Lame Duck Congress 2010 or Just Plain Lame?

The American people haven't sent such glaring screams of dissatisfaction over the presiding administration and its policies to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since 1948. One would think that this would have been enough for President Obama and the Democratic Party to get the message that the American public is now flat out rejecting their policies and if they want to keep their jobs, perhaps they should consider changing the way they have been running the show ... right into the ground.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple of years you would realize that the United States has been experiencing the toughest recession in recent history, certainly since The Great Depression. As of October 2010 the jobless rate is at a staggering 9.6%. Entire communities have been abandoned and boarded up as people lost their homes due to the closing/down-sizing/relocation of many businesses. To compound our economic woes the real estate bubble finally burst and values have plummeted.

A direct quote regarding US unemployment labor statistics: "The unemployment rate in the United States was last reported at 9.60 percent in October of 2010. From 1948 until 2010 the United States' Unemployment Rate averaged 5.70 percent reaching an historical high of 10.80 percent in November of 1982 and a record low of 2.50 percent in May of 1953." (This record low unemployment was experienced in the US during President Eisenhower's administration.)

I find it interesting that over the past two years whenever someone who does not support the Obama administration would point out the obvious flaws with their policy the automatic defense would be, "Well if President Bush wouldn't have screwed up the economy so badly then it wouldn't have been so hard for the Obama Administration to fix it. You can't very well expect the Obama administration to perform miracles in such a short period f time." I find that to be an odd defense as "miracles" were exactly what Barack Obama promised the American public in order to get elected. I believe his platform was called "hope and change." But two years into the "hope and change" administration even the staunchest Obama supporters have realized that they had voted for nothing more than "smoke and mirrors" as they publicly express their weariness having to constantly attempt to defend his administration's policies.

So now here we are post election 2010 and we have a lame duck congress as a letter was delivered to Democratic Senator Harry Reid on December 1, 2010 stating, "We write to inform you that we will not agree to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers. With little time left in this Congressional session, legislative scheduling should be focused on these critical priorities." This letter was signed by all 42 members of the Republican Caucus.

I find it mind-boggling that anyone would oppose extending the Bush tax-cuts in light of the fact that our nation is experiencing such a terrible recession. I am further mystified as to why anyone would think that a tax-cut across the board would harm the economy. The fact that the Democratic party has somehow misled some members of the American public to thinking that unless the taxes of "the super rich" are raised the entire country would suffer because of that "lost government income."

Here are a couple of simple facts to help misled Americans gain a bit of perspective:

1. Once that tax money is taken from the people the government decides how to spend that money without any input from the American people. So far the Obama administration has handed out trillions of dollars to bail out failing big business and increased the size of (you guessed it) the government. How did the average American public benefit from these expenditures of their hard-earned money?

2. Who exactly are "the super rich" that the Democratic party has been working so hard to demonize? Many are the owners of small businesses that keep the economy chugging along by creating jobs as they experience growth. They are also the people that offer their income for investment into other companies which allows greater economic growth = jobs for the American public. I can't think of one sound reason why cutting taxes across the board would harm the economy. But as I have the vantage point of someone who deals with private sector investors, I do know firsthand how it will help stimulate our languishing economy.

Perhaps the Democrats just refuse to admit that former President George Bush actually did something right and that by extending the part of his policy that would keep taxes from going up across the board it would further amplify the glaring failure of the current administration? The arrogant implications of such should infuriate every single American citizen regardless of party affiliation.

Just in case there are still any stragglers who have the same "put your fingers in your ears and continue to ignore the reality around us" illness as President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid seem to suffer from here is a bit of truth that may help your transition back to planet earth. President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981. As previously stated the nation's unemployment rate had hit an historical high of 10.8% in November 1982 during his presidency. Despite this fact, it was during his two back-to-back presidential terms that our nation enjoyed a period of economic uber-bounty now remembered as the "80's decade of excess." Reagan had it far worse than Obama and yet he somehow managed to pull a rabbit out of his economic policy hat. What was his particular brand of magic, now dubbed "Reaganomics"? Reaganomics " advocated controlling the money supply to reduce inflation, and spurring economic growth by reducing tax rates , government regulation of the economy, and certain types of government spending." ...which is exactly the direction that the Republican party is again trying to steer our nation in an attempt to prevent us from heading further into treacherous economic waters that the Obama administration has been sending us full steam ahead.

And yet Senator Harry Reid and the Democratic Party have the audacity to spin this recent majority-voter sanctioned behavior by the Republican Party to make extending the Bush cuts across the board a priority as "the Republicans attempting to halt economic progress"? Could someone please explain this spin to me because I find it to be confusing. But then again, I also don't have my nose in the air, my fingers in my ears, nor do I have my hand out waiting for more "wealth redistribution."

I come from a long line of the hard-working self-employed that made this nation one of the mightiest in the world. Because you either did what you had to do to swim or you sank, pointblank = economic Darwinism. My parents escaped from a communist country so I am well-schooled in the fact that though that type of system looks real sweet on paper, in reality it flops. Unfortunately, I'd never had the good fortune to own a big business so when our economy tanked the Obama administration didn't have any of those trillions to gift my struggling business. Heck, I couldn't even get unemployment because I was self-employed. I have yet to see any benefit from Obamacare and it seems that nobody else has either.