Democrats Use Fiscal Crisis As Weapon To Bash GOP
Investors Business Daily Posted 12/27/2011 07:09 PM ET
Debt: Wasn’t it just last summer Republicans and Democrats nearly came to blows over raising the debt ceiling? Well, guess what — President Obama is back, asking for another $1.2 trillion. Are we being gamed here?
After last summer’s imbroglio, the debt limit was raised to $15.194 trillion. At the time, in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling, the GOP sought token spending cuts. But on the now widely discredited notion that government spending boosts the economy the Democrats wanted to spend and borrow even more.
Now, with the economy struggling and 2012 looming, we’re “just” $100 billion away from hitting the debt ceiling again, and President Obama wants the OK for another $1.2 trillion in debt, lifting the total to $16.394 trillion.
Coming just after Democrats in Congress threatened to close the government unless Republicans agreed to extend payroll tax cuts for two months, we’re beginning to see a pattern: Democrats create a crisis, blame Republicans for it, then reap the political benefits.
Cynical as it sounds, it’s working. President Obama’s favorability in a recent Gallup Poll showed a hefty 10-point gain from earlier in the year. And many congressional Democrats believe they can win in 2012.
Knowing full well their ideas don’t sell, Democrats are intentionally manufacturing these minicrises, using people’s fear of chaos and a pliant liberal media to blame the GOP for Democrats’ own failures.
Quite a feat, considering how unpopular Democratic policies are. A new Rasmussen Poll shows that 77% of Americans want deficits cut, 71% want spending cut and 59% want taxes cut.
Americans see their once-bright future systematically being destroyed by a mountain of debt. And President Obama has presided over the largest increase in debt in U.S. history, adding $5 trillion to our debt load.
Today, each taxpayer owes $132,744 — $48,000 of it added since 2008. At current rates, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio may rise from 100% now to 250% by 2035 — twice the level of bankrupt Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal.
Even so, it’s 960 days — 2.6 years — since the Democrats even passed a budget as required by law. Yet, the media look the other way — it doesn’t fit the narrative.
If you ask Americans, they blame Republicans for this malfeasance as much as Democrats, though Democrats held sole control of Congress from 2006 to 2010, and the White House since 2008.
Democrats are building an ever larger and more oppressive government, ignoring the people’s expressed wishes — all the while saddling taxpayers with trillions more in debt, pushing us toward national bankruptcy and making it look like it’s the Republicans’ fault.
Let’s hope voters come to realize on their own, without help from the feckless GOP, how they’re being played for chumps.