私たちのお金に酔いしれて

February 5, 2010 -- You walk into a bar and see the same drunk who’s there every night lying on the floor in a pool of his reeking fluids. He raises his head and looks around at the room in general—the folks having a few beers, wines, or just Diet Pepsis, as well as the other drunks. With what little coherence he still can muster, he declares: “People drink too much. We gotta get this under control.”

Then, in fits and starts, he utters something like the following: “Yesterday I downed a whole quart of whiskey and a six-pack of brews. Today I was gonna suck in two quarts and two six-packs. But I’m cuttin’ back. Today I’ll only lap up a quart and a half of whiskey and a six-pack and a half of the suds! See, I cut back by a whole half a quart and half a six-pack!”

He then demands that everyone else alter their own drinking habits as well. He orders another drink and asks everyone else in the bar to pay for it since he’s spent himself broke and his credit is worthless.

Sober people would look with disgust on such a silly sot. Perhaps friends or family would also take pity on him, take away his wallet and car keys, and lock him away in a detox.

DRUNK’S LOGIC

President Obama and the Dems in Congress are just such drunks, inebriated on our money, complaining about over-spending and deficits even as they order another round in the Washington bar.

In February 2009, shortly after taking office, The One signed the now-infamous $787 billion stimulus package. He argued that it would ensure that unemployment wouldn’t go over 8.5 percent. The jobless rate hit 10.5 percent, but the administration declared with a drunk’s logic that the package had “created or saved” 640,000 jobs and, oh, the unemployment rate would have been so much worse without that spending, so unemployment really has been cut!

As to the alleged created jobs, they pretty much made up the numbers. When passing out the bucks they asked recipients to project the number of jobs created and just used it without confirmation.

Oh yes, based on the $159 billion the administration claimed to have spent of the stimulus money by late 2009, the alleged 640,000 jobs came at a price tag of $248,000 each. They could have just given the quarter of a million bucks to those 640,000 folks, but then the administration would have had to tax them as evil rich devils not paying their fair share.

And all along Obama declared the importance of controlling the growth of the national debt.

HE LIED

During his campaign, Obama pledged that “absolutely, we need earmark reform. And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.” In March 2009 he then turned around and signed a $410 billion omnibus budget bill with between 8,500 and 9,000 earmarks constituting billions of dollars in wasteful spending. His administration mouthpieces brushed off the shocked indignation at him for breaking his word by saying he wanted to focus on the future.

That future gave us his attempted government takeover of health care with a price tag of $2 trillion over the next decade. The high-sounding stated reasons for this effort included changing the system in order to contain costs, but in the end the Democrat bills in Congress were expensive exercises in charity and vote-buying. The public watched with the disgust one feels watching a drunk wallowing in his own filth as the administration gave away billions of bucks in legal bribes for the votes of reluctant Democratic senators from Louisiana and Arkansas and to win the support of various interest groups. Fortunately, the election of Scott Brown to the open Senate seat for Massachusetts stopped that spending obscenity for now.

And all along Obama declared the importance of controlling the growth of the national debt.

ANOTHER DRINK

After his party lost its filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, Obama in his State of the Union address to Congress made some noises to the effect that we must get spending under control.

Then, on February 4, Congress increased the debt ceiling by a record $1.9 trillion, adding to the already $14.5 trillion national debt. That debt now equals the entire U.S. GDP.

And now Obama has proposed a record-setting $3.8 trillion 2011 federal budget with massive deficits. Like the drunk in the bar, he claims to want $20 billion or so in cuts, meaning that drinking—err, sorry, spending—goes up but not as much as it might have.

And he wants everyone else in the bar, the responsible citizens of the country, to pick up the tab through tax hikes on those who he can still afford to squeeze.

The fiscally sober people of this country look with disgust on this silly political sot. We, who are not his drinking buddies or enablers, should do everything possible to take away his wallet and stop him and his friends in Congress from spending again. We must rub their noses in the illogic and contradictions of their drunken rantings and force them to take the first step to changing their ways: admitting that they have a spending problem.

It’s time to put ‘em into political detox!