This was held out for an extra-long time by LFS, but my tenth article originally posted October 1st.
Since his election last November, even before taking office in January, Barack Obama has reshaped the office of the Presidency into the image he envisioned when beginning his quest for the Oval Office.
But since his swearing in on January 20 Barack Obama has continued to blame his predecessor for “inherited” problems, and the President may indeed have had a few legitimate complaints. Yet he’s been unwilling to change many Bush-era policies, particularly in the realm of national security. Obama has also chosen to ramp up the war in Afghanistan while continuing the withdrawal from Iraq begun in the latter stages of President Bush’s term. As Commander-in-Chief President Obama has the perfect right to halt these military endeavors but chosen against complete withdrawal, frustrating his support base on the antiwar Left to no end.
This first eight months of Obama’s term have also been marked by the normal changing of the appointee guard one would expect during a shift in the party in power; needless to say the President placed his own stamp on domestic policy with his Cabinet selections and dozens of “czars” brought in without the benefit of Congressional oversight. In that respect his team is very much in place.
Aside from judicial appointees, though, the final vestige of the Bush era comes to an end when the calendar shifts from September to October and the new government fiscal year begins. No longer will Obama and Congress be forced to work under a budget prepared with the blessing of the prior administration – albeit with trillions in supplemental spending prepared for and approved by President Obama. Since it’s actually the Democratic-controlled Congress who creates the budget, the Bush budgetary framework has long since been warped with bailouts and stimulus spending well beyond anything he wished for, but George W. Bush was still in charge when the fiscal 2009 budget was approved last fall.
Even with a president and Congress hailing from the same party, the fiscal year 2010 budgetary process is again behind schedule and temporary stopgap measures necessary to prevent the federal government from shutting down. It’s highly likely, though, that a budget reasonably close to that proposed by Obama this spring will be approved. If so, it will be a budget with “trillion dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see” as House Republican leader John Boehner termed it then.
The so-called budget hawks on the left like to point out that the national debt surged under both Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, blaming the tax cuts they enacted for the red ink. (Never mind federal revenue increased under both presidents due to a thriving economy.) Yet those two are pikers compared to the budgetary blueprint Obama and Democrats are creating. Even the Chinese, who fund a large part of our debt, fret about the massive spending proposed under the Obama plan because they’re worried about a coming wave of inflation.
Starting Thursday, that recipe for economic disaster will be placed squarely on the shoulders of Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats. With their poor track record of rising unemployment, misplaced stimulus spending, the prospect of higher energy costs, and stalled efforts at reforming health care, their favorite tactic of shifting blame to the previous president won’t play in Peoria anymore – or anywhere else for that matter.
President Truman famously remarked about his office that, “the buck stops here.” While blaming Republicans is a favorite sport among Democrats and their compliant friends in the media, the era of Bush-bashing needs to stop October 1st – it’s Barack’s baby now.
Michael Swartz is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
