President Barack Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders have hypocritically promised since taken office in January that are going to be “deficit hawks”. We have not even reached the one-year anniversary of the Inauguration and the same Democratic leaders are raising the debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion.    The national debt is already nearing $12.1 trillion and the economic geniuses in DC have realized that their historic deficit spending has made it imperative to raise the ceiling.

The federal deficit for last fiscal year that ended at the end of September was around $1.4 trillion. To put that into perspective, the federal budget for all of 2008 was $2.9 trillion. To be fair, and to prevent my left-leaning friends from hyperventilating, some of that deficit belongs to President Bush, but in the first 2 months of this fiscal year the Obama administration has spent $296.7 billion in the red. Project that out for the next 12 months and the 2010 federal deficit will be about $1.8 trillion. Of course we have to consider that the “emergency” stimulus spending has not really even started to be spent. 

Based on President Obama’s penchant for socialist government, you can guarantee his response to the crippling deficit and ever-increasing debt will be to raise taxes. His tax increases will be “targeted” towards only the “rich”, but it will soon become apparent that the definition of rich will be continually redefined until the majority of the middle class will be hit as well. Of course the net result of his tax hikes will be an even bigger hit to the economy than his disastrous policies have already been. "There is no such thing as government money - only taxpayer money." William Weld

The bureaucrats in Washington have expelled so much hot air making promises about deficits, bailouts, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and health care that if I believed in the global warming hoax, I would be worried about a real life Day After Tomorrow. Thank God the carbon dioxide being spewed out in DC has no effect on our climate. Unfortunately the idiotic economic policies coming out of Washington will have lasting effects that our children and grandchildren will feel. To borrow a line from the President’s campaign, “It is time for Change!”

President Barack Obama has decided that all of this reckless spending has to stop. He has told Congress that they must now cut $1 from somewhere else in the budget for every $1 that they spend. The concept is not an original idea; in 2006 the Democrats gained control of Congress with promises to turn the tide of Republican spending. They promised to never introduce a spending measure without a means to pay for it. Of course, in the 2 years following their takeover of Congress they simply ignored their own rules. They added $398 billion in deficit spending without any concern for being seen as hypocritical.

For a bit of perspective, $398 billion is a mere drop in the bucket when compared to the $1 trillion forecasted by the Congressional Budget Office to be added to the deficit spending for every year for the next decade. Of course, the President added a few caveats to his “pay-go” requirement. He conveniently provided an exception for his health care reform spending which has been forecasted to cost the taxpayers at least another $1 trillion in deficit spending. To make matters worse, Obama warns that now is the only time to pass health care reform. He is trying to gin up fear to provide pressure on Congress to pass yet another disastrous spending measure. At this point with nearly $12 trillion in projected deficit spending over the next 10 years, why should we care about spending an additional $1 trillion of money we don’t have?

Over the past few weeks I have focused on the hypocrisy of President Obama and the rest of the political class in Washington DC. After reading the responses I have come to an interesting conclusion. There is just as much hypocrisy among his breathless devotees. Before I begin to detail the duplicity of those experiencing chills running up their legs, allow me to explain that not all of those who support the President’s socialistic agenda are hypocrites. There are some that support Obama and his misguided policies because they truly believe that socialism, for the first time in human history, will actually work. There are others, those of which I am referring to as hypocrites, which were vehemently opposed to various policies under the Bush administration, but are jumping to their feet to applaud the very same policies under an Obama administration.

During the summer of 2007, President Bush and members of both political parties were pushing for “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” that would grant amnesty to more than 12 million illegal aliens. The public outcry against the ill-conceived legislation was swift and fierce. Congress quickly folded under the public pressure and defeated the measure. The opposition to the amnesty bill was made up of conservatives, liberals, and moderates. Last week President Obama spoke of the need for immigration reform that would again grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. Yet the silence from the Kool Aid drinking followers of the President was deafening. Why would someone oppose amnesty when proposed by Bush but yet support it when proposed by Obama? 

During the 8 years of the Bush presidency, the screams against deficit spending came again from both conservatives and liberals alike. Conservatives railed against foolish legislation that added to the deficit spending. We opposed the expensive Medicare Prescription Drug plan because of the outrageous cost of the measure. We opposed the reluctance of Bush to veto any spending measure sent to his desk from Congress. Now that President Obama is in office, the some of the same people screaming at Bush’s deficit spending are strangely silent about President Obama’s budget plans that will increase the federal deficit by 4 times to $9.3 trillion. Why is it evil when Bush spends more than the government collects in tax revenue, but it is perfectly fine when Obama quadruples the deficit spending in his first 8 weeks in office?

When the news reports came out about the problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the outrage at Bush was immense. The anger was aimed at Bush because of the treatment of our country’s bravest men and women. President Obama even campaigned on better treatment for our veterans. Unfortunately this was yet another campaign pledge that was nothing more than empty campaign rhetoric. Last week the leaders of the American Legion reported on the President’s proposal to force the private insurance companies of combat injured veterans to pay for the medical costs associated with treating their combat related injuries. Again there was no cry from the swaying masses of the Obama acolytes. Why would they not care about the treatment of veterans by the Obama administration?

The answer to the above questions is obvious to anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty, hypocrisy. If you have the courage of your convictions, it will not matter who is proposing a policy. If the policy is at odds with your core beliefs then you will oppose it regardless of which political party is proposing it. I have been accused of being blinded by my partisanship, but if you read anything I wrote over the last year it would become obvious that my conservatism has remained steady. If a Republican, such as Bush, proposed something with which I disagreed, I voiced my opposition. On the same token, when Obama has said or done something with which I have agreed, I voiced my support. The only question that I have for those incapable of being honest with themselves is what flavor is the Obama Kool Aid?