"I DON'T Feel Your Pain" or "It's the Economy, Stupid"

"And, you know, the stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics. You know, it bobs up and down day to day. And if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you’re probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong."

- Pres. Barack Obama

I am of the firm opinion that Pres. Obama's response to the financial crisis can fairly be called an abject failure, a mere six weeks after his inauguration. I don't deny that he inherited a nearly unprecedented mess, one which seems to befuddle many of the world's foremost economic experts. Then how, you may ask, can you rush to judgment on his program?

If President Obama were focused on implementing policies aimed at resolving the liquidity crisis and stimulating our domestic economy, and those policies were enjoying limited or mixed success, I'd say hang in with him. But, in fact, what's happening is that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are more focused on using the crisis to consolidate their power than in addressing our economic crisis.

It's as if the day after 9/11 President Bush began stumping for repealing Roe v Wade, school vouchers, and a defense of marriage amendment, all of which he claimed were critical problems that had to be solved if we were to win the war on terrorism. Everyone would have justly and roundly criticized him for not focusing on the true crisis at hand - the terrorist threat to the nation.

Well, here we are teetering on the precipice of global depression and what is our President spending his time doing? Stumping around the country for massive tax and spend programs that will only add to our economic woes, both now and in the future:

• Cap and trade (a tax of at least $650B over ten years)
• Health care reform (a cost of at least $1 trillion over ten years)
• Reducing tax breaks for charitable giving
• Reducing tax breaks for mortgage interest (!)
• Closing Gitmo
• Green energy subsidies
• Thousands of wasteful earmark projects
• Cutting back domestic oil exploration
• Shutting down Yucca Mountain
• Taking away school vouchers from deserving families in Washington DC
• Reinstating federal funding for embryonic stem cell research
• Reinstating federal funding for abortions

This administration is providing no leadership on the economy. The markets have voted with their dollars - each day the markets hit new lows - especially after a speech by Obama or Geithner. But worse, the Obama administration is demonstrating how little it cares about fixing the economy. You don't go around warning of impending catastrophe and threatening huge tax hikes if you want to restore confidence in the economy. Why then is Pres. Obama doing this? Because, apparently, his priority is exploiting this crisis to expand the power of government to a degree never seen before in our nation's history.

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." - Rahm Emanuel, Obama Chief of Staff

Fortunately, it appears that more than a few Democrats are worried about following Pres. Obama down this path. They realize that the markets and the American people are beginning to lose faith in the President, and they fear a backlash that could send them packing in 2010 in a way that makes 1994 look pale. The job of Republicans in Congress is to make sure those Democrats are forced to stand and be counted.