J's Cafe Nette

A few weeks ago I received an email from my congressman, who happens also to be the chairman of the Budget Committee in the House of Representatives.

I was angered by the email because he was politicking while writing about the last fiscal year’s deficit. Of course, everything was blamed on former President George W. Bush.

While Bush made his mistakes in signing off on spending bills he should have vetoed while the Republicans were in the majority (and the reason the Republicans got kicked out) and while in his last two years in office, he was not the one who initiated the bills and actually had to swallow a lot of pork in order to fund the war against terror–especially in the last two years of his presidency.

I called my representative’s office to ask what I thought would be an easy question for them to answer so I could pounce on them. I asked his aide, “Constitutionally, where do spending bills originate?” Either she really didn’t know (in which case she should be fired) or she was playing coy with me.

She offered to let me “speak with” someone’s voice mail. I didn’t want to have a discussion with someone’s voice mail so I called the number at the bottom of the email, which I had called before and found to be the number for the Budget Committee.

I asked the same question of the aide who answered that call and got transferred to someone else. (Apparently the telephone answerers don’t have any basic civics knowledge.)

I spoke to a highly-polished political lawyer who immediately proclaimed that Congress initiated spending rules, although the president can put in a request. BINGO!! Someone knew.

Then I asked why my congressman would blame Bush for the fiscal problems if a Democratic Congress initiated the spending bills for the most part. I also mentioned all the stimulus spending not doing what it was supposed to do (perhaps more of that in another post) and the bailouts of car companies and banks etc.

I was then told that Obama inherited all this mess. My reply was that he ran for office and asked to inherit it.

After arguing for a few minutes I realized he and I would not agree and that he was more informed about such things than I so I would just tell him I’m tired of the partisanship and wish him a good day.

All this to tell you that I just finished reading a column by Peggy Noonan, which is saying precisely what I have been saying for a few months now: Obama now owns the problems he “inherited” and it’s time for him to take ownership.

At a certain point, a president must own a presidency. For George W. Bush that point came eight months in, when 9/11 happened. From that point on, the presidency—all his decisions, all the credit and blame for them—was his. The American people didn’t hold him responsible for what led up to 9/11, but they held him responsible for everything after it. This is part of the reason the image of him standing on the rubble of the twin towers, bullhorn in hand, on Sept.14, 2001, became an iconic one. It said: I’m owning it.[...]

[...] President Obama, in office a month longer than Bush was when 9/11 hit, now owns his presidency. Does he know it? He too stands on rubble, figuratively speaking—a collapsed economy, high and growing unemployment, two wars. Everyone knows what he’s standing on. You can almost see the smoke rising around him. He’s got a bullhorn in his hand every day.[...]

[...] Everyone knows he was handed horror. They want him to fix it.

At some point, you own your presidency. At some point it’s your rubble. At some point the American people tell you it’s yours. The polls now, with the presidential approval numbers going down and the disapproval numbers going up: That’s the American people telling him.

When you run for the highest office this country has you have to expect to eventually take responsibility for all the problems in this great country. The American people will stand behind you as long as you show a good faith effort to lead.

Obama has not tried to lead in any positive way. He has tried to marginalize his critics from the Republican Party, from the press (see how he’s treating Fox News), from anyone who dares say he is not doing something the way they would prefer to see it done.

He is marginalizing the people who think health care needs a fix in the sense there are some people who cannot afford it, but disagree with re-inventing the whole system for the sake of “change” when no change in their health care programs is necessary.

Let me be clear: We want people who do not have access to health care for preventative care as well as urgent care to have those benefits. Do what has to be done to fix that small segment of our population and leave the rest of us who are happy with our coverage and prices, alone.

We do not wish for any presidency to fail because it means our country fails, but we also have legitimate disagreements with how policies are implemented, and indeed, which policies need to become law in our country.

While we do not wish for a presidency to fail, we do wish for policies to fail. So far, I haven’t seen anything come out of the current White House to make me think it’s worthy of passage, so you can conclude that I have wished for everything proposed by this man to fail. I think I’ve been right. Especially when the person in charge of the economic council for the president pronounces we have seen all we’re going to see of an improvement in our economy from the stimulus.

And for this my great-grandchildren three times over will have to pay.

Written by Jeanette

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