The Sting, In Four Parts
--Charles Krauthammer, April 17, 2009
Franklin Roosevelt gave us the New Deal. John Kennedy gave us the New Frontier. In a major domestic policy address at Georgetown University this week, Barack Obama promised-- eight times --a "New Foundation." ... As it happens, Obama is not the first to try this slogan. President Jimmy Carter peppered his 1979 State of the Union address with five "New Foundations" (and eight more just naked "foundations"). Like most of Carter's endeavors, this one failed ... Undaunted, Obama offered his New Foundation speech as the complete, contextual, canonical text for the domestic revolution he aims to enact. It had everything we have come to expect from Obama:
The Whopper: The boast that he had "identified $2 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade." It takes audacity to repeat this after it had been so widely exposed as transparently phony. Most of this $2 trillion is conjured up by refraining from spending $180 billion a year for 10 more years of surges in Iraq. Hell, why not make the "deficit reductions" $10 trillion -- the extra $8 trillion coming from refraining from repeating the $787 billion stimulus package annually through 2019.
The Puzzler: He further boasted of his frugality by saying that his budget would reduce domestic discretionary spending as a share of GDP to the lowest level ever recorded. Amazing. Squeezing discretionary domestic spending at a time of hugely expanding budgets is merely the baleful residue of out-of-control entitlements and debt service, which will increase astronomically under Obama. To claim these as achievements in fiscal responsibility is testament not to Obama's frugality but to his brazenness.
The Non Sequitur: "To make sure such a crisis [as we have today] never happens again," Obama proposes his radical health-care, energy and education reforms, the central pillars of his social democratic agenda. But Obama's own words contradict this assertion. Notes The Post: "But as his admirable summation of recent history made clear, these pursuits have little to do with the economic crisis, and they are not the key to economic recovery." Obama rarely fails to repeat this false connection. A crisis -- and the public's resulting pliability to liberal social engineering -- is a terrible thing to waste.
The Swindle: The Obama administration is spending money like none other in peacetime history. Obama is smart. He knows this is fiscally unsustainable. He has let it be known privately and publicly that he intends to cure the imbalance with entitlement reform.
Fixing the "crisis," and ensuring "it" never happens again by spending in areas that do not address the "crisis," but rather creates new entitlements out of whole unconstitutional-cloth...? Obama must have one colossal pair, or he simply doesn't care about the damage his "wish list" will do to this country.
For myself, I think he just doesn't care. He wants what he wants and he doesn't care who or what gets broken to get it.
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