Deja vu Democrats
Objective observers know that Republican legislatures have posted some spotty records, too, but giving Democrats another congressional majority would be fiscal insanity. The evidence lies in Barack Obama’s presidential history and the promises Democrats have made should they be successful in November.
Mr. Obama claims to have inherited the “worst economy in history.” Not quite. President George W. Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke formulated policy to revive it before leaving office. The Troubled Asset Relief Program was controversial, but, by Obama’s January 2009 inauguration, markets had reopened and investment money was available. The Dow hit its low in February. The Great Recession was officially over in June 2009.
Largely due to Barack Obama’s and Democratic congressional majorities’ fiscal excesses and market tinkering, post-recession recovery was the slowest since World War II. With interest, Obama’s failed “stimulus” added $1.2 trillion to the national debt. Stimulus funds went heavily to Democrat-run jurisdictions to avoid unionized public employee layoffs. Obama’s auto-industry bailout violated bankruptcy laws to indemnify the United Auto Workers Union from losses at the expense of senior creditors and taxpayers. Democrats alone passed Obamacare, another budget killer.
Three rounds of Federal Reserve “quantitative easing” (Q.E.) created trillions of unsecured dollars for open-ended purchases of mortgage-backed securities which were intended to simultaneously inject liquidity into markets and pull down interest rates. They did both. One consequence was to wreck returns on savings investments upon which millions of seniors depend.
In 2006, the last time they won a House majority, Democrats posing as spending hawks promised voters fiscal responsibility, and then, while controlling the presidency and Congress, incurred multiple $trillion-plus deficits.
Mr. Obama boasts that he cut deficits “in half.” He didn’t. Republicans did. Deficits were cut by more than half after Republicans retook the House in 2010, and then only in comparison to congressional Democrats’ record profligacy.
At their president’s urging, the Democratic Congress ran up unprecedented deficits and nearly doubled America’s national debt. The $458 billion deficit for Fiscal Year 2008, the last full fiscal year before Obama’s inauguration, was then the largest in the nation’s history. It was dwarfed by Obama’s FY2009 $1.412 trillion deficit. Obama’s smallest deficit, in 2015, was $438 billion after Republicans reined it in.
Now, twelve years later, using the same playbook, Democrats are seeking another House majority.
Again, Democrats are mouthing promises about fiscal restraint, but are campaigning on, among other costly, unpopular items, open borders (indigent, unskilled immigrants burden taxpayers), abolishing ICE (running up costs of public safety), “democratic” socialism, free college, and Medicare-for-all – saying they’ll fund them by taxing “the wealthy.”
In reality, confiscating every asset of America’s “top 1%” wouldn’t cover it all, and there’d be nothing to confiscate in year two. America’s middle class will pay. Markets and the economy will tank as joblessness, deficits and debt soar.
The past is always prologue in Democratic politics, so voters beware: New Democrat majorities would be another fiscal nightmare.
Fool us once, Democrats, shame on you…
