Obama: The Great Scapegoat

The Republicans recently have made claims that, unfortunately, the general population has swallowed hook, line, and sinker due to their unceasing ignorance. In a nutshell, the Republican claims are these:
President Obama has spent us into the poorhouse.
President Obama has not created jobs with "his" spending bills.

So, let's look at these to see where the truth lies.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution is known as the Taxing and Spending Clause. In this clause, CONGRESS is expressly designated as the entity with the power to tax and, implicitly, to spend. Many times we have heard Congress holds the purse strings. This is a true statement. The opposition party to whomever holds the Presidency tends to have intentional memory lapses regarding this Constitutional clause when referring to the sitting President's record when it comes time to gear up for the next election. By virtue of this clause, no President since the founding of this nation has EVER spent a single taxpayer dollar. On the other hand, CONGRESS has spent every single penny of the tax revenues collected AND has authorized every law that subjected the citizenry to any tax.

So, Representative Cantor, Speaker Boehner, Representative Ryan, and other "hardline Republicans"... would you like to explain why the people in your state have voted for a man (you) who is totally ignorant of the definition of the separation of powers and the authority granted to you as members of Congress?

And, speaking of that bastion of support for the little guy (Eric Cantor), when President Obama is asking for taxes to be raised on the top 1% of wage earners, can you explain why you are painting this fact as an attack on the ability of the "average American" to support his family? That's ok, Eric. We know why you are doing it. The "average American", believing wholeheartedly in the American dream, sees himself as being fully capable of becoming one of those top 1%, regardless of the extreme unlikelihood of such an event. So, portraying the proposed allowance of expiration of the Bush tax cuts, through the tactics you are employing, makes it appear to the average person as though they are the ones being targeted, thereby gaining wider support for your argument, regardless of how far beyond the boundaries of reality your claims may be. And, the really unfortunate facts are: the average person has neither the ability to reason out just how far off base your claims are nor the inclination to do so. The citizens of this country are so pissed off at the government that they are willing to listen to anyone who can give them a target at which to vent their anger, regardless of whether the target is the right one or not.

I, for one, would like to see Congress step up and accept responsibility for the wrongness of their own actions instead of passing the buck.

And lest we forget the second claim, the stimulus bill DID create jobs. Due to limitations placed on the bill by Congress, however, it was unable to achieve the initial projections made by President Obama. Where he had originally forecasted 4 million jobs, even with the limited budget for the bill as finally passed by Congress, the bill did create approximately 3.2 million jobs. (The source of this information is the Congressional Budget Office.) Of course, knowing politics as I do, there is no reason the Republicans are going to let truth get in the way of a good story.