How lovely that the young are willing to share their wisdom with the old! It makes me optimistic.
I am also optimistic that after years and years of economic and political turmoil, America will eventually sober up and realize that it cannot fund entitlements and government programs forever via the issuance of debt. It appears right now America is of two minds on the subject, and this is likely to go on for a long time.
Facts, however, will intrude at some point.
Anyone not a union president acknowledges that our entitlement programs are on the road to bankruptcy and have to be reformed. Anyone not a union president has to be uneasy at 1 billion a year in annual deficits, funded by endless debt issued by the Federal Reserve and Treasury.
I am sure Mr. Obama recognizes both truths. He is not overly concerned, since he is confident that he can successfully blame Republicans for tax increases and spending cuts that he agreed to a few years ago.
Mr. Obama's plan to fix entitlement deficits: ignore them and they will go away.
Mr. Obama's plan to fix current annual deficits: ignore them and they will go away.
Mr. Obama's plan, as I understand it: if we tax rich people and keep issuing lots of debt, somewhere along the line we will have an economic recovery based on wind and solar power and everything will fix itself.
Thankfully, Mr. Obama has been predicting economic recovery since 2008. At some point, I suppose, he will be right, although whether that point arrives in the next 4 years I am not sure.
In the meantime, Eternal Optimist is confident that we could trim the budget, begin fixing entitlement funding, and not cause an economic catastrophe. Mr. Obama, and 52% of America, disagree. So we won't do it anytime soon. Simple as that.
[Caveat: at this point, since I have disagreed with Mr. Obama, I will have been called an elitist, a racist, a fascist and possibly a warmonger. This is a verbal tic that passes for debate among some of my Obamaista friends. I am none of the above.]
The Republicans must feel like they are negotiating with the Palestinians, whose idea of good faith is to demand that you submit to genocide and then blame you for unreasonably breaking off negotiations.
All of this was easily predictable. The Obama Administration is just Chicago machine politics writ large. The Machine is good at winning elections, but bad at governing. To study our fate as a nation, study the City of Chicago and State of Illinois.
Ugh.
