Before I get started with what I was planning on writing about, I have to give a quote of the day. It was the best response to Obama’s oil spill speech that I heard and surprisingly enough it came from MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann…here it is… “It was a great speech if you’ve been on another planet for the last 57 days.” For once I have to give it to him. Now to my topic of the day.
To me, Obama is one of the easiest politicians to pick apart. Mainly because very little of what he says is based upon any type of factual data. Take the following argument from the same Carnegie Mellon speech I mentioned yesterday.
“So what was true then is true today. As November approaches, leaders in the other party will campaign furiously on the same economic arguments they’ve been making for decades. Fortunately, we don’t have to look back too many years to see how their agenda turns out. For much of the last 10 years we’ve tried it their way. They gave us tax cuts that weren’t paid for to millionaires who didn’t need them. They gutted regulations and put industry insiders in charge of industry oversight. They shortchanged investments in clean energy and education, in research and technology.”
It is the ‘it’s all Bush’s fault’ argument. ”For much of the last 10 years we’ve tried it their way”. The best way I have found to combat this argument is to explain to them that Bush was not a fiscal conservative and that to bash his policies is actually a knock on their own economic philosophy. Now do not get me wrong, I liked Bush as my Commander in Chief and his stand on social issues was admirable, but I cannot really say he provided the same leadership on the economic front. Partly due to him and partly due to Congress, both spending and the size of the federal government grew (I would also say he is not nearly as liberal as Obama on this front though). Not only do liberals get utterly confused with this argument, they have a hard time explaining how Obama doubling down on the same policies is the right thing to do. Other evidence lies in the very examples Obama gave in his speech.
Regulations. You can explain to your liberal friends that regulations increased during the Bush administration as they have for most other administrations. Over 120 new regulations were implemented. Over 30 in his last year. You can show them this report that makes this point in more detail. In the case of the oil spill, be sure to remind them that regulations and inspections were in place for this rig and Obama’s department of the interior gave this rig (to include the valve that failed) a pass 10 days before the accident. If you are not following the regulations currently in place, how are more regulations going to solve the problem. Seems like common sense.
Education. The Department of Education was one of Bush’s main big government problems for his administration. He followed the liberal philosophy of throwing more money at it. As the analysis from the Heritage Foundation below illustrates, Bush did not shortchange education “investment”.
Annual U.S. Department of Education spending on elementary and secondary education has increased from $27.3 billion in 2001 to $38 billion in 2006, up by nearly 40 percent. According to the department, annual spending on the Title I program to assist disadvantaged children grew by 45 percent between 2001 and 2006. In 2007, the department will spend 59 percent more on special education programs than it did in 2001…annual Department of Education spending on federal Pell Grants grew from $8.7 billion in 2001 to $13 billion in 2006, nearly 50 percent growth. The federal government spends considerably more on higher education today than it did during the Clinton administration. According to the College Board, federal funding for higher education in 2004-2005 totaled $90 billion, a real increase of 103 percent over ten years.
The real problem is that there is no correlation between more spending on education and higher quality education. Corrected for inflation, we have doubled spending on education since the 1970’s and test scores simply have not gotten better. We need to be smarter with what we do with education money, not just use more of it. Obama has the same philosophy as the past few administrations so do not expect any change. Once again, it does not pass the common sense test. This also goes for higher education. Later in this speech he boasts about nationalizing the student loan industry.
“And to achieve my goal of ensuring America once more has the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020, we passed a law that will make college more affordable by ending the unnecessary taxpayer subsidies that go to financial institutions for student loans. That means we’re saving billions of dollars that will go directly to students, including students right here at Carnegie Mellon.”
First, as we have seen with everything the government touches, this is not a good thing. The government will not be able to efficiently run this program and as with any other government intervention, it will lead to more corruption. Government intervention in the housing industry brought us to our knees. This eye opening report illustrates exactly what happened. It will be no different in education.
Before I go for today, I would like to make one point about Obama’s continued attempts at class warfare. He continues to talk about the tax cuts for the rich so the next time one of your liberal friends brings it up, talk about it. Tell them that Bush cut all the tax rates. The lowest bracket was cut from 15% to 10%. Also let them know that the tax cuts for the rich only account for 4% of the current deficit (report). The Stimulus, by comparison accounts for 6%. A stimulus that economists agree did nothing to create economic growth or jobs. Its not just these economists though, there have been numerous other research projects that have said the same thing. Then there are the real world examples of Japan and our own Great Depression.
Hope this helps in any discussions you may have. Considering Obama’s thirst to look back into history to learn from our mistakes, I think I might take that journey. I might travel a little further than 10 years though. Yes, it is true. The recorded history of the United States did not start in the year 2000.
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