An excerpt from a recent post by Tim Phillips:
The federal government’s spending has more than doubled since 2000. Federal debt has increased $6 trillion since President Obama was elected. With spending racing forward at such a rate it is no wonder that scandals, unaccountability and cronyism are so voluminous. Barely days into his first term, the President pushed the largest single “stimulus” bill in American history. Almost $1 trillion was wasted in the most profligate government spending gusher ever passed into law.
President Obama ran on the notion that government must be large to solve our nation’s problems– to make life better. We were told that through big spending programs like the stimulus, TARP and other bailouts, we would get the economy moving again. Instead, the private sector languishes while government continues to grow. It’s also worth noting that presidents from both parties tend to grow government; in fact, under the Bush Administration spending and the size of government grew massively. Democrats may be worse offenders on the government spending front but Republicans failed when they had the opportunity to rein in the federal government from 2001 through 2006.
The result of these efforts isn’t an agile, effective government. It’s a government constrained by its own size, weighed down by layers and layers of bureaucracy that choke off private job creation and bring more cronyism and more waste. Obama’s promise has fallen flat: life is certainly not better for most people in America. Big government hasn’t solved our problems, it’s created different ones.
