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AMERICA CAN NO LONGER AFFORD BARACK OBAMA |
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Written by Sarah Palin
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Thursday, 27 January 2011 |
The President's State of the Union address boiled down to this message: "The
era of big government is here as long as I am, so help me pay for it." He
dubbed it a "Winning The Future" speech, but the title's acronym - WTF - seemed more accurate than much of the
content.
Americans are growing impatient with a White House that still just doesn't
get it.
The President proves he doesn't understand that the biggest challenge facing
our economy is today's runaway debt when he states we want to make sure "we
don't get buried under a mountain a debt." That's the problem! We are
buried under Mt. McKinley-sized debt.
It's at the heart of what is crippling our economy and taking our jobs. This
is the concern that should be on every leader's mind. Our country's future is
at stake, and we're rapidly reaching a crisis point. Our government is spending
too much, borrowing too much, and growing too much. Debt is stifling our
private sector growth, and millions of Americans are desperately looking for
work.
So, what was the President's response? At a time when we need quick,
decisive, and meaningful action to stop our looming debt crisis, President
Obama gave us what politicians have for years: promises that more federal
government "investment" (read: more government spending) is the solution.
He couched his proposals to grow government and increase spending in the
language of "national greatness." This seems to be the Obama administration's
version of American Exceptionalism - an "exceptionally big government," in
which a centralized government declares that we shall be great and innovative
and competitive, not by individual initiative, but by government decree.
Where once he used words like "hope" and "change," the President may now
talk about "innovation" and "competition"; but the audacity of his recycled
rhetoric no longer inspires hope.
Real leadership is more than just words; it's deeds. The President's deeds
don't lend confidence that we can trust his words spoken Tuesday (1/25) night.
In the past, he promised us he'd make job creation his number one priority,
while also cutting the deficit, eliminating waste, easing foreclosures in the
housing markets, and making "tough decisions about opening new offshore areas
for oil and gas development."
What did we get? A record $1.5
trillion deficit, an 84% increase in federal spending, a trillion dollar
stimulus that stimulated nothing but more Tea Party activism, 9+% unemployment
(or 17% percent if you include those who have stopped looking for work or
settled for part time jobs), 2.9 million home foreclosures last year, and a
moratorium on offshore drilling that has led to more unemployment and $100
dollar a barrel oil.
The President glossed over the most important issue he needed to address: spending.
He touched on deficit reduction, but his proposals amount to merely a
quarter of the cuts in discretionary spending proposed by his own Deficit
Reduction Commission, not to mention the $2.5
trillion in cuts over ten years suggested by the Republican Study
Committee.
And while we appreciate hearing the same President who gave us the trillion
dollar Stimulus Package boondoggle finally concede that we need to cut
earmarks, keep in mind that earmarks are a $16
billion drop in the $1.5 trillion ocean that is the federal deficit.
Budget cuts won't be popular, but they are vitally necessary or we will soon
be a bankrupt country. It's the responsibility of a leader to make sure the
American people fully understand this.
As it is, the American people should fully understand that when the President talks about
increased "investments" he's talking about increased government spending.
Cut away the rhetoric and you'll also see that the White House's real message on economic reform wasn't one of
substantial spending cuts, but of tax increases.
When the President talks about simplifying the tax code, he's made it clear
that he's not looking to cut your taxes; he's looking for additional tax
revenue from you. The tax "simplification" suggested by the President's Deficit
Reduction Commission would end up raising taxes by $1 trillion over the next
decade.
So, instead of bringing spending down in line with revenue, the President
wants to raise our taxes to pay for his massive spending increases. It's tax
and spend in reverse: spend first, tax later.
And the Obama administration has a lot of half-baked ideas on where to spend
our hard-earned money in pursuit of "national greatness." These "investments,"
as the President calls them, include everything from solar shingles to high
speed trains. As we struggle to service our unsustainable debt, the only thing these "investments" will get
us is a bullet train to bankruptcy.
With credit ratings agency Moody's warning us that the federal government must
reverse the rapid growth of national debt or face losing our triple-A rating,
keep in mind that a nation doesn't look so "great" when its credit rating is in
tatters.
Of course, it's nice to give a speech calling for "investment" and
"competition" in order to reach greatness. It's quite another thing to advocate
and implement policies that truly encourage such things. Growing the federal
government is not the answer.
Take education for example. It's easy to declare the need for better
education, but will throwing even more money at the issue really help? As the
Cato Institute's Michael Tanner notes,
"the federal government has increased education spending by 188 percent in real
terms since 1970 without seeing any substantial improvement in test scores."
If you want "innovation" and "competition," then support school choice
initiatives and less federal control over our state and local districts.
When it comes to energy issues, we heard more vague promises last night as
the President's rhetoric suggested an all-of-the-above solution to meeting our
country's energy needs. But again, his actions point in a different direction.
He offers a vision of a future powered by what he refers to as "clean
energy," but how we will get there from here remains a mystery. In the
meantime, he continues to stymie the responsible development of our own
abundant conventional energy resources - the stuff we actually use right now to
fuel our economy.
His continued hostility towards domestic drilling means hundreds of
thousands of well-paying jobs will not be created and millions of Americans
will end up paying more at the pump. It also means we'll continue to transfer
hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars to foreign regimes that don't have America's
interests at heart.
On the crucial issue of entitlement reform, the President offered
nothing. This is shocking, because as he himself explained
back in April 2009, "if we want to get serious about fiscal discipline...we
will have to get serious about entitlement reform."
Even though the Medicare Trust Fund will run out of funds a mere six years
from now, and the Social Security Trust Fund is filled mainly with IOUs, the
President opted to kick the can down the road yet again. And once again, he was disingenuous when he
suggested that meaningful reform would automatically expose people's Social
Security savings to a possible stock market crash.
As Rep. Paul Ryan showed in his proposed Roadmap, and others have explained,
it's possible to come up with meaningful reform proposals that tackle projected
shortfalls and offer workers more options to invest our own savings while still
guaranteeing invested funds so they won't fall victim to sudden swings in the
stock market.
And what about that crucial issue confronting so many Americans who are
struggling today - the lack of jobs? The President came to office promising
that his massive, multi-trillion dollar spending programs would keep
unemployment below 8%; but the lack of meaningful, pro-free market reforms in
yesterday's speech means his legacy will almost certainly be four years of
above 8% unemployment, regardless of how much he increases federal spending (or
perhaps I should say because of how much he's increased it).
Perhaps the most nonsensical bit of double-speak we heard Tuesday night was
when the President said that hitting job-creators with a tax increase isn't
"punishing their success. It's about promoting America's
success."
But government taking more money from the small business entrepreneurs who
create up to 70% of all jobs in this country is not "promoting America's
success." It's a disincentive that will result in less job creation. It is, in
fact, punishing the success of the very people who created the innovation that
the President has supposedly been praising.
Despite the flowery rhetoric, the
President doesn't seem to understand that individuals make America great, not the federal government.
American greatness lies in the courage and hard work of individual
innovators and entrepreneurs. America
is an exceptional nation in part because we have historically been a country
that rewards and affirms individual initiative and offers people the freedom to
invest and create as they see fit - not as a government bureaucrat does.
Yes, government can play an appropriate role in our free market by ensuring
a level playing field to encourage honest competition without picking winners
and losers. But by and large, government should get out of the way.
Unfortunately, under President Obama's leadership, government growth is in our
way, and his "big government greatness" will not help matters.
Consider what his "big government greatness" really amounts to. It's
basically a corporatist agenda - it's
the collaboration between big government and the big businesses that have
powerful friends in D.C. and can afford to hire big lobbyists.
This collaboration works in a manner that distorts and corrupts true free
market capitalism. This isn't just old-fashioned big government liberalism; this is crony capitalism on steroids.
In the interests of big business, we're "investing" in technologies and
industries that venture capitalists tell us are non-starters, but which will
provide lucrative returns for some corporate interests who have major investments
in these areas.
In the interests of big government, we're not reducing the size of our
bloated government or cutting spending, we're told the President will freeze it
- at unsustainable, historic levels!
In practice, this means that public sector employees (big government's
staunchest defenders) may not lose jobs, but millions of Americans in the
private sector face lay offs because the ever-expanding government has squeezed
out and crippled our economy under the weight of unsustainable debt.
Ronald Reagan said, "You can't be for big government, big taxes, and big
bureaucracy and still be for the little guy." President Obama's proposals last
night stick the little guy with the bill, while big government and its big
corporate partners prosper.
The plain truth is our country simply cannot afford Barack Obama's dream of
an "exceptionally big government" that may help the big guys, but sticks it to
the rest of us.
Sarah Palin
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