Your Opinion: Promises and job performance

Dear Editor:

Remember, prior to getting elected the first time, Obama told us about his plan to stimulate the economy by borrowing billions and handing the money out as part of a national giveaway? He told us that he would have unemployment down to 5 percent by now. You can see a copy of his plan by doing a Google search for "Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan", dated Jan 9, 2009.

Looking at the latest jobs report here is what we have received for the trillions of borrowed money Obama has blown. Unemployment is now 7.6 percent. It has averaged 7.6 percent for the past four months.

There are 144.0 million people employed, the same number that were employed in November 2008. The labor participation rate (the people employed versus the over 16 year old population) is 63.5 percent. That number has averaged 63.4 percent for the year, the lowest in 30 years. (No doubt some of the lower labor participation rate is due to the number of baby boomers retiring.

Why work when you fall into one of two classes. Either the government robs you blind and hands over your money to others, or it offers you so many benefits you chose to sit on your butt rather than work.)

At the end of fiscal 2008 that national debt was $9.99 trillion. Obama's 2014 budget proposal estimates that the debt will be $18.2 trillion by the end of fiscal 2014. For comparison, at the end of 2000, the start of the Bush presidency, the debt was $5.6 trillion. (A $4.4 trillion debt increase during the eight years of the Bush presidency versus a $8.2 trillion increase in six years of Obama.)

Don't blame these massive deficits on lack of income. Obama's budget projects that the income of the federal government will be $2.71 trillion for 2013, the highest it has ever been.

The problem is not that the federal government does not have enough income, the problem is that federal politicians/bureaucrats are far more interested in currying favor with special interest groups, or feathering their own nests, than they are doing what is best for taxpayers. The current IRS scandal certainly shows that federal employees are prone to action that minimizes the impact of anyone who supports reducing the size of the federal government.