President Obama’s approval rating for handling the economy has been abysmally low for months, somewhere in the mid-30s. June’s disappointing job data will likely drive those numbers even lower. In June, the unemployment climbed to 9.2 %, with an overall gain of only 18,000 jobs. Even that paltry number is likely much lower. The New York Post reported that Obama’s Labor Department reduced the number of employed in May to show an artificial June increase. Labor also added 131,000 job numbers for phantom “start-up” businesses as a ploy to keep positive job growth numbers.
Now the President wants to sucker punch the Republicans by forcing them to agree to a trillion dollar tax hike in return for promises to cut entitlement spending and/or reform the tax codes. Republicans know that tax hikes would occur but the promised reforms would not. Democrats would quickly spend new tax revenues and then blame any bad economic news on Republicans. Obama has waited until the last minute to start promising reforms of complicated programs that would require months or years to resolve. It’s foolish for Republicans to give serious consideration to anything he says about deficit reduction. Under his leadership, the deficit has mushroomed by $4 trillion in less than three years, and ObamaCare, with its myriad regulations and requirements, is yet to be fully unleashed.
Why is the President suddenly fixated on a bipartisan solution to the Aug. 2 debt-ceiling “crisis” when the Democrats have not even bothered to pass a budget in over two years? Throughout 2009, Democrats controlled all three branches of government and the word “bipartisan” wasn’t even in their vocabulary. Did Obama and the Democrats learn anything from their November 2010 shellacking? Apparently not. But the voters did, and 2012 is looming on the horizon.
Jim Littlejohn
Concerned Coastal Voters
Gualala, CA 95445
