I recently read the column “President Obama displays incompetence,” by Alligator columnist Joshua Fonzi. With all due respect to the author, this column is highly typical of the “things are bad and no matter who made them bad, blame Obama” argument.
The fact is that Republicans have been obstructing everything President Obama has tried to do, and this is more the “John Boehner Economy” than the “Obama Economy.”
President Obama, for instance, has a job bill that would create four million jobs, but Republicans have blocked nearly every part of it.
Last month, the unemployment numbers went back up even as the private sector continued to create more jobs. How is that possible? Because state and local governments led by Republicans are laying off workers like there’s no tomorrow.
Fonzi mentioned how Obama was using taxpayer money to travel to more campaign events than Bush did. Perhaps the author was unaware that Obama has already reimbursed more campaign travel expenses than Bush did in all eight years as president — that’s not something you’d hear on Fox News.
While we’re on the topic of jobs and Obama’s performance, does the author remember the promise that the stimulus bill would prevent unemployment from going above 8 percent? Well, as it turns out, we were already at 9 percent unemployment when the Congressional Budget Office made that prediction.
Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics comes out with an initial estimate of unemployment, then halfway through the month, it comes out with a revised estimate. We were between the initial and revised estimates when the Congressional Budget Office made that statement.
I guess we don’t hear that too often because it’s not great politics to say, “Oh, we were wrong because we didn’t even know how high unemployment was in the first place,” but those are the facts.
Fonzi also mentioned that Romney may not be wonderful, but that he knows how to use a calculator and balance a budget. When Romney ran Bain Capital, the company would buy out failing and struggling companies and “make them profitable” by firing a quarter of the workers and lowering pay and benefits, while also using outsourced labor.
Recently, Romney tried to defend his record by saying there’s a difference between “outsourcing” (which he defines as firing American workers and moving their jobs overseas) and “offshoring” (which he defines as creating new jobs overseas instead of creating them here).
Every time Obama talks about giving tax breaks to companies for not outsourcing, Romney says he “doesn’t want to pick winners and losers,” so I think it’s clear that Romney’s record of outsourcing at Bain Capital reflects how he would govern as president.
In sum, if Obama were our king, Fonzi would be 100 percent correct. But Obama is not a king; he’s a president who has limited power and must deal with representatives whose No. 1 priority is to make him a one-term president rather than work together to create jobs for American workers.
Finally, for full disclosure, I will admit that I too am a lifelong Republican. However, I am horrified by the extreme hardcore fiscal conservatism that has become popular with the Tea Party.
I never thought I’d hear people like Michelle Bachmann or Dick Morris say that it would be OK for the U.S. to not raise the debt ceiling and be in technical default. According to this new extreme fiscal conservatism, as long as we pay for the interest on the national debt, fund the military and keep social security solvent, everything else can remain unfunded.
I never dreamed my party would come out with the proposed Ryan Budget that block-grants Medicaid back to the states with such large cuts, it practically ends the program. It also virtually turns Medicare into a voucher program, making the average senior citizen pay $6,000 more per year. (Yes, I know the Ryan Budget has a $6,125 voucher for poor senior citizens, but only for extremely poor senior citizens.)
I agree with Jeb Bush — I can’t even reorganize my own party anymore!
William Deich is a UF alumnus with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in computer science.
