After engineering an unprecedented spending surge for nearly a year, President Barack Obama now wants to signal that he takes deficits seriously. So this week the White House announced that it is considering creating a commission to figure how to fix the budget mess.
Eureka!
Well, almost. What seems to concern the president is not the problem runaway spending poses for taxpayers and the economy. Rather, what bothers him is the political problem it poses for Democrats.
Last year, Mr. Obama made fiscal restraint a constant theme of his presidential campaign. “Washington will have to tighten its belt and put off spending,” he said back then, while pledging to “go through the federal budget, line by line, ending programs that we don’t need.” Voters found this fiscal conservatism reassuring.
However, since taking office Mr. Obama pushed through a $787 billion stimulus, a $33 billion expansion of the child health program known as S-chip, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill, and an $80 billion car company bailout. He also pushed a $821 billion cap-and-trade bill through the House and is now urging Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion health-care bill.
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Gee…. I’m glad we’ve got a Conservative government, they don’t believe in deficits….
Well…. even if they did, they said they wouldn’t, and that seems good enough for most Conservatives these days doesn’t it?
The clueless among us no doubt have trouble remembering this, but it was a coalition of clueless lefties who formed exactly one year ago that demanded deficit spending or else they would bring the Harper government down during a recession. This notion was very unpopular with clued in Canadians on the right who just wanted the Harper government to govern, but even though their minority position was bolstered by the coalition, they compromised by giving clueless lefties the deficit spending they asked for but have since forgotten about already. Fortunately clued in people can remember what happened less than a year ago, and so Harper now has a 51% approval rating, an all-time high, higher now than President Obama’s in the United States. Clueless lefties should suck on this bitter fruit for a while before they bolster Harper’s fortunes even higher because there is always next year to look forward to.
Anniversary of economic update fiasco sees Harper riding high
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/091126/national/harper_crisis_yr_later