In First 100 Days, Obama Moves Too Fast, Spends Too Much
By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Too much, too fast. That's my take on President Obama's first hundred days in office, and it's pretty much the opinion of everyone I've talked to lately. People agree and disagree with the merits of his proposals, and that's fine. But almost to a person, I'm hearing that the speed at which Obama is moving—and spending trillions—is concerning to people.
But "too much, too fast" implies strong leadership too, doesn't it? Say what you want about President Obama, but he's a leader the likes of which we haven't seen in years. Like Reagan, he's coming across well rhetorically. He's changed the tone of the conversation, which is reflected in his approval ratings and the "right track/wrong track" numbers showing that most Americans like him personally despite their policy differences with him. My advice to him would be to slow down—and those numbers will climb even higher.
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Tags: Barack Obama | federal spending | Obama administration
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Reader Comments
Peter Roff is also a good thinker
Peter is also a good thinker but the others are fair to bad
Good observation
I believe Mary Kate is the best thinker US News has here. I missed commenting on her article about the necessity of everyone paying taxes. If we had something like a flat tax along with pay as you go requirements for normal times, we would all then feel the pain of taxes. Many of the President’s fans don’t pay much and make comments like here that everything will be okay if we get the rich to pay more. But the rich already are paying a disproportionate share of income tax, as she points out in her other article, where the poor pay nothing. So it becomes a situation where we all have a vote and the majority decides we want big government with the rich paying for it.
But we would all become fiscal hawks as Mary Kate points out if we all feel the pain of taxation, which would happen if we had something closer to a flat tax without exemptions.
She wrote this in the other article. “According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 20 percent of taxpayers—whose average household pretax income of $250,000 drops to $180,000 after taxes—are paying 69 percent of all federal income taxes and a whopping 86 percent of all individual income taxes.”
Elsewhere I have read where the bottom 50% earners pay only 3%. So if they have to pay more and feel the pain of it, they will want smaller, cheaper government just like the bad old Republicans.
During the campaign this president sounded like Robin Hood, take from the rich via taxes and give to the poor via government programs, but the rich are already getting taken to the cleaners (I am not rich) and he wants to pile on much more.
The traditional Republican model is small simple government which addresses only the essentials, fixing roads, providing defense and so forth, all while cultivating the business environment so that the “pie” gets bigger. Here we are wrecking our economy, the pie is shrinking and we will be fighting each other over scraps. Cultivate business to increase our nations prosperity and minimize government. We are going in the wrong direction with our Robin Hood president.
It Takes Big Efforts to Clean Up W's Mess!
All the champions of the previous Bush administration are surprised what horrible conditions Obama inherited, and in denial of their responsibility as accomplices.
Its just downright nasty to keep blaming Bush's alcohol problem on the state of nation he left over. Really its the Republican policy as "the party who runs on the premise that government doesn't work, then gets elected and proves it."
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