For once I think Joe Biden had the right idea: He fell asleep in the first row.
“From our first days as a nation,” Obama said, “we have put our faith in free markets.”
“Faith” presumes an intellectual confidence, hopefully formed after rational deliberation, in a transcendent or metaphysical reality. Faith is what one places in God.
The free market has simply worked. Empirical evidence abounds in support of this fact. For that, behold America’s sweeping vistas of freedom and opportunity (closed to public viewing in January, 2009).
President Obama has a tendency to begin a speech with a history of America that starts with the good parts, and then abruptly segues into his own horrifying revisions.
“[W]e are rugged individualists, a self-reliant people with a healthy skepticism of too much government.”
“But [meaning, contrary to what was just said] there has always been another thread running throughout our history – a belief that we are all connected; and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation.”
(a) We are self-reliant and skeptical of government. (b) We are interdependent and require government for many essential things. (c) Therefore all A’s are B’s.
Oh, wait, that doesn’t follow.
To prove his point about the greatness of big government, he unswervingly talks about the military, technological advances, interstate highways and public schools (even though it is laughable to suggest that the federal government has been the cause of American public education, which presently stinks anyhow).
Obama’s three-year spending spree has, adjusted for inflation, cost more than the Vietnam War, the Marshall Plan, the Korean War, NASA, the Louisiana Purchase, the New Deal, the Iraq and Afghan Wars and the S&L Crisis combined.
Is he kidding with his jibber jabber about interstate highways? (Which must truly beguile Obama, what with his high speed rail fetish; given that the interstate highways effectively replaced rail travel, as automobiles are often a more convenient and efficient method of travel).
No one is discussing interstate highways and races to the moon, here. Yet Obama knows he has to roll out these neutral-to-popular government expenditures, as a premise for why we must gouge taxpayers for more disastrous federal welfare.
“Medicare and Social Security,” Obama went on, “guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income.” Do they? At 26, it is an indisputable certainty that I will not enjoy these programs given their current outlooks, and the amount of unfunded liabilities.
Big-spending liberals like to pretend that their welfare agenda is altruistic, and that it’s evil free market defenders who are acting out of self-interest. Yet they themselves harvest votes by preaching to the masses that liberal policies shall provide those people more bread and circuses, at other people’s expense.
Well, maybe its time my generation started voting out of economic self-interest, and at least start to disabuse ourselves of failed New Deal Ponzi schemes.
“For much of the last century, our nation found a way to afford these investments and priorities with the taxes paid by its citizens.” Yes, when Social Security began there were approximately 18 working persons for every beneficiary. The baby boom, birth control, and rising life expectancy have caused that ratio to dwindle to 3 to one. Five or six generations of insatiable government have brought the program to the brink of disaster.
Obama also complained that the tax code allows too many itemized deductions for rich people. “And while I agree with the goals of many of these deductions, like homeownership or charitable giving, we cannot ignore the fact that they provide millionaires an average tax break of $75,000 while doing nothing for the typical middle-class family that doesn’t itemize. My budget calls for limiting itemized deductions for the wealthiest 2% of Americans.”
Wait a second. A person is given tax deductions (which simply means the government is entitled to less of that person’s hard earned money) for things like “homeownership or charitable giving” and yet Obama thinks we do nothing for the middle class in the process. Therefore he shall limit the itemized deductions for the “wealthiest” 2% of Americans?
First, income taxes, tax income, not wealth. If Bill Gates, who is worth over $50 billion, earns $0 in 2011, he will pay $0 in income taxes. Thus, Obama is limiting deductions on the highest paid 2%.
Second, a charitable deduction is earned where one gives money to designated charities, as defined in the tax code. Why, we can’t have “millionaires” getting a “tax break” for such covetousness behavior! Therefore, it’s best we reduce the wealthy persons’ deductions. Set them on equal footing with the middle class. By jove, that’ll fix’em!
In the final analysis (which must have been fatiguing for Obama’s left-loony speech writers), but for the tax cuts of the past decade, our fiscal house would be in great shape.
Really? Of course it couldn’t be that inefficient sectors and programs like Obamacare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Environmental Protection Agency shall enjoy rising and overfed budgets over the coming years, due to the inherent structural deficiencies of socialism (that is, what Liberals have put their “faith” in). Rather, it is because of the highest paid Americans, that the least among us cannot get food stamps.
Because of the tax cuts of 2001, the government shall be forced to borrow $500 billion every year. This is like saying, because my parents cut off my allowance in my 20s, I will have to borrow a zillion dollars a year throughout my 30s and 40s. Who said the federal government had prior ownership of that $500 billion? For it to even be generated, taxpayers will have to work, in a free market each year. Has their labor been earmarked to pay for Social Security and other government-botched disasters?
What a joke.