Change?

Didn’t Barack Obama trumpet ‘change you can believe in’ a few months ago?

We’ve seen his first budget, and there’s no change. There’s a quadrupling of the deficit. If you believe that deficit spending can go on forever and that no one will ever have to pay the piper, read no further. You and I don’t and won’t  agree.

If, on the other hand, you think that uncontrolled deficit spending is a highway to the hell of economic collapse, did you wonder why Obama insists on shovelling more money into “global warming?”  Why can’t “global warming” wait a few years until the politicians are done bailing out the banks, the auto makers, and everyone else except you and I? It can’t wait because Obama is in hock to Gang Green.

Why doesn’t the President freeze wages for all federal employees until the current economic crisis eases? State employees and those of us who still work in private industry are dealing with wage freezes, pay cuts, and loss of benefits - assuming we’re lucky to still be employed. Why hasn’t the President called for federal workers to share the pain?  How much money would the country save?  If the government workers don’t like a pay freeze, let them quit their jobs and join the five million unemployed Americans who’ll be glad to compete for a wage-frozen government gig. Why won’t it happen?  Obama’s in hock to government workers’ unions.

Where’s a sense of national economic priorities? Where are  the cutbacks to NASA?  Why is it more important to land go-karts on the surface of Mars than it is to balance the federal budget? Where does it say that a rocket scientist has a lifetime job?

Where is the logic behind Obama’s tax cuts? America’s deep in a financial hole. Long-term, that hole is going to swallow us. Where’s the common sense in tax cuts?  Why not cut spending instead? Yes, it hurts. No politician wants to feel any heat from cutting the bureaucracy that is swallowing our country.  It’s easier to keep pumping up the debt. By the time the whole house of cards comes crashing down, incumbents will be long retired - at a fat taxpayer-funded pension. Obama won’t skip the tax cuts to help balance the budget any more than he’ll freeze wages for federal workers. Oratory today is easier than reality ten years down the road.

Tax cuts are a moot point, anyway, given Obama’s plan for “carbon credits.” Essentially ‘carbon credits’ is a massive new tax on coal-fired power plants.  The power plant owners will pass the new tax through to ratepayers. If you like your power bill now, bloated as it is with useless save-the-salmon expense, wait until you start paying for Obama’s ‘carbon credits’ nonsense. His budget gives you money with one hand via a tax cut and takes it right back out via an increase your power bill. What? His oratory didn’t explain that little move? 

Speaking of oratory, did you catch his line about saving money pulling troops out of Iraq? What about his ‘surge’ of troops in Afghanistan? Dones anyone save money moving the war from one country to another? Is that change you can believe in?

Bottom line? No hard choices. No changes. Just another politician running up the deficit and ignoring the long-term economic health of America for his own short-term political gain. Sort of like George W. Bush, except a deficit four times larger.

Change we can believe in?

Of course, Congress has the power of the purse. Maybe you believe they’ll act sensibly to control spending. Maybe you believe that Denny Rehberg or Max Baucus will jump on the stump and announce proudly that they’ve finally stopped the multi-billion-dollar money pit known as AMTRAK, despite the fact that it may inconvenience Whitefish skiers and a few Hi-Line travellers, for the long-term goal of reducing the deficit. When we  as a nation elect politicians who will brag about how much less money they bring back to their constituents  we’ll solve our deficit problems.

Until then, led by Barack Obama, we will follow the path predicted by politicial scientists who say that democracy is fatally flawed: that short-sighted voters will invariably spend their country into bankruptcy. We’re well on our way. If we stay on this path, America will lose itself as a democracy.

And that’s a change you can believe in. It’s going to happen, unless we change first.