We Must Stop it Now

Member Group : Jerry Shenk

Four years ago, American voters elected as president a man who offered "Hope and Change," but no specific plans for America. Barack Obama’s campaign vagueness created a blank canvas upon which voters who suffered Bush fatigue, were weary of two distant wars or harbored doubts about the Republican nominee were able to project their individual hopes for change.

But, there was much that didn’t change. Bush-era policies which Obama disparaged during the 2008 campaign survived his inauguration, and some were expanded. Though Obama promised to close it, the Guantanamo prison base remains open. Obama continued the war in Iraq and expanded the war in Afghanistan. He also committed acts of war in Libya and Pakistan, and has placed American troops in Jordan on Syria’s border – all without congressional authorization.

Indeed, there have been many changes in the past four years. Arguably the only positive change is that Obama now has a record upon which American voters can base rational 2012 decisions.

Oddly, Obama has refused to run for reelection on his first term record, and he has offered no plan to change anything over the next four years.

Characteristically refusing to accept any personal responsibility, Obama, the campaigner, blames Republican congressional obstructionism for America’s problems, but he ignores 2009–2010 — years not among America’s finest periods of governance — when the president worked his will with a Democrat-controlled Congress. Obama signed a huge, poorly-crafted, failed stimulus bill. He and his congressional henchmen abused the legislative process and bought off special interests to pass an expensive, intrusive, unpopular health-care bill. And he signed an enormous, complex financial reform bill which has created so much uncertainty in markets and among employers that businesses are afraid to commit assets and hire workers. Obama’s policies generated public blowback — the 2010 wave election in which Democrats lost the House of Representatives and a portion of their Senate majority. Thank goodness for obstructionism! Their 2009-2010 record was predictive of the damage Washington Democrats would have done without effective opposition.

President Obama’s throwback, 1930s Keynesian economic schemes have put America through the worst recovery from a recession since the Great Depression. The Joint Economic Committee recently issued a report revealing that, of ten post-WWII recoveries, the Obama recovery ranks tenth for both jobs and economic growth. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that real GDP has expanded only 6.7 percent since the recession ended in June 2009. At the same stage, the Reagan recovery experienced 17.6 percent GDP growth, and the Clinton recovery 8.7 percent.

The American people are much poorer now because of Obama’s policies, and will remain poorer, falling farther behind, unless and until we change course and restore traditional American prosperity.

In June, candidate-for-reelection Obama said to a campaign audience: ""Yes, foreign policy matters. Social issues matter. But more than anything else, this election presents a choice between two fundamentally different visions of how to create strong, sustained growth."

Obama is right – and he’s wrong. The key to the election is economic vision and the means of enabling growth, but Obama is wrong about his vision for achieving it.

Under Barack Obama, the national debt has soared by $6 trillion, more than $1 trillion in deficits annually. If the Lebanon Daily News were to remove its masthead, its news, sports and features content, all of the ads and the classifieds, and print nothing but "periods" for a year……………….there wouldn’t be the space in twelve months of editions to print one "period" for each dollar borrowed by the Obama administration during that time. Think of it: America must repay more than $16 trillion dollars before we can declare ourselves broke, but Obama’s only "plan" is to continue to borrow and spend more.

We have six grandkids and three great-grandchildren. One day, perhaps, they will all have children of their own. The national debt with which they and their children have been saddled – years, decades – before they’ve begun to work and pay taxes, constitutes generational theft on a massive scale.

In the second presidential debate, Obama spoke of a "moral obligation" to the next generation. How dare he? How dare a man who has committed grand larceny on young and unborn Americans speak of morality?

In a second term, Barack Obama intends to continue picking our grandkids’ pockets and mortgaging their futures. Responsible voters simply cannot allow it to go on.