President Obama Continues His War Against Prosperity
This morning, President Obama used his radio address to tell people that he has no intention of slowing down in his war against prosperity, this time telling us that he’s planning on shoving universal health care down our throats:
President Barack Obama challenged the nation’s vested interests to a legislative duel Saturday, saying he will fight to change health care, energy and education in dramatic ways that will upset the status quo.
“The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long,” Obama said in his weekly radio and video address. “But I don’t. I work for the American people.”
Yet again, President Obama is using intellectually inaccurate arguments to pass his agenda. Fighting to shove rationed health care down our throats won’t be opposed only by big money people. It will be opposed by Main Street just as much as it’s opposed by Wall Street.
President Obama casting himself as crusading populist fighting for the American people is a farce. President Obama ignored the people if they opposed the bailouts and the Generational Theft Act. That isn’t what people who fight for the people do. President Obama was too busy shoving a radical ideological doctrine down our throats to care what Americans thought.
SIDENOTE: Doesn’t President Obama’s postpartisan politics sound like old-fashioned Democratic class warfare?
Remember that the Generational Theft Act isn’t an economic document. It’s a political decree that tells capitalists that he’d rather pay his political allies off with a ton of taxpayer-subsidized pork rather than put in place policies that help us prosper.
Based on this column, Larry Kudlow thinks that President Obama is conducting a war against prosperity, too:
Let me be very clear on the economics of President Obama’s State of the Union speech and his budget.
He is declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds. That is the meaning of his anti-growth tax-hike proposals, which make absolutely no sense at all, either for this recession or from the standpoint of expanding our economy’s long-run potential to grow.
Raising the marginal tax rate on successful earners, capital, dividends, and all the private funds is a function of Obama’s left-wing social vision, and a repudiation of his economic-recovery statements. Ditto for his sweeping government-planning-and-spending program, which will wind up raising federal outlays as a share of GDP to at least 30 percent, if not more, over the next 10 years.
The philosophical difference between President Clinton and President Obama is that President Clinton valued a healthy private sector that created wealth and prosperity. President Obama is more ideologically driven. Creating prosperity isn’t his top priority. Installing policies that fit into his radical vision is President Obama’s top priority.
Mr. Kudlow highlights statistics that President Obama doens’t want people to hear:
Study after study over the past several decades has shown how countries that spend more produce less, while nations that tax less produce more. Obama is doing it wrong on both counts.
President Obama’s policies don’t make economic sense. There’s no other way of saying it. This stops President Obama dead in his tracks:
And as far as middle-class tax cuts are concerned, Obama’s cap-and-trade program will be a huge across-the-board tax increase on blue-collar workers, including unionized workers. Industrial production is plunging, but new carbon taxes will prevent production from ever recovering. While the country wants more fuel and power, cap-and-trade will deliver less.
Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade policies penalize manufacturing companies because manufacturers are big energy consumers. Cap-and-trade policies increase these companies’ tax burden. Carbon taxes have the same effect.
What the Obama administration won’t talk about is that these policies drive companies to Mexico, South Korea and other countries. This isn’t outsourcing. It’s the outright driving of manufacturers out of the United States.
President Obama has clearly identified which side of the issues he’ll be on. With him listening to environmental extremists about cap-and-trade, with him raising taxes on small businesses and other entrepreneurs, it’s difficult to characterize President Obama as a capitalist. It’s easier to make the case that he’s an anti-prosperity radical.
Technorati Tags: Taxes, Cap-And-Trade, Carbon Tax, Health Care, Energy, President Obama, Recession, Democrats, Larry Kudlow, Capitalism, Entrepreneurship, Conservatism
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog