Obama's Spending Record - my thoughts

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303753904577450910257188398.html

I have been reading about Obama’s spending record. What I found so hard is that there is no longer an actual un-biased news source for American’s to trust. Those in favor of Obama will only read left leaning news and those who oppose him will only read right leaning news. I found what I call the most un-biased news sources, and even those two sources disagree on the numbers.

What sparked my interest is that Obama is claiming that spending under his regime has risen at the slowest pace in the last 60 years. A left leaning news source made this claim and apparently Obama took advantage of it to toot his own horn. On the other hand, many right leaning news sources are claiming that his spending is out of control. The GOP jumped on that in a heartbeat. And then, several other news sources took on the challenge of figuring out actual numbers to see if Obama’s or the GOP’s claims were accurate.

In the end, what I found is that no one was able to agree whether some of the massive spending should be accounted to Bush or if it should be accounted to Obama. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), however, lumped the two Presidents together as the two administrations who took spending to new heights. I have to agree that between both of them, spending went out of control. But because one is a Republican and the other a Democrat, everyone wants to blame one or the other, not both. This is also supported by the news media. Since news is no longer unbiased, there is no way to get accurate information. The purpose of the news today is to divide the country into factions in order to continue creating more news. In turn this makes money for the news industry.

In my opinion, the WSJ got it right. We can’t blame just one President. Spending is often attributed to the President, but in actuality, spending bills come from Congress with the President’s approval. Bush, a Republican, was dealing with a Democratic controlled congress. So if Bush overspent, he had Democratic support to do so. Obama, a Democrat, had a Democratic controlled House when he passed Obamacare. This is one of the biggest spending bills of all time, but it is not accounted for yet, because it is just getting started and the spending has not yet begun. He is now dealing with a Republican dominated House. They have fought him all the way as far as spending goes. So he claims to be spending at a lower pace, but the House is actually reigning him in and not “allowing” him to spend more, plus Obamacare spending has not yet begun. There was additional billions requested by Obama that the House never approved. So should he be taking all the credit for not spending too much?

The second item where I think the WSJ gets it right, is that Bush gave out billions in bailout money (the spending obviously attributed to him), but when the funds were paid back, they were attributed to Obama as income against spending. This actually skews the numbers of actual spending. So the accounting of who spent what is not clear at all. Depending on your news source of choice, you will hear nothing more than an opinion of who is doing the spending, it will not be legitimate news. The left leaves out the facts that make the President look bad, while the right leaves out the facts that make him look good.

As I see it, we need to stop trying to figure out who to blame for our problems and get to the business of running the country and solving the problems we have. We also need politicians to stop campaigning by passing laws just to gain votes. And while I’m on that subject, we need politicians to live by the laws they pass, both Congress and the President. They do not participate in Social Security, Obamacare, Pensions for Federal employees, etc. They have systematically exempted themselves from having to suffer like the rest of us every time they make a decision. When was the last time Congress proposed a spending cut that included reducing their salary? They’ve made cuts to the pensions of Federal employees, but they have income FOR LIFE because they “served” our country as congressmen and women. I put the word “served” in quotes, because I believe most of them are “serving” themselves and not the interests of the country. They draw a full salary FOR LIFE even if they only served one term. When I retire after being on the job for 45 years, will I continue drawing the same salary as when I was working? Not at all! I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation for any job, unless you’re in Congress where “realistic” doesn’t really exist.

So let’s get back to solving our problems. We have a spending problem. I don’t care who caused it, I just want it fixed. We have an unemployment problem. Again, I don’t care who’s to blame, make it better. Our economy sucks, get it back on track. What the politicians know is that if they make their constituents happy, they will get re-elected. So they propose bills that give away free stuff as a means to getting there. All that free stuff costs money and contributes to our climbing national debt. What they don’t understand, is that if they made actual lasting changes, such as improving the economy, reducing unemployment, and reducing our spending, they will not only get re-elected, as an added bonus, a thriving economy means tax revenues will also climb, allowing them to spend more money on our actual remaining problems, perpetuating them into a lifelong career.

As a bonus, I found this article written many years ago that talks about the "tax and spend" method for prosperity. Very good reading: http://mises.org/daily/3637/