The anti-intellectualism that is all too common in politics peaked last November with the election of Barack Obama. Those who didn’t want to think – study – learn about Obama’s views on issues like the economy, tax policy, health care or school reform, or the very messy and complicated arena of foreign policy – preferred to just emote and vote for the cool guy.
Sadly, even many folks who support limited government, free markets, traditional values, and personal responsibility set aside their reasoning powers and also voted for the cool guy. Undoubtedly, many of them are now wondering if their feelings led them astray.
If voters in their teens, twenties, and thirties, haven’t figured it out yet, this cool guy is going to cost them a lot of their hard earned dollars in the years to come. If their young minds have learned non-complicated things like borrowed money must eventually be repaid – then I’m assuming they’ll soon be joining the Republican Party in droves and signing up to receive email updates from the campaign of Bobby Jindal.
The Obama Administration is spending money these youngsters won’t be able to spend themselves. Instead of being able to afford a larger car or mortgage payment – or vacation – they will be paying down the debt incurred during the “Obama Revolution.”
Republican U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg, who almost took the Commerce job in the Obama Administration, said this yesterday:
“The practical implications of [the Obama budget] is bankruptcy for the United States. There’s no other way around it. If we maintain the proposals which are in this budget over the 10-year period that this budget covers, this country will go bankrupt. People will not buy our debt; our dollar will become devalued”
Earlier this month, Michael Boskin wrote this in the Wall Street Journal:
“Mr. Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents – from George Washington to George W. Bush – combined… And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.”
On National Review’s Corner Blog Mark Steyn commented on Boskin’s words:
“What emerges from such a blueprint will not be America. The United States will survive as a geographical designation, a collection of zip codes, but what goes on within them will be a Euro-Canadian form of societal arrangement…
[I]f your objective is fundamentally to transform the relationship between the citizen and the state, it all makes perfect sense.”
Steyn attempts to set straight anyone who thinks that all of the opposition to this will be in a negative direction:
“My worry is…that when people turn against the government, it’s usually because they’re banging on the door … saying why don’t you guys do more for me? In other words, they’re saying a $3.7 trillion dollar package isn’t enough, we need a $20 trillion dollar package. So I’m a bit worried that when this public dissatisfaction with Obama starts, a big chunk of it will be from people who are actually demanding even bigger and even more Europeanized solutions to these things.
Obama’s priority is not the restoration of the economy but, as he says, ‘the remaking of America.'”
Reports are that President Obama’s proposed budget would produce yearly deficits of almost $1 a trillion a year for the next decade. That’s almost four times as large as those that were run-up by President George W. Bush. Ah yes, change we can believe in.
Even the president’s own budget chief admits it’s “unsustainable.” Economist Mark Zandi uses the word “unsupportable.”
Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner had this to say:
“We simply cannot continue to mortgage our children and grandchildren’s future to pay for bigger and more costly government.”
I personally like Michelle Malkin’s phrase “generational theft.”
Obama’s budget is, to put it mildly, insane. Here’s a simple math fact. In order to pay down debt, you have to have higher revenues than expenditures. It’s doubtful an economy staggering under the weight of oppressive tax rates will ever produce the kind of growth rates necessary to avoid – yep – cuts in government spending.
Cutting the size of government is not an option. Returning to limited government is the only way the rising generation will be able to enjoy a rising standard of living.
Are Republicans ready to win public support for the necessary cuts? Nope. But let’s hope they will be soon.
