I hate to say it, but America doesn’t have a President anymore. Barack Obama is in full campaign mode right now at the expense of his role as a leader in this country.
I say this after yet another speech by President Obama asking Congress to “Pass this bill." Fun fact: it took Obama a total of 38 seconds to say that very phrase. During this speech, Obama presented his plan for paying for his American Jobs Act. In case you didn’t see it, here it is.
Early on, Obama engages in class-warfare. He talks about the concept of “Fair share” which is nice, but what does that mean? He talks about the middle class not carrying the burden and then essentially says that the rich and the corporations need to be taxed more. That doesn’t sound like everyone pitching in. He talks about not cutting entitlement programs while suggesting that businesses need to pay more. So in other words, Obama believes that a fair share is that businesses and the wealthy pay more in taxes while those taking advantage of entitlement programs keep taking the same amount from the pot. Where do these people give?
If we’re talking about a “fair share,” wouldn’t that mean everyone pays the same percentage? However, the current tax rates have the rich paying the vast majority of the financial burden on our country. I’m not saying we need to move to a flat tax, but the terminology used by Obama is questionable. It’s very much campaign speak. “Fair share” sounds good, especially to Obama political base on the left when coupled with talk of more taxes on the rich. The same goes for the phrase “Balanced approach.” It all really doesn’t mean much when said by the Chief Executive. There’s no real metric.
It wasn’t just class warfare and campaigning. Obama engaged in a little hypocrisy as well. When talking about a speech given by Speaker John Boehner, Obama said Boehner said “we can’t afford the kind politics that says ‘It’s my way or the highway,’” and that this encouraged Obama. Obama then started criticizing him for not accepting any plan that involves increasing revenue. Isn’t this what Obama’s doing with the tax increases on the rich and corporations? I’m just saying. It seems like Obama’s doing exactly the same thing.
Obama also said that he’s ready to work with both parties to reform our tax code and get rid of loopholes and whatnot. In fact, he said he’s eager to reform the tax code. He mentions how our tax code gives benefits to the best connected companies (Solyndra?) and how reform could help businesses be more competitive. Obama’s been in office for almost three years. Why is he just now getting to this? The economy has been in the tank for some time and he’s just now talking about reform of the tax code? This whole part of the speech was a campaign effort.
The Warren Buffett and his secretary example came out yet again. It’s rather telling that even with all the resources at his disposal, this is the example that Obama keeps going to to illustrate this point. Why? Because this is most likely a very rare case. Some new material would go a long way in Obama’s efforts to defend this argument.
But the most interesting point from the whole speech is that none of his numbers consider people going back to work or new investments by businesses because of his jobs plan (we are still talking about his jobs plan, right?) All of the new income from his plan comes from taxing the rich. America has an unemployment rate of over 9% as well as a significant number of people who are unemployed but have given up and even more who are underemployed. Getting these people back to work means that they can be taxed. They can also spend more which means those they do business with will pay more in taxes. However, Obama never mentions this. So he either doesn’t believe his jobs plan will get people back to work or it means that this is really all just about increasing taxes on the rich. Either isn’t very promising. Speaker Boehner should point to this when Obama asks for new revenue.
It should be abundantly clear at this point that this county isn’t going anywhere until January 2013 when we’ve got a new Congress and possibly a new President. Right now, we’re stuck. The best we can do is hope things don’t get any worse before then. Fortunately, it probably won’t. Obama’s too busy campaigning right now.
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