Obama ‘Change’ Is for the Worse

[goodboy]

Gov. Joe Manchin is very worried that the state of West Virginia may not be able to make ends meet - by 2014.

Meanwhile, a short trip east along I-68 and I-70, the federal government has been spending more than it takes in for years. And it is getting worse.

Last week Manchin told members of the state Board of Education that he's worried about state finances. "If this thing doesn't turn by 2013, God help us all," the governor said, in reference to the current downturn in the economy.

A couple of points need to be kept in mind:

Manchin won't be governor in 2013 (his second term ends early that year). Politically, he doesn't have to worry about what happens here after that, yet he does and is working to avoid dumping a fiscal mess on Mountain State residents in the future. Contrast that attitude with those of some presidents and members of Congress, who continue to add to the national debt.
In comparison to many other states, ours is in very, very good condition. We still have nearly half a billion dollars in our "rainy day" fund as insurance against fiscal calamities. On the other hand, the national debt is $11.7 trillion and climbing fast.
This isn't a tribute to Joe Manchin. Other governors, beginning with Gaston Caperton, also have worked hard to curb the free-spending ways that dominated West Virginia politics for many years. State legislators deserve enormous credit, too.

What I'll call the "West Virginia Attitude" has served our state well. Why can't presidents and members of Congress adopt the same approach to spending?

Please do not tell me that I "just don't understand." If I had a dollar for every time a politician has said that to me, I'd be writing this column from my second home in the Bahamas.

I recognize that the federal government has obligations above those our state has to fund. National defense is an example. But our financial woes are not because of defense spending. They are due to "entitlements" such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and scores of other federal benefit programs. The state has similar obligations in the form of its share of Medicaid spending, pension programs for public employees, etc.

Yet even though the federal government often makes spending decisions for us on programs such as Medicaid, West Virginians somehow have managed to live within our means.

What is especially frustrating, again, is that while we are making sacrifices to make progress, no one in Washington seems willing to do that. Our financial management has improved. Congress and the White House have not.

During the election campaign last year, then-candidate Barack Obama leveled much of his harshest criticism against deficit spending under the Bush administration.

But according to the Congressional Budget Office, deficit spending from 2000-2008, the Bush era, totaled about $3.3 trillion. Obama, now president, will preside over about nearly $1.6 trillion in deficit spending during his first year in office.

Brace yourself: The White House admits that, even under optimistic projections, the next 10 years - much of it under Obama - will see $9 trillion in deficit spending. Our national debt will top $20 trillion. That's about $65,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

The president who promised us change isn't going to leave any in our pockets. The members of Congress who claim to represent us are misrepresenting themselves in regard to fiscal responsibility.

Worse, they're playing us for suckers: Obama and liberals in Congress want a variety of changes, including a massive government health insurance program and "cap and trade" rules on air pollution. They have the audacity to claim that such legislation will save money for most Americans.

Ronald Reagan had it right in that regard. The scariest words in the English language, he reminded us, are: "I'm from the government - and I'm here to help."

http://theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/527787.html?nav=509

[goodboy]

1. It's this kind of thing that makes me hate the area in which I live. (nt)

[Cant trust em]

2. What is the purpose of posting this here? nt

[goodboy]

5. Isn't this the editorials and other articles forum? (nt)

[Warren Stupidity]

3. This is such bullshit.

"But our financial woes are not because of defense spending. They are due to "entitlements" such as Social Security."

Social security runs a huge surplus that funds out of control defense spending. Ronald Reagan had nothing right. Military spending (laughably called 'defense' spending) has been out of control for decades and is funded by looting the social security trust fund, under an arrangement set up in the early 70s to pillage pension payment income to float the bloated MIC. The out of control part of the federal budget is military spending and interest payments on military spending. And all that spending is now so baked into our system that stopping it would result in a depression, a global depression, that would make the 30's look like a picnic.

Is this Post Rightwing Crap on DU Day? Is that how we are celebrating our fallen warrior?

[goodboy]

6. Thanks for your post. I posted this to shine a light on what these cockroaches

are saying freely with impunity. If you don't mind, can I repost your comments?

[Doctor_J]

7. The wingers have been out in droves the last few days

they refuse to let us concentrate on mourning EMK. There has been more right-wing bullshit at DU the last 4 days than the previous month combined.

GO away, wingers. We hate you, just as much as you hate democracy.

Alerting the OP

[CitizenPatriot]

8. yeah, just like an abusive person

they kick you when you're down.

It's to be expected-- that and the unrelenting assaults intended to distract us from our goal, cause chaos, and isolate us from one another.

same old shit.

[PSPS]

4. While I am disappointed in Obama, this is nothing more than a right-wing screed.

[CitizenPatriot]

9. yes, things are sooo much worse

than under Bush.

Never mind that Bush expanded the executive office in astonishing ways, resulting in him literally running a dictatorship. And that's not hyperbole, but I wouldn't expect anyone who thinks things are worse now to understand even the beginning of that, because they are the same people screaming about socialism and hitler -- which only indicates that they no nothing about history.

Sure, things are worse now if you don't care about democracy. If you don't give a shit about freedom. If you're an utter moron who never paid attention to what Bush did to the DoJ. If you like corruption, authoritarianism, cruelty, and an executive office takeover of the 3 arms of government, things are worse now.

[caseymoz]

10. Not even a defensible argument.

First, bloated, unnecessary, defense spending is what has been breaking us all along. Second, every industrialized country in the world manages to handle health care within its means. Per capita, their entire health care systems cost far less than our private system alone does. Our public system is more expensive than all but 4 countries, yet, it is does far less than any of them.

Companies are gouging the system and they are allowed to do it with impunity. Conservatives are sabotaging public medicine by letting companies gouge the system, and they are then able to use that as evidence that the government programs are the problem. That's not what the evidence points to.

The reason why health care costs are growing across the board are not a matter of some immutable economic laws concerning government interference. It's about greed, really. And our state and federal systems are rolling over for it.

We can definitely get a good health care system that is an economic plus for the whole country, but we'd better lose our pro-defense, anti-government ideology in the meantime. That is a cultural relic of the Cold War, that allowed the most ideologically correct and entitled to profit from it, and that is what has been killing us all these years. The squeeze on medical prices now are just a red herring, and probably they are manufactured by private industry charging the government.

There's a reason why medical costs are rising 9 percent this year in a deflationary economy: they want to get their profits in before unfavorable health care reform raids their party.

[Deja Q]

11. If they axed social security & medicare, we better get the money back we'd otherwise are paying now

They might take the money and divert it, likely for more undeserved corporate tax breaks.