Obama’s Budget

This week, President Obama introduced his budget plan for the next ten years. In this budget, the president created a wish list of government policies that sound too good to be true. The unfortunate fact is that these policies are too good to be true. They are simply another deception in the false Demo-Republican rivalry, meant to pull the wool over Americans’ eyes. We can expect the Democrats and Republicans to spend the next weeks and months arguing about it, but in the end we will get the same results that we always see.

President Obama’s budget is meant to serve as a policy statement for the Democratic Party. In this budget, Obama introduces more progressive ideas than he ever did when he and the Democrats were running the country practically unopposed. Obama’s plan is to increase taxes on the ultrarich, close tax loopholes for corporations, and tax individuals and businesses on money earned overseas, then use this increased income to fund programs that benefit the poor and middle class. These programs are things like tax credits for parents, expanded child-care services, and two years of free community college for any American student who qualifies. The budget also calls for a massive investment in infrastructure projects, which is a benefit for all Americans and which will also create thousands of construction jobs and stimulate the economy. However, none of these policy ideas will ever see the light of day, and President Obama knows it.

The White House is not responsible for actually creating the government’s budget. This responsibility falls to Congress, and since the midterm elections, Congress is entirely controlled by the Republicans. The Republican Party is always strongly opposed to any kind of attempt to make Wall Street and the other richest Americans pay their fair share, and they have already laughed off the President’s proposed budget and called it irrelevant. Republican House Speaker John Boehner said, “The president gave the American people a good laugh yesterday,” clearly implying that his party does not take the budget at all seriously. Meanwhile, the president has declared that he will veto any bills Congress passes that he doesn’t like, all but guaranteeing further gridlock.

For the first two years of Obama’s presidency, the Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate. If President Obama truly cared about making these revolutionary changes that would help poor and working class Americans, why didn’t he propose those changes back then? The answer is that the president is not actually interested in making those changes. He is only proposing them now because it’s safe – nobody expects him to actually be able to accomplish these goals when the Republicans are opposing his agenda in the House and the Senate. This budget is just a cynical attempt to appeal to his base, the people who elected him on his platform of “hope” and “change” back in 2008. The goal is for Democratic supporters to forget that Obama did not follow through on any of his promises, and only remember that the Republicans stopped him from accomplishing them in his last two years.

Obama and the Democrats have no more desire to see their friends on Wall Street pay taxes than the Republicans do. This is just another stage of the elaborate deception the Democrats and Republicans have been running for decades. The Demo-Republican party is continuing to represent its real constituents – the investment bankers and the corporations – and nothing is going to change. In the meantime, however, Americans will argue with each other about whose fault it is, and the Democrats and Republicans will continue to blame each other. The Demo-Republican circus will continue, and Wall Street will continue to rob America of its wealth and freedom.

We can’t allow this circus to continue. If you agree with me that this deception needs to end, I urge you to please join me in 2016 and vote for change by casting your write-in vote for Art Drew as President of the United States.