Still blaming Bush

Of course you’ve heard that the Obama Administration froze Federal employees’ paychecks for the next two years. What you probably didn’t hear is that Obama is still blaming the previous administration for the problems he’s expanded by growing government spending. Witness this from the White House;

Because of the irresponsibility of the past decade, the President inherited a $1.3 trillion projected deficit upon taking office and an economic crisis that threatened to put the nation into a second Great Depression. He moved quickly to get the economy moving again. Now, the economy is growing, and we have gained private sector jobs for the past 10 months. But families and businesses are still hurting, and our top priority is making sure that we are doing everything we can to help boost economic growth and spur job creation.

Now I don’t have much sympathy for government employees, many of whom I listened to while they complained that Bush was “only” giving them a 3 or 4% COLA pay increase (in the Metro DC area). I wonder how much they’d like to see that “pittance” over the next two years? But I’d remind them that, although there was a hiring freeze in some agencies, there was never a pay freeze. So is Obama calling those COLA increases for government employees “irresponsibility of the past decade”?

But isn’t it time to stop blaming Bush and admitting that wild-ass expenditures and uncertainty about the upcoming tax status of employees and employers must have something to do with the economy. I’d also like to know what among Bush’s expenditures the Obama Administration wouldn’t have spent. Of course, they’ll say the wars, but that’s an easy thing to do with much of them in the rearview mirror.

I remember we didn’t have any cruise missiles left after the Clinton Administration. MPs in Fort Hood didn’t have 9mm ammo for their annual qulification. Would the Obama Administration left our military to rot? Would they have not up-armored Hummers or built MRAPs? Would they have restricted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from buying risky loans like McCain and Bush tried for years? More importantly, is he going to let the Bush Tax Cuts expire and become the Obama Tax Hike?

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden