Say Anything Blog

Remember when Obama and his fellow liberals were campaigning to get the economic “stimulus” spending spree passed?  Remember when they talked about how it needed to be passed quickly.  How there was no time for delay.  People were suffering, they claimed.  People were losing their jobs.  They said the spending must be passed immediately, and accused anyone even trying to slow the process down of not caring about the nation’s proverbial “great unwashed masses.”  Of course, when the bill actually got to Obama’s desk he didn’t immediately sign it as one would expect someone who had spent so much time talking about how there wasn’t even enough time to debate the spending before it passed.  Instead, Obama took Michelle to Chicago for a romantic Valentine’s Day getaway.

But that urgency, that demand for immediate action with all but the most basic pretenses of debate and scrutiny adhered to, has become a theme of the Obama presidency since the “stimulus” spending spree passed.  It almost seems as though Obama wants to issue decrees, not arrive at policy through the democratic process.

A pattern is emerging for this new presidency. The more radical and far-reaching the plan, the less time the public gets to debate it. Is this due to ambition or fear of push-back? ...

As of the past week, not one but two reform schemes to transform huge swathes of the economy and extend government power into both are on a do-it-yesterday fast track. President Obama wants Congress to send him an overhaul of the entire U.S. health care system by Oct. 15 — about 16 weeks from now.

His financial reform plan, unveiled just last Wednesday, is the most far-reaching since the New Deal. But the administration wants action now, and at least one leading Democrat, Barney Frank, says Congress will get a bill to Obama’s desk before the end of the year.

And this Congress could do it — as long as no one cares about the quality of the result. It proved as much with the stimulus bill, which was produced in a matter of weeks and has done far more to swell the deficit than to juice the economy.

Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev once said, “Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.”  The reason why Obama is in a hurry is he doesn’t want Americans to realize that there is no river.  Not to mention how much the bridge is going to cost.