Prez Obama's Take On History

[deacon blues]

Watching the C-SPAN replay of BO's town hall meeting with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Palo Alto, CA. He started with saying in 2000 we had a balanced budget and a surplus. He gave credit to George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Democratic Congresses and Republican Congresses. Okay, fair and balanced so far.

Then he said that over the past 10 years, we forgot what got us there and allowed spending to get out of control. Okay, good, he's including the years he's been in office and the Democrats ran Congress.

So he starts by pointing out we had huge tax cut without offsetting it with spending cuts. Then there were the two wars that weren't "paid for". It was the first time we'd gone to war without asking Americans to sacrifice to pay for them. He mentions the expensive prescription drug benefit that added to the deficit. Then he talks about the recession and how they had to spend money to save the economy and prevent a depression. He said that added another trillion dollars to the debt. So far so good, however he didn't mention the housing bubble caused by the failed policy of loaning people money they could never pay back to buy homes that really set the stage for the banking failure which started the downward slide we are in.

He said conditions became unsustainable with Baby Boomers retiring, with rising healthcare costs, with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid being overwhelmed. And then he just ended his take on recent history with some other comments.

But he never mentioned Obamacare which costs 1/2 trillion dollars. He never mentioned that in his two years of office the deficit has grown, that the debt had ballooned under his administration by historic proportions, that spending has gone crazy wild until the GOP was voted back into power in 2010. He didn't mention that he signed to extend the Bush Tax Cuts that he earlier said were part of the problem. He didn't mention that he said nothing, did nothing about the debt and spending until now simply because the Democrats got schillacked last November. No mention that they went a whole year with Democrats in power across the board and never presented a budget. When forced to present a budget Democrats in Congress offered to cut spending by a measly $4 billion on a $1.5 trillion deficit. He didn't mention that he only offered to cut spending by a meager $6 billion.

The take on history that brought us to this point was woefully missing his huge contribution and the Democratic led Congress. I'm not confident this man is going to seriously tackle this economic challenge.

BO has not offered a comprehensive and complete plan to deal with this debt. Oil is going through the roof, gas prices are rising, we've been warned by Standard and Poor that America is on the cusp of being downgraded in our credit rating, the dollar is taking a beating, etc.

BO's take on history reveals he doesn't fully understand how we got here. I doubt he'll figure out how to get us out of this mess.