Posted by
Bert Chapman on Monday, November 21, 2011 7:38:02 PM
Today, the congressional supercommittee charged with coming with credible spending cuts to reduce the national budget, announced that it had failed in its task. If the status quo continue, the nation will face enormous mandated cuts in governmental spending in 2013 that will do grievous damage to our military. All of the committee's Republicans are solid and substantive conservatives who, undoubtedly, tried to do their best to achieve prudent spending reductions. Committee Republicans were even receptive to some revenue enhancement measures such as closing tax loopholes. Unfortunately, they were stymied by committee Democrats. With the arguable exception of Montana Senator Max Baucus, all of the committee Democrats are hustlers for the welfare state including the Vice-Chair Washington Senator Patty "Liberal Mom with Tennis Shoes" Murray. The biggest political loser in this is Barack Obama. Mr. Hope and Change proved he's more interested in political campaigning than reducing the size of our national debt or providing serious leadership on the mechanics of governmental economic policymaking. Obama could have played a constructive leadership role in helping this committee to achieve agreement if he were a real President like Ronald Reagan. Instead, he continues engaging in infantile class warfare rhetoric and egging on imbecilic "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrators instead of offering credible policy proposals.
Evidence of Obama's overriding commitment to political posturing was provided in Iowa this weekend by his former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who is now Chicago's mayor. You would think that running America's 3rd largest city at a time of acute national economic distress and with winter approaching, that there would be more than enough to keep the Rahmster's schedule sufficiently occupied. However, the Rahmster decided to go out to Iowa to campaign against potential Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Of course, the Democrats have every reason to be scared of Romney's political skills and the prudent policy alternatives he'll offer to the country as opposed to the abject failure of leadership by Barack Obama. Nevertheless, overwhelming responsibility for the failure of this supercommittee rests with Obama and his Democrat congressional lackeys. Obama has been more interested in promoting reckless spending and leftist social engineering (e.g. same-sex marriage) than actually addressing national economic problems with prudent and pragmatic fiscal policies.
The American people are the ultimate losers in this development. The dysfunctionality of the federal budget process has again been demonstrated. The supercomittee's failure has already caused a significant drop in national and international financial markets which may accelerate in subsequent weeks. Spanish voters were smart enough to respond to their country's acute financial problems by throwing out the incompetent Socialist government and elect a conservative oriented government lead by the Popular Party this weekend. Let's hope this incoming government and achieve the reforms Spain needs and the American voters will take inspiration from the example provided by the Spanish electorate this past weekend.