Cagle Post: Obama Speech Takeaway: “Government is the Answer”

President Obama, there you go again. Barack Obama giving a speech about the importance of fiscal restraint is like Bill Clinton talking about the importance of telling the truth. It just doesn’t pass the smell test.

The national debt has increased by $3.6 trillion on President Obama’s watch, exploding from $10.6 trillion to $14.2 trillion during the first 27 months of his presidency. Our federal budget deficit is at a record high, largely because of Obama’s trillion dollar “stimulus” plan and trillion dollar healthcare takeover. So when the President, a big government liberal from Chicago, stands up and says he’s now a budget hawk and proposes to cut $4 trillion dollars over 12 years, why should anyone believe that he’s actually going to follow through on this new plan?

President Obama’s core political strategy revolves around spending a lot of taxpayer funds on a lot of government programs. That is his ideology – that government is the answer to society’s problems. But what does President Obama, running for reelection, do when the public rebels against his big government ideology and tells him we need to make unprecedented cuts and reforms to government, for the sake of our children and grandchildren? He pulls a 180. He makes another speech that contradicts his record in the hope that a $1 billion campaign war chest can convince the American people that this time he’s being sincere.

This unprincipled change of direction is not only disingenuous, but it’s also indicative of a politician willing to say and do anything to get re-elected. Let’s look at his record. In 2008, candidate Obama campaigned on deficit reduction. As President, he has done nothing. At this year’s State of the Union address, he could have made entitlement reform and spending cuts a priority. He did not. When the President’s own bi-partisan debt commission came back with serious recommendations to curb the debt he could have embraced them. He chose not to. When he released his budget for fiscal year 2012 in February, the President could have changed direction from the failing status quo to chart a new direction to put us on the path to fiscal solvency. He couldn’t find the political courage to do so.

Read the full op-ed here