Is Barack Obama Still President?

I wonder.

He’s openly and enthusiastically a candidate for President, but every day we see less and less energy in the performance of the duties of his office.

His first budget proposal was turned down by the Senate 97 to nil. His second version remains, weeks after it was presented, no more than a set of talking points. When he met with House Republicans to discuss budgetary matters, he spoke vaguely about the need for more federal spending.

This lackadaisical stance might be fine if the economy were soaring. When you’re rich, you don’t need a budget. (Has the President gotten so used to personal wealth that he no longer remembers having to balance income and outgo?) But right now we’re soaring like a brick-laden, xenon-filled balloon. After two years of the most “stimulative” fiscal and monetary policy in our nation’s history, the GDP is barely growing, unemployment is rising, and the stock and housing markets are sinking. It ought to be obvious to the meanest intelligence that history’s most thorough experiment in liberal economic orthodoxy has solidly disconfirmed its tenets. Priming the pump does no good if nobody’s willing to pump it, and printing dollars accomplishes nothing if there are no productive uses for them.

The President responds by raising money for his next campaign. Exactly what a non-incumbent seeking to throw the rascals out ought to do.

Further reading: The Wall Street Journal, “‘Bumps in the Road’”:

At this stage in the Reagan expansion, after a comparably deep 1981-82 recession, the economy was growing by 7% a year and the jobless rate was plunging. This time the economy is growing by less than 2%, and we still have 6.8 million fewer jobs than when the recession began in late 2007. . . .

The same economists and pundits who promoted the economic policies of the last four years are now lamenting the jobs bust and demanding that Washington double down: More stimulus spending, more Federal Reserve easing, more temporary tax rebates. They can’t explain why these policies have failed to date, but we are supposed to rinse and repeat.

The real “bumps on the road” to recovery are these policies and the larger climate of hostility toward job creators that still prevails in Washington. A National Labor Relations Board that wants to stop businesses from moving plants; a $20 billion political raid on banks over foreclosures; hundreds of major new regulations from ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank and the EPA’s war on carbon energy; federal deficits that Mr. Obama says require higher taxes; near-zero interest rates for 30 months that have sent commodity prices soaring, and so much more.

The economy doesn’t need more of this. It needs a return to the growth agenda that created the long post-1982 boom.

Nile Gardiner, “After 29 Months of the Most Left-Wing Presidency in US History, the American Superpower Is Heading Towards the Economic Abyss”:

Years of profligate spending, massive bailouts and useless stimulus measures have made America poorer, not richer, and threaten the long-term economic foundations of this great country. President Obama’s big government experiment has been a dangerous failure, only further proof that the deadening hand of federal intervention is the last thing America needs at this time. The United States needs more economic freedom, less government regulation and spending, and lower taxes if it is to create jobs, wealth and prosperity, a message that seems to have been lost on the Obama presidency as it drives the United States towards the financial abyss.

Comments

[Rick Ficek]

Another view from the American Conservative showing Obama to swim around in the mucky middle-where most liberals live.Rick Ficek
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2011/04/28/republicans-for-obama-2012/