Buffeted by Obama

President Obama has decided that the “Buffet Rule” and the issue of “fairness,” coupled with the mythical GOP “war on women” will somehow keep the broader electorate from recognizing that:

• he continues to propose 1 trillion dollars in deficit spending (oops, I mean “investment”) per year;


• his management of the economy has resulted in the weakest post-recession recovery in U.S history;


• the dismal unemployment rate of 8.2 percent is actually an optimistic assessment because millions of the unemployed have simply stopped looking for work and are (conveniently) not counted in the rate;


• our overall indebtedness as a nation is now 100% of GDP, putting us in the same indebtedness category as Greece;


• the non partisan CBO has noted that if the USA continues on Obama’s spending trajectory, our ability to service our debt will cease in 2027;


• his own party is either unable or incapable of proposing their own budget and that his proposal was so bad that it was rejected in the House by a vote= of 437 – 0 (not a single Democrat voted in favor of it).

And that’s just the tip of the domestic iceberg, but no matter. The President will, as all good lawyers do, change the subject when his argument (i.e., his record) is weak.

But let's return to Obama’s big-idea, his signature piece of "tax reform" legislation—The Buffet Rule. In his own words, the President stated, it "will help us close our deficit."

Mark Steyn comments:

A-hem. According to the Congressional Budget Office (the same nonpartisan bean counters who project that on Obama's current spending proposals the entire U.S. economy will cease to exist in 2027) Obama's Buffett Rule will raise – stand well back – $3.2 billion per year [recall that under Obama our yearly deficit is $1 trillion per year]. Or what the United States government currently borrows every 17 hours. So in 514 years it will have raised enough additional revenue to pay off the 2011 federal budget deficit. If you want to mark it on your calendar, 514 years is the year 2526.

Does President Obama really think that the Buffet Rule will help reduce the deficit in any meaningful way? If he does, he is economically illiterate. If he does not, then he has no problem misleading the American public.

The sad reality is that President Obama had two years with overwhelming congressional majorities. He could have passed tax reform, he could have developed meaningful measures that would have reduced our deficit, he could have reformed our entitlements. Instead, he cobbled together 2700 pages of Obamacare and forced it through Congress in a partisan manner. The result—70 percent disapproval among the public and a constitutional challenge that will likely be upheld by the Supreme Court.

So today, with no meaningful accomplishments, the President falls back on obfuscation and divisive rhetoric. He hopes that by demonizing the rich he will somehow cause people to forget his failures. If it works, he’ll be re-elected.

Again, Mark Steyn offers a few dark comments:

Sometimes societies become too stupid to survive. A nation that takes Barack Obama's current rhetorical flourishes seriously is certainly well advanced along that dismal path. The current federal debt burden works out at about $140,000 per federal taxpayer, and President Obama is proposing to increase both debt and taxes. Are you one of those taxpayers? How much more do you want added to your $140,000 debt burden? As the Great Magician would say, pick a number, any number. Sorry, you're wrong. Whatever you're willing to bear, he's got more lined up for you.

Since the President is so, so concerned about “fairness,” one can only wonder how he thinks that $140,000 of debt dumped on every one of his constituent taxpayers is in any way “fair.” Then again, as my dad used to say, “Life’s not fair, get used to it.”