It's Time For Obama to Put Country Before Party

On Saturday President Barack Obama gave another weekly address, but this one was especially hypocritical.

Obama’s request for the GOP to do what is best for the country instead of what is best for the party is laughable. This is from the president who, when Paul Ryan put a serious plan forth to deal with the debt and produce more growth for the economy, reacted with demagoguery rather than taking the issue seriously and offering either a competing plan or changes to Ryan’s Plan.

Then after attacking the Ryan plan, he quit governing to start his 2012 campaign.  Neither he nor his party have yet to come up with a comparable plan to seriously deal with either the economy or the debt.  President Obama showed a complete lack of leadership during the debt ceiling debate. During those negotiations he held a press conference to complain about tax breaks for corporate jets and attacking the GOP, but he never brought that up as an issue in the meetings with the GOP leadership before that point.

Is that the example of putting country ahead of politics he wants Congress to follow? Or does he mean he was such an obstruction to getting anything done that Congress was forced to cut him out? It appeared he wanted to stop any deal to try to win the shutdown. He pushed for 50% more in tax hikes when GOP was caving to his plan before they realized a deal could not be done with Obama. Is that what he means by doing what is best for the country?  

He sure did not care what was best for the country in his first two years when it was all about what his party wanted to do for years, like Rahm Emmanuel said “never waste a crisis.” The first two years he paid back supporters with so called “stimulus”, Obamacare,  and more regulations.  What did that accomplish? He added more debt and prevented a serious recovery in the economy that seemed likely by January 2010, if he had just done nothing.

Even if spending to create jobs ever worked it would not do so now.  We need to create stability and a pro-growth environment. Part of that is having confidence that Washington will deal with its spending problems. With so much worry that we will go the path of Greece and refuse to deal with spending issues, more spending would only lead to less confidence and a worse economy.  This is demonstrated by the recent sell off in the stock market. The only worse idea to create jobs would be to extend or increase unemployment benefits. Great idea, increase subsidies for unemployment and wonder why we get more unemployment.  

Then he proposes more temporary payroll tax cuts which are never a good solution to create long term job growth. Only a few weeks ago Obama was saying we need to generate more revenue. Now I guess we don’t need any more revenue.  Since he apparently thinks we no longer need to worry about debt, I’m surprised he didn't propose increasing aid to states (to bail out irresponsible states like Illinois) at the expense of responsible states like Wisconsin that are doing the right things to fix their budgets.

I would just point out the definition of insanity is to do same thing and expect different results.

Ironically, Obama has the ability to do some of the most important things that could be done to improve the economy without spending a dime.  The problem is, he would need put his country before his party and his ideology.  Start with reigning in out of control regulatory agencies.

1. Have the department of the interior stop obstructing the energy industry like recently when Exxon had a major new find thought to be a billion barrels of oil, and they have to sue to get the right to develop the find.
2. Get control of the EPA which is creating uncertainty for manufacturing jobs, with no telling how far they will go. They have threatened to implement Cap & Trade without congress. They stopped Shell in Alaska because of concern over carbon emissions of ice breakers, etc.
3. Stop the ridiculous NLRB lawsuit against Boeing which sends a message that the US is not going to be fair to employers who choose do business in right to work states if they have operations in strong union states. This is bad for all states as it tells employers that don’t have operations in north not to start one, and if you are in the north, just go outside the US, certainly not to the south, to improve competiveness. Also have NLRB stop trying to implement Card Check and other anti employer regulations to force more unions and kill jobs.

Then if he really wanted to do what is best for country, he would repeal Obamacare, Sarbanes-Oxley, and Frank-Dodd regulations. After that he could work jointly with GOP to reform entitlements and cut at least $150 billion out of the 2012 budget.  These steps would create more jobs than his first stimulus ever dreamed of creating.  I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for him to put country ahead of party though.