The Control Freak President

Townhall.com ^ | May 30, 2012 | John Ransom



So Obama, like every good control freak, has this plan apparently.

Yeah. That’s the first thing that should make you wary.

It’s plan that you are probably familiar with.

Or to put it a better way, it’s another plan that will give you kind of sick, eerie feeling, like so many of his other plans that involve top-down government planning.

Remember when he combated the growing instability in world oil supplies and prices by making the price of oil go up even faster- twice?
Or that time when he ushered in a golden era for solar power by throwing money into manufacturing capacity in solar when there was no actual demand for solar products, thereby decimating the solar industry?
Or that time that he harangued us about fiscal discipline while he was spending money left and right and couldn’t even pass a budget? He called it “eating our peas.”
It’s like any one of those wonderful plans that worked out so well for all of us- and went exactly as planned for Obama, control freak.
Ok, so the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is warning that cuts in government spending along with automatic tax increases from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts will spur a recession in the first half of next year unless Congress and the president act before the 1^st of the year.
Oh, their first mistake: They gave Obama a timetable. Control freaks have problems with timetables.
Does the CBO know that the president really doesn’t like timetables? They should ask Congressional Republicans about the timetable that they had with the Keystone pipeline. Or maybe ask S&P about their timetable on the debt ceiling debate last summer before S&P downgraded U.S. debt.
A control freak would rather do anything- even fail- than deal with a timetable.
“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) fired off a warning Tuesday to our nation and its leaders in Washington,” writes Fox News’ Gretchen Hamel. “The CBO told us that the United States of America is headed toward a fiscal cliff and that if we do indeed fall off, it will have profound effects on our country and world economy. The CBO projects that if Congress does not act to prevent coming tax increases and spending cuts, a recession is certain. The CBO estimates gross domestic product would decline by as much as 1.3 percent if lawmakers don’t act.”
So here’s Obama’s plan to protect us all from an economy under assault by tax increases: more tax increases.
Yes. That’s right. Talk about control freak.
Obama wants to ensure our economic prosperity now threatened by tax increases by increasing taxes. Because, at least that way, Obama’s still in control.
This reminds me of a story from Abraham Lincoln.
An old friend from Illinois died after his disloyal comments about the Union set his neighbors against him.
“Blank is dead,” a friend informed Lincoln, “His extremely disloyal sentiments so provoked his neighbors that there was serious talk of inflicting vengeance on him, and he was found dead in bed—caused largely by fright.”
“He died, then,” replied Lincoln dryly, “to save his life, it seems.”
Like Obama, there's an example of extreme control-freakishness.
So Obama wants to save our economic life by first killing our economy through tax increases because, while it won’t help the rest of us, above all, it will give the government more control.
And it’s this repeated policy mistake that’s been killing us.
Whether it’s been Obamcare, or lack of a budget, or the debt ceiling, or a massive new regulatory schemes like Dodd-Frank- long on cost and short on benefit- the dreadful uncertainty of the control economy under Team Obama is frightening business and taxpayers to death.
Not coincidentally, consumers are reacting with peevishness.
“Americans confidence in the economy suffered the biggest drop in eight months,” reports Boston.com “as worries about the weak jobs, housing and stock markets rattled them again. The decline comes after a few months of optimism amid some positive economic news.”
The confidence index now stands at 64.9 from a bounce of 68.7 last month. Any time the measurement stands under 100, the incumbent president is going to have a hard time controlling his own destiny.
And don’t look for the economy to improve much over the summer either. Gas prices haven’t declined that much to make up for the sharp increase at the pump. While the stock market rallied a bit on good dividend news, investors have moved on from the quarterly distribution of loaves and fishes.
Government spending is certainly a component of our GDP, but it’s time we recognized that business and consumer spending are much more important components.
And time that the government stopped killing those components by seeking arbitrary control.Because really, they're a bunch of freaks.