Roman Around

The only thing I might have done differently during President Obama’s campaign drive for the White House is expand the campaign slogan to include three additional words: “…Screw Up America.”

They’re ahead of schedule.

Change has, indeed, descended upon Washington – just like the new President of the United States promised. In that sense, he has been true to his word. Otherwise, with all due respect, the President – only ten days into his “Yes We Can” makeover of the country – has lied to the United States.

I assure you, I do not use that word lightly. This is not “Bush Lied, People Died” bumper sticker twaddle. (More on this in a moment).

If George W. Bush’s anti-conservative approach to spending could be characterized as a nagging cough, Barack Obama’s spendulous plan is Stage Three Pancreatic Cancer.

And now, as Charles Hurt’s Inside Washington column explains, the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is about to rest in pieces – blown apart by this Obamacratic spending disaster.

Deep within the language of the spending bill – on Page 354, Section 2101 – is an interesting choice of phrasing – five little words, as Mr. Hurt points out – that “could drastically undo two decades of welfare reforms.”

Those words?

“Such sums as are necessary” … as in: “Out of any money in the Treasury of the United States not otherwise appropriated, there are appropriated such sums as are necessary for payment to the Emergency Fund.“

In short, from the Treasury, there will be unlimited money available to the “Emergency Fund.”

The “Emergency Fund” is the well from which welfare payments are distributed to the states.

I’ve got to hand it the President. That is what you call change.

As Mr. Hurt writes:

The very heart of the widely applauded Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is a cap on the amount of federal cash that can be sent to states each year for welfare payments.

But, thanks to the simple phrase slipped into the legislation, the new “stimulus” bill abolishes the limits on the amount of federal money for the so-called Emergency Fund, which ships welfare cash to states.

“This re-establishes the welfare state and creates dependency all over the place,” said one startled budget analyst after reading the line.

In addition to reopening the floodgates of dependency on federal welfare programs, the change once again deepens the dependency of state governments on the federal government.

President Obama won on promises of changing the way Washington works.

Which brings me to my charge – and a serious one – about the President lying.

Back on January 6th, a full two-weeks before he took a botched Oath of Office – when he was still Secretary of the Office of President-Elect – Obama told reporters that his recovery plan and stimulus package would set a “new higher standard of accountability, transparency and oversight. We are going to ban all earmarks, the process by which individual members insert projects without review. We’re not having earmarks in the recovery package. Period.”

That, my fellow Americans, is a bold-face, empirically provable, substantively verifiable lie.

An earmark is not defined by the process by which individual pet projects are inserted into a spending bill. (Clever attempt there, Bam). It is, rather, defined as the provision itself that “directs approved funds to be spent on specific projects or that directs specific exemptions from taxes or mandated fees.” The process of creating this catostrophically bloated spending bill may have been void of individual insertions, as Obama alluded to, but by any measure it is loaded – by definition - with earmarks.

At the great “Indy Mind” website, Arkady writes:

Only if you were to consider billions of dollars going to non-profit groups like ACORN, hundreds of millions to buy new government vehicles, millions for global warming research, millions for digital tv conversion subsidies, billions to upgrade federal buildings, millions for clearing out water pollution and a slew of other items as NON-pork. Technically speaking individual members did not insert projects without review, so yeah, I guess there are no earmarks.

How exactly does sending out analogue-to-digital TV converters stimulate anything?

President Bush was raked over the coals – and rightly so – for his reckless spending. Now it makes more sense why Obama wants to do away with coal.

So, yes … change is in the air. Without question, the differences between this administration and the previous one are glaring – just as Obama said it would be.

Obama is different from Bush.

For one, Obama is a liar.

-