Lion, Tigers, and Bears . . . and Deficits?--oh, my

As someone who knocked on doors and made phone calls and debated endlessly w/ Republican friends in person and via email for Barack Obama, to say that I’m disappointed in our President would be an understatement.

Republicans reading this, here is your candidate for 2012—Barack Obama.  No need to decide whether to vote for an alleged moderate in Mitt Romney or somebody a little more feisty in Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich.  Pres. Obama has done more for your party than even GW Bush was able to accomplish in his eight years, mostly because Obama is willing to offer up cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid— and I’m not even sure for what advantage other than to gain your favor in the voting booth in 2012.

Like many Democrats, I’ve been mystified by the seeming incompetence and/or weakness of this Administration as bad negotiators. Pres. Obama seemingly negotiates with fun-house mirrors—how else to explain that he could have raised the debt ceiling himself without any cuts three weeks ago per Sen. McConnell’s offer, or that just last week, House Speaker John Boehner offered up a plan that had the modest inclusion of a 15% increase in revenue coupled with an 85% cut in spending. Never mind all that, Obama and the others went all in—100% cuts; no increase in revenues.

Now, some of the Tea Party folk will applaud all this; in fact, roughly half of their caucus voted for this latest deal, which goes to show just how whacked of a plan it is. But the rest of us—those who want our kids to breath clean air; drink clean water; have their food inspected for contamination; go for a walk in a national or state park, without having to look at drill rigs; attend quality public schools where the student-teacher ratio is less than 50 to 1, which is likely to be the case in Cleveland this upcoming year; enough well-equipped and adequately trained police and fire fighters to ensure our safety; and roads that aren’t beaten to pieces by the hundreds of trucks that each prospective drill site will require—we want something more.  

We don’t want our Democratic President following Bush policies on extradition to secret prisons in other countries, warrant-less wire-tapping, endless detentions for American citizens (Pvt. Manning has been held for over a year without being charged with a crime), and the reckless continued cuts in government spending when the economy is already vulnerable. Again, we want something more. 

Well, the bad news for the Tea Party and the like-minded is that your taxes will go up, and they will go up disproportionately.  The sales tax is destined to increase and the wealthy will have succeeded yet again in shifting the tax burden downward, to us. 

And to those of you are now so distraught over the budget deficit, where were you during Reagan years when the size of government tripled? Or during the GW Bush years when government doubled in size?  Heck, even as recently as November of 2010, only 4% of those polled expressed any concern at all for the deficit.

But now we’re willing to knock out the knees of a wobbly economy, and place more
of the burden on the bent backs of the poor, aged and infirm — those who always
bear the brunt of these master plans schemed up by Republicans and, now we see,
even by some Democrats.

*this piece was first published in The Akron Beacon Journal and though it was prompted by events of late last summer, it's still relevant in the frustration many liberals feel w/ the current Administration