John Hinderaker: A Silver Lining and a Conundrum
I can see only one good outcome from yesterday’s election: the fact that Barack Obama will be the president who inherits the mess left by Barack Obama.
Let me translate for the typical Boulder Progressive. That means, the time for blaming George W has passed, although in my mind it passed a long time ago.
How WILL Obama deal with the debt?
But I digress: back to the silver lining. Obama will now have to reveal his agenda for a second term, heretofore a closely-guarded secret. In particular, what is he going to do about the nation’s $16 trillion debt? Obama’s answer during his first term was “nothing.” His budget, incorporating any number of optimistic assumptions, called for the debt to rise to $20 trillion. I don’t see how Obama can get through his second term without articulating some plan, however half-baked, for dealing with the debt. Ben Bernanke can’t keep interest rates at zero for another four years; at least, I don’t think he can. As soon as interest rates start to rise, the budget–no, wait, we don’t have a budget, but you know what I mean–is blown. It will be difficult for the press to conceal from the American people the fact that we are broke. (emphasis added)
But if anyone can conceal the debt and deficit being blown wide open, it’s the MSM.
OK, how about taxing the rich, always the “preferred” strategy laid out by the envious masses that never ran their own companies or had to make a payroll (or see subtitle comment by “Voluble although the link tells a much larger story)…
Obama’s default idea is to raise taxes on the rich, but that approach has a fatal defect. We suffer from a severe shortage of rich people. You could confiscate every penny belonging to every rich person in America, and not make a dent in the national debt. So, Barry, over to you: what’s your plan? I confess that I am looking forward to watching Obama squirm. (emphasis added)
Me too!
Let me make a very bold prediction. However much money Obama and his progressive friends believe they will get from taxing the rich as they hallucinate in their ivory tower (I actually have a different word in mind), the reality of actual revenue received won’t come close to it. We can depend on the MSM to report that as well.
Furthermore, if they somehow “force” the rich pay the actual amounts relating to their bold amatuer academic predictions, the actual economic unintended consequences will be much greater than just settling for the smaller revenue they would actually have received.
What John Hinderaker said was my thinking, too. The Democrats blamed the '08 crash on Bush and free markets, and a lot of people have bought it, when the cause had more to do with liberal policies and strategies from the Carter and Clinton era that were never repealed by Republicans. What I didn't want to see happen is us elect a Republican president, have him not deal with Obama's, Clinton's, and Carter's policies, and then for the debt bomb, or another market crash to come down on him, taking the consequences for what they all created. I figured if this was going to happen, let it happen to Obama. He was instrumental in creating the policies that created the '08 crash. He can live with their consequences.
I'm not blaming Romney. I'm blaming us, for electing people to office over the years who created this mess, and then being resistant to repealing the policies that created it, such that Republicans wouldn't touch them. Rather than try to hold back the deluge, it might be better for people to get a good dose of what they've voted for. If they get it hard and fast, there's hope they might realize there's something wrong with what they've wished for. Of course, this means we'll all have to deal with these consequences, too. We just have to be strong enough to withstand them, and try to avoid the pitfalls as much as we can. We can't reform what needs to be fixed by ourselves. We need more to join our side. Only people waking up will do that. We can't make them do that. They have to do it of their own choice.