Obama Not Even Pretending Like He’s Going To Rein In Deficit Spending
Well, I guess you’ve got to give him points for being honest about being a heedless tax-and-spend liberal.
Not only does Obama say he won’t eliminate the deficit in his first term, as McCain aims to do, he frankly says he’s not sure he’d bring it down at all in four years, considering his own spending plans.
“I do not make a promise that we can reduce it by 2013 because I think it is important for us to make some critical investments right now in America’s families,” Obama told reporters this week when asked if he’d match McCain’s pledge.
This is in contrast to John McCain who is promising to eliminate the deficit in his first term in office, and you gotta love how the Associated Press frames this divide between the candidates:
So what is more important in tough economic times? For the government to spend more to help hard-hit Americans or to eliminate a deficit that can lead to higher borrowing costs and slow the economy?
What’s more important? Helping families? Or eliminating the deficit and slowing the economy?
That’s a fair and objective way of putting it. And I’m being sarcastic when I write that, if it wasn’t obvious.
Sometimes these reporters don’t even try to pretend to be objective.
Regardless, I’m a bit skeptical of McCain’s promise to balance the budget. Can it be done? Sure. Is McCain the guy who can do it given that he’ll probably be working with a Democrat-dominated Congress? I find it unlikely.
But even so, Obama’s statement about wanting to increase government spending even further rather than give some money back to the taxpayers so that they can spend it in the economy and create jobs (remember that’s what the stimulus checks Obama and the rest of the politicians supported were all about) is a bit shocking. I think most Americans find the federal deficit, and the national debt, to be worrisome and aren’t going to like Obama’s rather cavalier attitude about it at all.
Of course, in the coming days as Obama begins to take some flak for this he’ll undoubtedly “refine” his position a bit, claim he never meant what he actually said, and then wonder why everyone’s making a fuss.












