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United States News Title: The Last Refuge Of The Incompetent (That would be The Kenyan and his fellow Democrats) Recent events, along with the continued bleeding of the U.S. economy and Wall Street, underscore the desperation of the party in power to escape responsibility for its failures. Case in point: The president, speaking in Wisconsin on Wednesday, lashed out at Republicans: "We already tried the other side's ideas. We already know where their theories led us. And now we have a choice as a nation." We must have missed the Democrats' attempt to enact broad-based tax cuts, for instance, to boost the economy like they did each time they've been tried in the past. Truth is, "the other side's ideas" have been studiously ignored in our financial crisis and recession. Unemployment remains close to 9.7% and, based on even White House estimates, is unlikely to improve much. Vice President Joe Biden himself has noted that, under current Democratic policies, "there's no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession." Of course, he too blames the GOP, though his party has controlled Congress since 2006 and its earlier policies, such as the Community Reinvestment Act and the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were responsible for the 2007-08 financial meltdown. Democrats like to style themselves as the party of the little guy. But small businesses are going bankrupt in droves while unemployment among black males is averaging 16.3% — well above last year's 14.8%. In March, 1.8 million African-American men were without work — the most on record. Now we see signs the economy's improvement may soon stall — and perhaps even slide backwards. On Thursday, we learned that June auto sales dropped 4.3% while May pending home sales plunged 30%. Consumer confidence has fallen sharply, and financial markets are in a tailspin. Also this week, the Congressional Budget Office reported that federal debt by year-end will soar to 62% of GDP — highest since World War II, when the U.S. went deeply into the red and killed off the private economy in order to beat the Nazis. Worse, the CBO said debt will hit 87% of GDP by 2020, rise above its record peak of 109% by 2025 and hit a stunning — and financially ruinous — 185% by 2035. CBO chief Doug Elmendorf told the White House's deficit commission this week that those rising levels of debt, fueled by uncontrolled federal spending, might lead to "higher interest rates, more foreign borrowing, less private investment and lower income growth, if not a full-blown fiscal crisis." While there's been modest job growth this year, business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable warn that government policies of higher taxes and big spending will squeeze future private-business sales. Without private-sector growth, there will be no recovery and no sustained rebound in job creation. Compassion for the little guy comes from understanding this very simple point — not from pointing fingers and mouthing vacuous economic platitudes. The fact is, $700 billion in TARP bailouts, $862 billion in economic "stimulus," $70 billion in auto industry aid, $1.2 trillion in Fed money-printing and $146 billion spent on bailing out insolvent government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have done nothing to restore our economy's vigor. This is among the most incompetent series of economic policy moves in U.S. history — all the more unforgivable because similar Keynesian pump-priming was tried during the Great Depression and in the 1970s, failing miserably each time. On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said unemployment checks create "jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name." We are not making this up. This is what passes for economic wisdom in the Democratic Party. The current mess is a result of policies in place now — not those put in place years ago. Watching this nightmare unfold, and then listening to our leaders blame the opposition, is getting more grotesque by the day.
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