Obama’s Tall Fiscal Tales
Barack Obama continues to peddle the myth that he has been the most fiscally responsible president since World War II. The facts, however, are stubbornly against him. Meanwhile, Wes Pruden explores the “bigotry” of opposing Obama, the president explains what a nasty campaign he’s going to run, and some hateful leftists have messages for our Armed Forces for Memorial Day. Thank goodness we can finish it off with some humor.
The Foundation
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” –John Adams
Editorial Exegesis
“Mitt Romney ‘warned about a “prairie fire of debt.” That’s what he said,’ Mr. Obama said on the Des Moines fairgrounds on Thursday, as if he couldn’t believe it either. … ‘What my opponent didn’t tell you was that federal spending since I took office has risen at the slowest pace of any President in almost 60 years.’ … [P]ress secretary Jay Carney chimed in [saying] … to White House reporters that they should not ‘buy into the B.S. that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this Administration….’ Mr. Carney the media critic deeply sourced his view to someone named Rex Nutting, who wrote an 856-word column for MarketWatch that argued ‘There has been no huge increase in spending under the current President, despite what you hear.’ … His accounting methods are, er, unusual. Mr. Nutting claims that Mr. Obama is only responsible for $140 billion worth of spending in his hyperactivist first year in office because … the fiscal year technically begins on October 1, 2009. Therefore he says Mr. Obama had no control over the budget, though in February 2009 he did famously manage to pass an $800 billion stimulus that was supposed to be a one-time deal. Mr. Nutting then measures Mr. Obama’s spending growth rate against an inflated 2009 baseline that includes the spending Mr. Obama caused but which he attributes to Mr. Bush. … The larger conceptual error of the Nutting-Obama-Carney troika is neglecting to compare the budget to the size of the economy. The best perspective on how outlays, tax receipts and deficits change over time is as a share of GDP. … Prior to Mr. Obama, the U.S. had not spent more than 23.5% of GDP … since the end of World War II. Yet Mr. Obama has managed to exceed that four years in a row: 25.2% in 2009, 24.1% in 2010 and 2011, and an estimated 24.3% in 2012, up from a range between 18%-21% from 1994-2008. … As for that prairie fire of debt, Mr. Obama can fairly blame $1 trillion or so of the $5 trillion debt increase of the last four years on Mr. Bush. But what about the other $4 trillion? Debt held by the public now stands at 74.2% of the economy, up from 40.5% at the end of 2008 — and rising rapidly.” —The Wall Street Journal
Essential Liberty
“The Origination Clause in Article I, Section 7 states: ‘All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.’ … The Founding Fathers required revenue measures to originate in the House because they wanted this authority to belong to the legislative body closest to the people. … Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has taken to thumbing his nose at this clear mandate. Recently, he publicly dismissed the Origination Clause as a ‘hyper-technical budget issue,’ raised by his Republican opponents as ‘a fig leaf to hide their blatant obstruction.’ … One unnamed Senate staffer even speculated that the House’s fealty to the Constitution ‘may be part of some Republican plan.’ … Liberal Senate leaders, it seems, are determined to do what they want when they want to do it, Constitution or no Constitution. … One of the chief operational principles of the current Senate seems to be, to paraphrase that famous line from Treasure of the Sierra Madre: ‘Constitution? We don’t need no stinking Constitution!’ That’s one more reason why the tea-party movement remains politically relevant more than three years after its birth.” —Heritage Foundation’s Michael G. Franc
Upright
“Barack Obama and his friends in the mainstream media, so called, can’t believe that anyone could vote against someone as wonderful as he is (and they are). Only a bigot would vote against such a wonderful president. … Sixteen states have offered Democratic voters an alternative to Barack Obama, either an actual candidate, ‘Uncommitted,’ or an opportunity to write in someone’s name. So far 15 percent of those Democratic voters have done so. In five states where there has been an actual opponent, 27 percent voted against the president. In New Hampshire, 1 Democrat in 10 wrote in an alternative. Twenty percent of North Carolina Democrats voted for ‘Uncommitted.’ That’s a lot of ‘bigots.'” –Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden ……MORE HERE
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