Blaming President Bush for everything that goes wrong with his presidency is Barack Obama’s favorite pastime. He decided to immerse himself in that warm bath of blame again today in Baltimore.
“I love it when these guys talk about debt and deficits. I inherited a trillion dollar deficit … We signed two trillion dollars in spending cuts into law. Spending under my administration has grown more slowly than under any president in 60 years … They baked all this stuff into the cake with those tax cuts … and the war.
“It’s like somebody goes to a restaurant, orders a big steak dinner, a martini and all that stuff, then just as you’re sitting down they leave and accuse you of running up the tab.”
Politico reported the remarks without comment. But every element of this is bunk. Obama has been spending at record rates. The deficit for this fiscal year is already about $844 million. The statistic he cites about slow spending is sheer nonsense – he has maintained emergency spending rates, jacking the deficit up to record levels. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are expensive, but are not even close to fully responsible for the deficit. Neither are the tax cuts. In fact, you could eliminate all that spending and still have record deficits.
President Obama sat down at a table at which President Bush had already ordered a steak. Then he ordered steak every year for the rest of his tenure and beyond. That’s not fiscal responsibility. That’s profligate spending. And Obama is a spendthrift leader.
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