Showing that he's finally getting serious about America's debt crisis, Barack Obama submitted his $3.7 trillion dollar budget yesterday while wearing his frowny face. While many Republicans suggested that the president might seem more serious if he actually proposed significant spending cuts, the Whitehouse was quick to point out that thousands of frowny faces caused the government to fall in Egypt, and so it's at least plausible that a similar strategy could cause our debt to fall.
In fairness, the president's budget did contain some specific cost-cutting measures. For example, there is no funding proposed for a return of the Presidential Debt Reduction Commission, who recently said that the federal budget needs at least four times the spending cuts that Mr. Obama is currently proposing.
Among the additional cuts actually suggested by Mr. Obama is reduced funding for home heating for the poor, presumably under the expectation that if Republicans vote for it they'll look like cruel bastards, and if they don't vote for it they'll seem like complete hypocrites. Moreover, freezing people look great on television, and will make taxpayers feel really guilty about the whole "cost cutting" thing.
Of course, what the president lacks in boldness when it comes to spending cuts is more than made up for by his enthusiastic willingness to raise taxes...by as much as $1.5 trillion in 10 years. Mr. Obama suggests raising taxes on the nation's top earners, raising the capital gains tax (which will discourage investment in business), raising the "death tax," reducing deductions for charitable donations, and creating energy taxes which will decrease hiring while raising consumer prices. Ouch.
The submission of the president's budget is expected to be only the first shot in a contentious battle over the nation's faltering economy and unsustainable debt levels. A battle that must finally be fought, because America is living on borrowed time. Or would be, if we had any credit left.
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It's Valentine's Day, and nothing says "romance" like our nation's own first couple, whom we sincerely hope don't have any "special plans" tonight which involve the Lincoln bedroom and a stovepipe hat.
We are, however, curious about whether or not the president will gift Michelle with a traditional box of chocolates. After all, last Easter the first lady replaced all of the candy at the Easter Egg Hunt with healthy fruit, in her continuing effort to give Americans "waistlines I can be proud of for the first time in my adult life."
So does he give her chocolates, thereby showing a lack of respect for her "healthy foods" initiative...or does he skip any such calorie-dense show of affection, thereby declaring that he thinks there's a little too much junk in the first trunk? Either way, we'd like to imagine that the man in the stovepipe hat will be sleeping on a couch tonight.
Happy Valentine's Day to you and yours
from Hope n' Change Cartoons!-
Listening to the mainstream news media lately, you'd get the idea that there's nothing they like better than people filling the streets, peacefully but forcefully demanding freedom from government oppression, and insisting that their voices be heard.
Unless, of course, those streets are anywhere in the United States and the protestors are conservative. In which case the media breathlessly describes flag-waving senior citizens as a cross between Al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan.
Frankly, we're finding the media's enthusiasm for the Egyptian revolution a bit hard to swallow since they didn't seem to have an opinion until the Whitehouse finally declared they were in favor of the protestors...and only after it was clear which side was going to win.
Moreover, in their rush to support Mr. Obama's endorsement of the protestors, much of the mainstream media is downplaying the significant risks of the Egyptian situation and ignoring the possibility that the current instability could lead to an anti-Western theocracy like that of Iran.
Here at Hope n' Change, we're hoping for the best in Egypt. And we're also hoping (but not expecting) that the mainstream media will be equally accepting of the peoples' call for change when it happens right here in 2012.
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