying about what a computer simulation of prom week might look like.

The useless Oklahoma $450,000 airport:

The $520,000 Ohio bridge to nowhere:

The $1.1 million sidewalks to nowhere:

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:

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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w