Friday, April 17, 2009

OC: President Obama’s Foundation of Straw

Stealing from the Sermon on the Mount to defend his administration’s economic record this Tuesday, President Barack Obama urged Americans to “build our house upon a rock” instead of “the same pile of sand” it had been built on before. In Obama’s hands, the teachings of Jesus become just another way to tell the story of the Three Little Pigs. And a close examination of Obama’s new “five pillars that will grow our economy” shows that Obama is trying to build our new foundation with straw. The problems begin with the fact that Obama continues to link his pre-existing policy preferences to our current economic problems. The Washington Post editorial board writes: “The agenda focuses on education, renewable energy and health care. … 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.” Worse, in all “five pillars” Obama cites, his administration already has, or is proposing, to make economic recovery more difficult.

New Rules for Wall Street: Our financial sector is long overdue for regulatory consolidation and simplification, but so far all of Obama’s actions have only increased market uncertainty by extending government’s fumbling hand. Using the Treasury Department’s TARP slush fund, the Obama administration has taken over major firms, set employment practices for entire industries, and laundered money to failing firms.

New Investments in Education: No policy area has better exposed the administration’s hypocrisy than education. Despite the administration’s vow to support “what works” in education, mere days after a Department of Education study showed that students in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program out performed their peers, Education Secretary Arne Duncan took scholarship money away from low-income families. This brazen act makes it clear no real education reform has any hope in this administration.

New Investments in Renewable Energy: President Obama admitted last year that his energy plan would cause electricity prices to “skyrocket.” His cap and trade plan would amount to an economy-killing trillion-dollar energy tax. A new study from Spain shows it will generate a huge net job loss.

New Investment in Health Care: Obama says the key to reducing future deficits is health care reform that contains costs. But his own budget admits his plan will require $634 billion more in new spending just as a down payment. How do you decrease trillion dollar deficits by spending trillions more?

New Savings in Our Federal Budget: The most widely acknowledged untruth in Obama’s budget is the phantom savings he claims by first making spending projections that no one else ever proposed and then cutting them. Remember this is the candidate who in October of last year was still promising the American people a “net spending cut” before enacting a purely deficit spending “economic stimulus” that was larger than the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

As Charles Krauthammer points out today, Obama’s “New Foundation” rhetoric is a mirror image of President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 State of the Union speech and his energy and education policies are no different either. And we know how well that presidency worked out.

QUICK HITS
Georgetown University officials now confirm that the administration asked the university to cover up a monogram symbolizing Jesus’ name with a piece of black-painted plywood,when the President spoke in Gaston Hall on Tuesday.

Speaking in Mexico City, President Obama told Mexican President Felipe Calderon, “I have not backed off at all from my belief that the assault weapons ban makes sense.“

Hundreds of farmers, farm workers and local elected officials walked along dusty roads in California’s Central Valley on Thursday to protest Endangered Species Act mandated cutbacks in water supplies.

The American Federation of Government Employees union is battling the U.S. Military Academy at West Point over an Army decision to award 300 public works jobs to outside contractors.

Federal bailout recipients General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and NBC Universal president Jeff Zucker recently met with CNBC’s on-air talent and ordered them to go easy on Obama.

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