Thursday, June 11, 2009

Current deficit: at the moment, not Obama's fault



I heard on the news today that Obama’s worst ratings have to do with his (in)ability to curtail the deficit. In reaction to these poll numbers, the man has mentioned that he wants to institute a “pay as you go” policy. That is, he wants to either cut spending or raise taxes to pay for government programs in order to curtail our growing deficit; a policy that was in place when Clinton (the democrats) ran the executive branch and Gingrich (the republicans, at a time when they still seemed to have a brain cell to share amongst them; that is, they were fiscally responsible without being overly religiously fanatical) ran the legislative branch of our schizoid government. The policy, coupled with the mix of nuts running the place at the time, did result in a balanced budget and even in a surplus!

Granted, Obama seems to have big government projects in the works that if implemented will, probably, cost a lot of money. But let’s face it, this deficit we are talking about, and for which the people polled blame Obama, is purely the result of a government of the republicans, by the republicans, and for the republicans--- actually of and by the republicans, but for all of us to pay and keep paying for...

This current national deficit reached its zenith under the eight years of the Cheney, I mean, Bush administration. “Pay as you go” was left by the wayside in order to cut taxes. And as we were cutting taxes, we started spending more on Medicare and other types of social programs. In addition to more social expenditures, we also got ourselves embroiled in two seemingly eternal neo-crusades, I mean, wars. We, under the Cheney, I mean, Bush administration, did all this with no plans on how to pay for all this fun: the exact opposite of the “pay as you go” policy of the Clinton-Gingrich era.

Obama might be made of the same stuff that the ol’ big spending type democrats that America loves to love and hate are made of; but regardless of future expenditures and future deficits, the current ones, the ones that are impacting the poll ratings of our seated president, are most definitely not of his doing.

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