President Obama likes to use the metaphor that the Republicans drove the car into a ditch and that the Democrats are heaving mightily to get it out. Can't you just picture it? As soon as the Democrats get the car back on the road after exerting much effort, the Republicans are standing there, having not broken a sweat, demanding the keys back. If the voters are smart, they won't give them to them. The whole Republican strategy for the election this fall is to get the voters in a "throw the bums out" mood meaning throw the Dems out because they control Congress, at least the House and nominally the Senate, but, due to the filibuster rule and other arcane obfuscations, the Republicans really control the Senate even though they are a minority.
If the voters were smart ... that's a big if because they've proven to be anything other than smart in recent years. They let the Republicans get them all riled up about guns and gays while, at the same time, they are stealing their wallets. The issue to focus on is the economy, and, even though Obama and the Democrats haven't yet pulled the car out of the ditch, at least they're pulling in the right direction. Give Republicans the keys and they'll promptly drive the car off the nearest cliff laughing all the way to the bank. The Democrats are trying to repair the damage of the Bush years but they can't do it overnight. There is structural unemployment, but Republicans don't even want to extend unemployment benefits. Good luck to the jobless when they take over!
The reason the deficit and the national debt are so large is that Bush doubled the national debt from $5 trillion to $10 billion while building in deficits for as far as the eye can see. The deficits under Obama are really mainly composed of Bush built-in structural deficits. Bush started two wars of aggression which so far have cost roughly a trillion dollars while beefing up the Pentagon budget to approximately an annual $1 trillion if all costs are taken into account, greater than the combined military budgets of all of the rest of the world. Bush gave the rich two tax cuts that were entirely unpaid for. That means they were added to the deficit and in due course to the national debt. Ditto for the senior pharmaceutical drug benefits. They were entirely unpaid for too which means that they are added to the deficit year after year and the deficit is added to the debt year after year. This is what Obama has to wrestle with even though he is trying mightily to get the country out of a depression and hold it together by bailing out the states while doing it all insofar as is possible by not adding to the deficit ... by actually paying for his expenditures.
Of course, the Republicans don't want Obama spending any money. Only they can spend money. It's just Obama's job to clean up their mess so that when they're reelected again, they can create another one presumably for some down the road Democrat to clean up in an ever reoccurring nightmare: Republicans make mess; Democrats clean up.
The Republicans want voters to believe that their discredited economic policies (after all they're what created the financial meltdown of 2008) are exactly what the US needs right now after Obama has failed to get unemployment down to a normal 5%. Obama has failed to replace the 8 million jobs lost under the Bush administration so Democrats should be booted out of office and replaced with Republicans who will continue to pursue the supply side economics of Ronald Reagan. More tax breaks for the wealthy - that's just what we need. That's just what the doctor ordered. Deficits don't matter as Dick Cheney so famously said (at least when Republicans are in office)! So when the Republicans get back in, they'll spend like drunken sailors on war and tax breaks while nary a discouraging word will be heard about the deficit or the debt. Because we all know, it's an article of faith, that giving tax breaks to the wealthy will encourage them to create more jobs ... right? Yeah, they'll create more jobs alright ... in China!
While the Obama administration hasn't been successful in repairing all the damage of the Bush and Reagan administrations especially in regard to unemployment and the deficit, at least they are proceeding in the right direction. Voters, if they use their common sense, must ask themselves will they be better off electing people who are trying to pull the car out of the ditch or will they be better off handing over the car keys to a party that will promptly drive it off a cliff.
