Just days after President Obama boasts of spending freezes to quell the public uprising over his administration’s breakneck spending spree, he insults the entire nation by introducing a record $3.8 trillion fiscal budget with a projected record breaking $1.56 trillion deficit. To add insult to injury, our own Congressman here in the Fifth District, John Spratt, sends out a press release that may as well have “I’m With Stupid” written at the top accompanied by an arrow pointing to us. He must believe we are to write this tripe and he may very well be correct considering a recent polling of his reelection bid shows that 46% of this district still thinks he should be reelected.
Let’s take his piece by piece.
“Our economy began backsliding into recession in December 2007, one full year before President Obama took office. Within weeks after President Obama was inaugurated, his Administration and Congress approved a large recovery bill to get the economy moving.
A recovery bill that was an epic fail and may have made things incredibly worse by some estimates.
“The Recovery Act added to a deficit already swollen by recession and the Bush Administration’s budgets and bail-outs. But according to the Congressional Budget Office, in the second half of 2009, the Recovery Act raised real GDP by 1.3% to 3.5%.
Tell that to all the people who continue to lose their jobs, particularly those in Chester County where unemployment is in excess of 20%. Also, there is no way I am letting the hypocrisy in that first sentence slide by. Spratt’s right, it was the Bush administration’s bailout, but Spratt voted for the damn thing!
In the last quarter of 2008, the economy shrank by 5.4% and 741,000 workers lost their jobs in January 2009 alone. In the last quarter of 2009, the economy grew by 5.7%, and job losses averaged 69,000 a month.
Job losses in December rose to 85,000 and unemployment held steady at 10%.
“The Obama Administration has realized from the start that it will be impossible to bring the deficit down unless the economy is up. The budget the President is sending Congress today puts a priority on those objectives. It keeps one eye on the economy and the other on the deficit.
He must have a lazy eye because each year that deficit gets larger, breaking the previous Guinness world record.
“We have brought the economy back from the brink, but too many Americans are still feeling the recession and not the recovery, and no one can be satisfied when unemployment nationwide averages 10% and in many places is worse.
Back from the brink? Really? When the hell did that happen and why are companies still laying off thousands?
“The President’s budget keeps an eye on the bottom-line. The deficit is cut by half, from $1.556 trillion in 2010 (10.6% 0f GDP) to $727 billion (4.2% of GDP) in 2013.
Ah yes, he trotted out the ole “we’re going to cut the deficit in half” bull shit, the deficit he and Obama raised through the roof and then they say when it falls back down to $727 billion, which is still incredibly higher than any of Bush’s record deficits, Spratt tries to hoodwink us into thinking he’s doing us a favor. Well, please don’t. Just leave.
The budget continues to bring the deficit down, until it reaches 3.9% of GDP in 2014. The President also proposes a bipartisan fiscal commission to develop proposals to bring the deficit down further.
The commission is only needed because elected officials like John Spratt are too damn incompetent and cowardly to do the job they were elected to do.
“At the same time, the President’s budget funds additional initiatives to spur job creation – such as tax credits for small businesses that hire new workers. And the emphasis is on Main Street rather than Wall Street. The budget freezes non-security discretionary spending overall, but singles out priorities like education for funding increases well above a freeze.
“A three-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending and a bipartisan fiscal commission are concrete commitments on the President’s part to bringing down the deficit, even if additional steps will be needed.
Please, the spending freeze is a joke and I cannot believe the hubris behind this. We’re supposed to believe that the Congress is acting responsibly, despite hiking up the budget deficit to another record high, because they are freezing discretionary spending at a “paltry” $447 billion a year, after they just hiked it up 24% over the past ten months. Why don’t you just kick me in the balls?
“We proved in the 1990s that it is possible to reduce deficits responsibly, but it cannot happen without concerted effort. Later this week, the House of Representatives will take a step in the right direction by voting to reinstate a statutory Pay-As-You-Go system modeled on the rules that helped turn record deficits into record surpluses in the 1990s.
Well, not exactly. The calculation of the so-called Clinton “surplus”, which never existed, ignored intergovernmental holdings, in other words, money the government owes the government, IOUs for Social Security, etc.
“On both the budget and the economy, there are hard choices ahead of us, but the budget sent up by the President today marks one more step toward moving the economy up while bringing the deficit down.”
You’re right about one thing, Bubba, there are hard choices ahead and you sure as hell aren’t willing to make them.
John Spratt is the chairman of the House Budget Committee so if this passes you all know where the buck stops.
