Where's the Beef?
By: Michael Reagan
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, February 26, 2009
The swooning
media were enraptured by President Obama’s soaring rhetoric in last
night’s address to Congress despite the speech’s total lack of
substance. They never bothered to ask “Where’s the beef?” in all those
oratorical flourishes.
In this case the beef is the money it
will take to pay for his grandiose plans and programs, and that money
is allegedly lining the pockets of those who dare to earn $250,000 or
more a year.
No matter that if you took every last cent of their
earnings you would still not have enough to begin to pay for the
ultra-exorbitant spending agenda he laid out in his speech. The bill
for that extravagance will be paid by our children and grandchildren.
As
he described it, only those in the $250,000 and above bracket will see
their taxes increased. They will pay for such programs as
government-run universal health care and education. The other 95
percent of the people, many of whom don’t pay a penny in taxes, will
get checks in the mail -- rebates for taxes they don’t pay.
What
this means is that the top 2 percent will nearly carry the full load
while the bottom 95 percent will live nearly tax free, thus
guaranteeing Obama their undying support and their votes.
He is trying to maneuver that 95 percent into supporting taxing the top two percent to pay for everything they’ll get.
Obama
is deliberately attempting to create an economic system where more
people live off the government than by their own efforts, thus creating
a permanent underclass utterly dependent upon the largesse of the
government and therefore ever-beholden to it.
This gigantic
voting bloc can be depended upon to march obediently to the polls and
vote to place the full financial burden on the top 2 percent of
American wage earners.
During George Bush’s administration the
president allowed the war to get in his way of vetoing anything coming
out of Congress no matter what it cost.
He so needed the support
of Congress for the war that he allowed them to engage in an orgy of
unrestrained spending. This took the traditional Republican issues of
lower taxes and less government spending off the table, leaving the GOP
with the stigma of fiscal irresponsibility.
That makes it
difficult for the GOP to claim they are the nation’s guardians of
financial responsibility even when faced with an outrageous bill in the
House with a price tag of $400 billion that is loaded with 9000
earmarks. That’s 3000 more earmarks than were in the spending bill that
got George Bush in trouble.
Yet President Obama, who claims to
be a dedicated foe of earmarks, says he’ll sign that pork-laden bill
because he wants the support of Congress for all the burdens he wants
to put on the backs of the top 2 percent of Americans.
In his
speech the President laid the blame for the budget deficit on the past
administration, blithely ignoring the fact that it was his party that
controlled the Congress that rolled up that deficit since winning
control of Capitol Hill in 2006. They were running the show that
produced that deficit and that’s where the blame lies.
From now
on, the blame for huge unfunded deficits, borrowing from future
generations -- Sen. John McCain calls it “generational theft” -- and
the economy-deadening taxation of the productive sector will lie
squarely on the shoulders of Barack Obama.
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