Spending beyond their means, promising people things that can't be delivered, ideas that sound too good to be true, loans that are going to cost a lot more down the road, greed by powerful people. One might think this is a list of factors that lead to the current economic crisis (and it may well be), but this could also be a description of President Obama's spending plan. Despite record deficits and a financial crisis that has yet to be resolved, Obama has decided to go full steam ahead with his agenda, setting out grandiose plans to fix health care, win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, solve the financial crisis, and retool dozens of social welfare programs.
Like any good salesman, the President has been mustering all his charm on a plethora of TV shows this past week to reassure America that we are getting a good deal. There's no doubt that Obama is a highly skilled speaker, but let's look at the fine print here. As Obama himself has pointed out on multiple occasions, he inherited a massive debt from the previous administration, but the fact that the current debt is not entirely his fault does not make any difference when it comes to taking on more debt. What's more, under Obama's plan, the national debt will be more than four times that created by President Bush. That's like totaling your friend's car and saying it's okay because it had some dents in it already.
Another Obama favorite is the "We'll just raise taxes on the wealthy" line. But how exactly is he taxing the wealthy? One of his ideas for taxing wealthy Americans is capping the deduction for charitable donations for people who earn more than $250,000. Not only is this a terrible idea that disincentivizes charitable contributions from the people who can actually afford to make them, it also forces these charities to look elsewhere for funding, and the first place they are going to look will be the government.
Another pitch: raise money by taxing greenhouse gas emissions, which would also benefit the environment. Here's the problem though: if I'm an oil company and all of a sudden my taxes go up because of my emissions, I have three options: decide to live with the taxes and make less money; make a major investment into technology to make my operations cleaner; or just pass these taxes on to consumers and keep my profit margins exactly where they are. Which option am I going to choose? Obama's environmental taxes don't provide any incentive to the polluters to change, he only taxes the consumers who have to subsidize the polluters' costs. A tax on energy or emissions or anything directed at business is ultimately a tax on everyone; the President just gets to avoid accountability this way.
Obama came into office backed by big ideas: clean up the environment, limit tax increases to only the wealthy, fix the economy, win the wars, and more. Now two months into office he must realize that he won't be able to do everything he had planned to accomplish right away. Instead of facing this reality, however, the President has chosen idealism over realism. Like the thousands of people who are now on the street because they bought a house they knew they could never afford, Obama's eyes are too big for his wallet, and he is more than willing to take on a debt that he and this country are unable to afford. As evinced by dwindling public support for his budget measure, Obama must reconsider his plan to borrow so much, or he too will find himself evicted from his current home.
