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Jewish World Review Dec. 6, 2010/ 30 Kislev, 5771 The ‘Unexpected’ Consequences of Progressivism By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In the Congressional circus surrounding tax cuts, Democrats are still playing the class-warfare game, insisting that maintaining the Bush tax cuts for everyone, including the "evil" rich such cuts would "devastate" the federal budget. Perhaps it would--in terms of what the fed's slice of the fiscal pie is currently. But here's some perspective: The last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, submitted his final budget in 2000 for the 2001 fiscal year. It was $1.9 trillion. The 2011 federal budget submitted by Barack Obama? $3.8 trillion. In other words, federal spending has doubled in ten years.
Question for my fellow Americans: has your income doubled in the last ten years? Or perhaps more to the point, has everyone who pays taxes doubled their income? Perhaps such an economic analysis is over-simplistic, but it stands to reason if one's individual expenses have doubled, one would need substantially more income to afford such an increase--unless one borrows the money.
In fairness, on both a personal and national level, there are such things as unforeseen expenses: if one's house burns down, or one is inflicted with a major illness, one's expenses would go up without the commensurate increase in income. When America was attacked on 9/11, it was reasonable to assume that expenses would increase on the federal level as well, without having all the funds necessary to pay for them.
But who's kidding whom? Federal spending relative to Gross National Product is at its highest level since WWll, and despite all the obfuscation by Democrats, the additional outlays are not only failing to "stimulate" the economy, they are literally bankrupting the nation. Just as annoying is the level of willful ignorance demonstrated by progressives and their media enablers, which can be summed up by the one word they use over and over again to explain the "majesty" of Obamanomics:
Unexpected.
The failure of the stimulus package was "unexpected." Last week's lousy jobs report was "unexpected" The failure of Recovery Summer was "unexpected." The weak recovery in general is "unexpected," etc., etc. ad nauseam.
Such results are only unexpected if one is either economically illiterate, or ideologically rigid to the point of blindness. Democrats are two-for-two. How else can one explain a party which just got their hats handed to them on November 2nd, re-electing one of the prime architects of that shellacking, Nancy Pelosi, to her position as leader of their party in the House? For Americans who don't understand the symbolic nature of such a move let me spell it out: the public spoke loud and clear--and we Democrats don't give a damn about what you said.
And the lamest lame duck Congress, along with an equally clueless Obama administration couldn't make it clearer if they tried. A recent Gallup poll showed Americans think unemployment and the economy in general are the two most important issues facing the country today. A recent CBS News poll showed that Americans prefer cutting government services over raising taxes by a two-to-one margin.
How have Democrats responded? By proposing an end to "Dont Ask Don't Tell" for the military. By submitting four different versions of the DREAM Act in their latest attempt to grant millions of illegal aliens amnesty. By granting waivers from ObamaCare for "special" companies, including unions who supported the bill. By instituting a seven-year ban on off-shore drilling for oil. By engaging in quantitative easing (QE2), a "backdoor" stimulus plan endangering our currency, condemned by every other nation in the world. By ramping up deficit spending to a level that made the irresponsible spending of Republicans they replaced look chintzy by comparison.
And by holding an entire country hostage on tax cuts in order to vilify the "evil" rich--who are, far more accurately, exactly the kind of small business owners this country needs to help pull us out of our economic malaise.
Bottom line: this nation needs jobs. Every other consideration pales by comparison, and yet these ideological martinets refuse to let go of their agenda, even as the sun is sinking on their progressive universe. In fact, their only response to this crisis is to insist that unemployment benefits be extended past the already breath-taking span of 99 weeks--because failure to do so will affect up to three million unemployed Americans. Americans who remain unemployed due to a Congress and Obama administration which fiddled with a health care bill for over a year-and-a-half while the economy was still burning to the ground. Even now Democrats want to do the extension--as in spending more money we don't have--without making any offsetting cuts to the deficit.
How are they framing the issue? The inimitable Ms. Pelosi: "Unemployment insurance, the economists tell us, returns $2 for every dollar that is put out there. People need the money. They spend it immediately for necessities. It injects demand into the economy. It helps reduce the deficit."
Think about the level of stupidity embodied in that quote. And it is awesomely stupid, when one takes it to a maximum extrapolation. If what Ms. Pelosi contends were truly the case, wouldn't it make sense to put every American on unemployment insurance? According to the Speaker of the House, that would literally double our Gross National Product. A let's not forget the additional "upside:" no one would have to work.
Perhaps such progressive insanity would be understandable if it was occurring in a vacuum. But it is not. Europe, further down the same progressivist road the Democratic party wants the United States to travel, is one country away (Spain) from fiscal chaos, and a continent far more used to a bottomless government gravy train--which has run out of gravy--is exploding. So why do Democrats insist on emulating them? Americans need reminding that behind the progressive ideology which animates the likes of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, et al, is a level of conceit and arrogance of almost unimaginable scope. It is a conceit and arrogance which can gaze at the historically consistent failure of state-run economies and ignore every reason for those failures except one:
The wrong people were in charge.
For most Americans, January can't come fast enough. That is when arguably one of the sorriest Congresses in the history of the nation will have their majority power blunted in one chamber. Yet I suspect for equal or greater numbers of Americans, January 2012 can't come fast enough. It is then we will know for certain whether this last election was the "temper tantrum" progressives so desperately want to believe it was, or the beginning of the long slog back to national sanity.
That election is when our national character will truly reveal itself. Will we be a nation where people consider nearly two years of unemployment benefits insufficient, or one which understands the soul-destroying nature of those who consider such benefits "income?" Will we be a nation that promotes success, or one which continues to stoke class envy? Will we be a nation which gives those contemptuous of American traditions, culture and prosperity yet another election cycle to inflict their leftist ideology on an overwhelmingly center-right country, or send them back into the minority status they have so richly earned?
No one can predict the future. But those of us who saw through the facade of hope and change had a reasonably good idea of what was to come. Unfortunately for America, we were not disappointed. Yet it is worth remembering that the election of Barack Obama was extremely enhanced by the nomination of John McCain. In 2008, many Americans saw only one thing: a choice between an old liberal and young one. When McCain proved utterly incapable of articulating any serious ideological differences between himself and Obama, America went with youth. Two years later many of those same American felt foolish and sorry.
Here's hoping they can sustain those feelings for two more years.
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© 2010, Arnold Ahlert |
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