Obama has short memory
Wednesday, April 8, 2009 9:18 AM EDT
Hardly a day goes by that we don't hear President Obama saying, "When I got here" or "I inherited this from Bush" when talking about some of the problems of the country.
What I don't understand about those comments are, where did he come from, or what was he doing during the time Bush was president?
Well, as we all know for the last four years he was six blocks away in the U.S. Senate and he voted for most of the monetary policies that he is now complaining about.
The constant complaint about Bush spending or the deficit is rather astounding as he voted to increase every budget that the Bush administration submitted.
It should also be noted that the U.S. Constitution requires that before any president can spend, or invest, as the Democrats say, that expenditure must be approved by the legislature.
(Note: Article 9: No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.)
For the last two years of the Bush administration the Democrats were in charge of both houses of Congress and they increased spending every year and blocked all attempts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that most people agree is the genesis for the current economic problems.
So for the last four years President Obama has known, or should have known, what he was voting on, and if he was opposed, should have expressed that.
The only thing that I remember him being opposed to was the Iraq war and he commented the other day that he was surprised how that appears to be "the least of the problems."
Those of us who can remember farther back than Jan. 20, 2009, can also recall that when President Bush came to Washington from Texas there were a number of economic problems.
As I remember, unemployment was about 7 percent and we were still in the midst of the dot-com bubble burst, Enron, etc.
He also inherited 19 terrorists that were in the country courtesy of a Clinton administration policy known as "visa express." We all know what they caused!
(It's my understanding that now 9/11 is to be known in the Obama administration as a "mancaused disaster.")
I don't remember President Bush ever complaining about his predecessor. He never mentioned the vandalism and wanton destruction done to the White House by the Clinton staffers, or the fact that the Clintons had to return an entire tractor-trailer load of White House property that "mistakenly" was sent to New York.
I also can remember Senator Obama in the White House with President Bush, Senator McCain, and a Federal Reserve official, Mr. Geithner working on the TARP legislation.
It seems he has forgotten that he took credit for that legislation, then, but now doesn't seem to know what was in the bill.
The same thing is true for that official who is now Secretary of the Treasury and is credited as the architect of TARP, but is unaware of bonuses included in the bill.
When President Obama came into office the deficit for this year was about $500 billion, and when we finish it will be over 2 trillion.
In eight years Bush added about $2.1 trillion to the national debt and Obama and Congress has done that in 40 days.
Could someone explain to me how quadrupling the debt could be laid on either Bush or the Republicans when the Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress?
Recently, the Congress passed a bill for extra spending (investments) for the rest of fiscal year (FY) 2009.
According to President Obama, this was left over from the Bush administration, but in fact the bill had been proposed in September 2009.
When President Bush threatened to veto it over the excessive spending, the Democrats withdrew it to wait for Obama. It worked. Over $8 billion in earmarks passed!
In sum, our great-grandchildren and those that haven't been born will be saddled with immense debt from just the first 40 days of this administration.
I can't imagine what the next four years will add to that.
By the way I get the "change" that the campaign was about, as that's all I have left in my pocket.
