Cents and Sensibility

by Tony Perkins, FRC Washington Update: It was supposed to be a deal that neither party liked. But the bill that hiked taxes on 77.1% of American homes has one fan: President Obama. By passing last week's fiscal cliff band aid, he managed to foist the country's problems onto taxpayers without agreeing to a single cent of spending cuts -- which, it turns out, he never cared about anyway.

That was the biggest surprise of negotiating, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) explained to the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore. For all of his public statements ("spending cuts must be balanced with [tax] reforms"), privately, the President doesn't mind the four straight years of trillion dollar deficits. "At one point several weeks ago," Boehner told Moore, "the President said to me, 'We don't have a spending problem.'" Once he got over his shock, the House Speaker fired back, "'But Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem.' He repeated this message so often, he says, that toward the end of the negotiations, the President became irritated and said: 'I'm getting tired of hearing you say that.'"

Well, "tired" doesn't begin to describe how the American people feel after four years of unprecedented government bloat. The President is right. We don't have a spending problem -- we have a spending emergency. Taxpayers are on the hook for another $5,000,000,000,000 under this administration's first term alone. How many more zeroes will it take before the White House admits the obvious? Washington's spending addiction is so out of control that Congress couldn't pass a fiscal cliff bill without adding $70 billion in new earmarks and tax loopholes. Even the Senate wouldn't help Sandy victims without helping themselves to millions in new pork for everything from fisheries to forestry. And entitlement spending (on programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) is so exorbitant that the new deal had to raise taxes on every worker's salary to pay for it!

Now, Democrats say the fiscal cliff is just the tip of the taxing iceberg. According to The Hill, the President's party is pushing for another trillion in "new revenue" before the year is out. Tough luck, says Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). As far as Republicans are concerned, they've compromised enough. "The tax issue is finished. Over. Completed," he said.

With America bumping up against its credit limit, it's time to stop bleeding taxpayers dry and put meaningful spending reform on the table--something President Obama insists he's already done. "He's now claiming he already cut $1 trillion in 2011, largely by 'cutting' spending no one ever planned to spend," Jonah Goldberg explains. "So if I plan to build an orbital Death Star for $10 trillion and then think better of it, I've cut $10 trillion according to Mr. Obama's math." Based on the last four years, America will have to look beyond the President's "math" to find its way out of this mess. In the meantime, I think we could find plenty of sponsors for a congressional chapter of Spenders Anonymous.

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Tags: Tony Perkins, FRC, Family Research Council, spending emergency, federal government To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!