Obama is now officially as unpopular as George W. Bush. If not for the fawning mainstream media, or the elites in our universities, or even the run-of-the-mill tweets on Twitter, Obama would be sandbagged with 20% approval rating or less by now. A government that makes giving people stuff which belongs to other people will often buoy their popularity for a length of time, but not for long. Protestors rallied against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela when he ran out of other people’s money to hand out, and Great Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took down Labour because they were not working.
Unlike 1995-1996, Republicans, libertarians, and limited government conservative media outlets are fighting back like never before, doing everything in their power and influence to reshape the debate so that this time around, there will be no question about what happened in 2013. President Obama does not have as fawning a media following as he had enjoyed in 2008, where he coasted on double-digit disapproval of Congress and George W. Bush, and Republicans in general.
Now in 2013, in spite of unprecedented losses across the country, limited government activists held on to the lower chamber of Congress. The House of Representatives, with bipartisan support, refused to continue funding the government without also defunding Obamacare. The US Senate rose in protest and support, depending on the state or the status of their reelection chances in 2014.
The House of Representatives received a clean CR, meaning that the Senate Majority Leader dirtied the bill with amendments fully funding Obamacare.
With a pragmatic push while holding on their core principles, the House sent over another bill, delaying the individual mandate, a repeal of the medical device tax, and from there, with every blunt and blanket rebuff of Senate Majority Reid, the House has responsibly offered partial funding resolutions for our veterans, national parks, and other our federal airports.
He refuses to budge on Obamacare, even though he exempted business owners without Congressional approval. He has also repealed nineteen key provisions of his signature health care law with more signatures on bills properly passed by Congress.
From shut-down to default, Obama is pressing on Congress, and attempting to impress the Press, that the federal government must raise the debt ceiling, a routine part of governance.
President Obama has no integrity on this matter, as the record of His Democratic colleagues refute the argument that the debt ceiling should not feature in any deals between Congress and the President.
Hillary Clinton resisted raising the debt ceiling, affirming that the United States Government needed to pay down its debt.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer also decried raising the debt limit. Harry Reid, as Senate Minority Leader, believed that pushing the debt limit was the last thing that . Hoyer even called the idea “immoral and bankrupt.”
Yet Hoyer has stood with a President who has spent the annual budget into trillion-dollar deficits, plus shepherded (or rather, monstrously orchestrated) a massive boondoggle overhaul of one seventh of the national economy.
Hoyer can holler all he wants about shut-downs, spendthrifts, and even the recalcitrant TEA Party and conservative Democrats in the House, but he cannot demagogue the debt-ceiling issue
Former US Senator, now Secretary of State John Kerry also labeled raising the debt ceiling an irresponsible act. Why Kerry still supports Obamacare, and why his replacement Ed Markey in the US Senate voted to protect a medical device tax which he vocally protested just cannot be explained, let alone justified.
In 2006, President Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling. His reasons? Partisan, certainly, as George W. Bush was still president, and preparing to endure his own shellacking, with widespread Democratic victories in both chambers in November. Yet President Obama resisted raising the debt ceiling, which was a wise move, even if motivated for venal, partisan reasons. Today, as an embattled chief executive reaping consequences for inaction, resistance, and outright attacks against Republicans and the United States Constitution, President Obama is eating his Senator Obama’s own words.
In a similar yet moral vein, the Republican Party, with a growing caucus of Democrats, has voted to delay raising the debt ceiling, to withhold funding on the federal government, until President Obama and the Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid acknowledge that Obamacare is a train wreck, that every American deserves a one-year reprieve from this terrible law, and move to repeal the bipartisanly unpopular medical device tax.
On the debt ceiling dance, President Obama and the Democratic Party in Washington are all left feet, with a record denouncing the raising of the debt ceiling (including the ethically challenged Charles Rangel, who compared granting more money like permitting an alcoholic to drink at an AA meeting with a pledge not to again)
Even billionaire Warren Buffet has offered that the President and Congress should scrap Obamacare and start over. As a corporate capitalist with stockholder, shareholder give-and-trade experience, perhaps the wealthy investor from Nebraska, who supported a higher income tax, would like to instruct the President on reasonable negotiations in Washington politics.
And the importance of not saying one thing on then double-backing just to save face.
Arthur Christopher Schaper is a teacher-turned-writer on topics both timeless and timely; political, cultural, and eternal. A life-long Southern California resident, Arthur currently lives in Torrance.
