The High Price Tag of the Obama Administration
September 30, 2009
by: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)

Government WasteWatch, Fall 2009

Almost every problem that America faces can be traced to the size, unmanageability and bureaucratic inertia of big, wasteful government, along with the rise of the administrative state and central planning.  From the failure of government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to the fiscal insolvency of the postal system and the impending bankruptcy of Medicare, Washington has proven time and again that the best solutions are seldom found inside the Beltway.  Yet the Obama administration continues to look for new sectors of American economic life over which to exert its control.

The pace at which President Obama has pursued his radical agenda and the intensity with which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has bullied that agenda through Congress have only deepened our economic crisis.  One thousand-page bills are rammed through committees and brought to a vote without sufficient time for members of Congress to read them.  Indeed, the President who promised to restore American confidence in government with unprecedented transparency and accountability has actually proceeded in the first months of his administration to encourage more wasteful spending and more serious abuses of executive power.

Early in his administration, the President signed a $787 billion so-called “stimulus” into law with high hopes of jump-starting the economy.  Once Americans got a glimpse of the stimulus in action, questions arose about whether the President had jobs creation or political spoils in mind.  Rather than sending money into “shovel-ready” jobs like the administration promised, untold millions became immediately available for organizations like ACORN, a left-wing activist group whose reputation for voter registration fraud and corporate embezzlement is the subject of ongoing Congressional investigations.

As the nation now faces record unemployment levels, it is clear that the President’s economic policies are not only failing but that they could be doing greater damage. Unprecedented levels of government spending and a new wave of tax increases are creating a perfect economic storm to siphon off the remaining private sector capital that withstood the current recession.  Earlier this summer, when reports emerged from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that revealed the administration’s failure to stabilize unemployment numbers, the President’s response was staggering: spend more money, and spend it faster. 

Everywhere in America, people are waking up to the recklessness of President Obama’s handling of the recovery efforts.  An August poll by Gallup and USA Today revealed that 57% of Americans say the stimulus is having no impact on the economy or is actually making things worse.  Economists like Nouriel Roubini of NYU’s Stern School of Business have raised the possibility of a double-dip recession due to outsized budget deficits and soaring energy prices.

Yet when members of Congress have questioned the effectiveness of the President’s stimulus, the President’s Chief of Staff, former Democratic Congressman Rahm Emanuel, appeared to orchestrate a series of letters to state governors with threats to cut off federal funding if the criticisms continued.  What sort of intimidation and Chicago-style tactics the administration plans for the majority of voters who also question the President’s policies has yet to be seen, although the White House had at one point set up a tip-line where Americans can report on each other about opposition to the President’s proposals.  After citizens expressed widespread outrage, the administration decommissioned the tip-line. 

In the first year of the Obama administration, government spending in 2009 will top $3.7 trillion against a $1.58 trillion deficit, and more than 46 cents of every dollar that Washington spends is now borrowed, primarily from China.  In fact, the President has proposed the highest deficit budget in American history, one that promises to grow permanent “base” spending 43 percent faster than inflation, not counting the trillion dollar cost of the Obama health care plan.

In his efforts to grow the government, the President has fixed like a laser on creating government-run system for nationalized health care.  If enacted by Congress, the Obama plan for healthcare alone would create 53 new federal bureaucracies and cost $1.28 trillion in deficit spending.  When that amount is added to the cost of his energy policies, the President has increased the annual tax bill of every American by thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile, unemployment has spiked to the highest levels in more than a quarter century, with states like California, Michigan, Nevada, and South Carolina meeting or surpassing their record unemployment highs.  As the rest of the nation suffers the pains of economic recession, however, Washington D.C. has six job postings – most of which are government jobs – for every unemployed person.  In Miami, for instance, there is one job for every ten unemployed Americans. A recent study by the Rockefeller Institute of Government demonstrated that while the private sector has shed 6.9 million jobs since the beginning of the recession, the number of government employees continues to rise.

Unless the people whose government the President has the four-year privilege of leading are able to find a strong voice to say “No You Won’t” to the “Yes We Can” administration, this generation of Americans will be the first to leave our country poorer and weaker to our children and grandchildren.  Or perhaps by vigilant oversight of this administration we can cut government waste and reduce government spending to get America back on track to economic prosperity.

Unlike President Obama, Americans know they cannot spend their way out of a recession.  But they might be able to vote their way out of it.