Libertarian doles out reality check

Bryce Benefield

In 2008, the Democratic Party took the legislative branch of our nation by storm in what I like to call the “anti-Bush” election. Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were the respective leaders of the House and Senate, while the executive branch of our government changed hands to the Democratic Party. Essentially this means that for two solid years, the Democrats led by Barack Obama held almost exclusive power over the legislating authority of our country. In layman’s terms: Barack Obama had a two year window to introduce any legislation he could come up with to fix or at least address the troubles of our nation. With such power and responsibility, what were the results?

The current state of the union is as follows: there has been no balanced budget or change in the political culture or partisanship in Washington. We’re increasing our deficit spending, meaning that we are now going further into the red every year, more than ever before. No substantial or strategic military cuts  were enacted (I don’t consider cutting veterans benefits, while increasing personnel in Afghanistan to be strategic.) We haven’t seen legitimate immigration reform. Obama’s executive order is now being fought over in court, not because of the principles involved in the policy, but because he acted outside of his constitutional authority. I’ll top this incomplete list off with the fact that we haven’t even seen an effort or notion to reform the Dodd-Frank bill, which is the piece of legislation making our banking system so unstable.

So now that we’re aware of the fact that Obama had plenty of opportunity to introduce and pass proactive legislation, how does his administration stack up against the abysmal record of his predecessor?

Let’s keep this short and look at the numbers. Beyond our tax code, the single largest problem facing the fiscal and economic sustainability of our country is the amount of deficit spending our government has done already, and how much it is slated to do.  Under the Bush administration, the national debt, as well as deficit spending, sky-rocketed, adding an unprecedented $4.6 trillion in his two four-year terms.

In Jan. 2008, the national debt was climbing somewhere over $10.4 trillion—this number alone is terrible. In less than half the time that George Bush was president, the national debt has climbed to $16.05 trillion. That’s an increase in our national debt of around $5.6 trillion. Therefore, during Obama’s turn to watch over our nation, he broke George W. Bush’s record for being the single largest and most debt inducing president in history in half the time. This is terrible, without even mentioning the fact that our GDP is now embarrassingly smaller than our debt at 15.3 trillion dollars.

I’m not insulting anyone’s character and I don’t want to play partisan games. Ultimately whether you’re a liberal, a conservative, or a moderate, etc; reducing the size of our already bloated government both domestically and abroad is the only means of paying back any debt or having any form of an economic recovery. Americans: your country’s economy will not function normally until you have performed the standard operating procedure of balancing your budget. It’s basic math — the only real place Americans are spending wildly beyond our means these days is through our public credit cards and Barack Obama had the charge card for two of his four years. The people voted the house into conservative hands in 2010. Please, think and vote responsibly.

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