Coauthored with Randy DeSoto
If the past four years were a first date with Obama, would you agree to a second date?
To hear him lately, he sounds like a guy standing on a woman’s steps at the end of what has been a disastrous night. Because the would-be Casanova didn’t take the time to do a little research, he chose an overpriced restaurant with poor service and bad food. During the dinner he picked out an expensive, but crappy wine that is sure to leave his date with a hangover. His best accomplishment, a complex bouquet, turned out to conflict with her allergies, and she had to toss them out. When the waiter shows up asking if they’d like coffee or dessert, she intervenes, knowing far too much money has already been spent on the interminable date. She could brew herself a cup of tea at home.
Eventually, the bill shows up and he reaches into his wallet pulling out some bills, but doesn’t have enough money to pay for the meal. So he asks her to pay for nearly half of the bill, which she does on her already stretched-thin credit card. They arrive at her steps and he’s talking about himself (again) and the good time he showed her: the leisurely service gave them time to chat, and her paying for almost half the meal on credit was an investment in their future.
Still, no apology or plan about how things will be better the next time out.
The once-again wooing President Obama is nearing the end of his first date with America, and he’s now making the hard sell for the second. Just a few days ago, he told the leaders at the G8 Summit how wonderful his time in office has been for America. We “worked to get our own fiscal house in order in a responsible way. And through it all, even as we worked to stabilize the financial sector and bring down our deficits and debt over the longer term, we stayed focused on growing the economy and creating jobs in the immediate term.”
What first date was he on?!! “We worked to get our fiscal house in order in a responsible way…” When Obama took office, we had under $10 trillion in debt, now we have over $15 trillion and will reach $16 trillion by the end of the year. Under his watch we will have experienced unprecedented $1 trillion plus deficits for all four years. The federal budget when Barack Obama took office was just over $3.1 trillion, and has now reached $3.7 trillion. The President's signature "accomplishment" is the convoluted, multi-trillion dollar new entitlement Obamacare, which the Supreme Court will likely toss out as unconstitutional next month (well, here's hoping anyway.)
The former head of his Council of Economic Advisors, Austan Goolsbee, admitted on Fox News Sunday last weekend as much as half of the current deficits are Barack Obama’s and the Democrats’ alone. Only the intervention of the Republican House brought spending down slightly this past fiscal year (no dessert and coffee thank you) (but a little bit of home-brewed “Tea”).
Barack Obama, unlike the Republican House, offers no plan of how to deal with the enormous deficits and most specifically entitlements, which make up over half of all federal spending. In fact our current federal revenues do not even cover the entitlement programs and interest on the national debt alone. We are borrowing over 40 cents of every dollar spent by the government. So payment for our national defense, road construction, our 2.8 million plus non-military federal employees and their benefits and a myriad of other departments and programs is all with borrowed money from China and other lenders, kicking the can down the road for Americans to pay back in the future.
If Barack Obama had done a little research he could have discovered that stimulus spending does not get economies moving again. He would have discovered what does work is what Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy, and Calvin Coolidge implemented: control government spending and cut tax rates across the board. Each instance resulted in 5 percent plus growth and millions of new jobs, and ultimately higher revenues to the Treasury.
By contrast, when President Obama signed the $800 billion Stimulus Bill, he promised that unemployment would not go over 8 percent. It went to 10 percent and has not been under 8 percent for the past 3 years and 3 months. At this point in the Reagan recovery, unemployment had fallen to 7.2 percent from a high of 10.8 percent, on its way to under 5 percent. Reagan’s economy was creating over 360,000 jobs per month, while Obama’s struggles to create 100,000 and tens of millions of Americans have given up looking for work at all. In total, the Reagan economy added over 17 million jobs (4 million in the year 1984 alone).
When Reagan was standing on the steps after his “first date” asking America for a second, she was more than pleased to say yes (a landslide victory winning 49 of 50 states). Regardless of how Barack Obama tries to spin it, the first date was a disaster! He offers no remorse or apologies for it or his plans for how to make the second one any better.
America, if she’s smart, will let him know, “Thanks, but no thanks.” She deserves much better.
Randy DeSoto is freelance writer and media consultant, and Hadley Heath is a policy analyst at the Independent Women's Forum.