The past 16 months have seen furious activity on the part of the Obama Administration, culminating in the passage of the Health Care Reform Act. The administration promises similar activity on proposed Cap and Trade legislation and Wall Street financial “reform.”
But while we have been almost totally absorbed in the continuing campaign to push the Obama social agenda, we need to ask a simple question. Are these the crucial issues facing the United States that will affect the freedom and prosperity of the American people in this century? Most certainly they are not!
The Health Care reform was passed in spite of the overwhelming opposition of the American people, who are happy with the health care they now receive. Cap and Trade purports to remedy a problem (man-made global warming) that is of questionable scientific merit with a solution that will cripple our struggling economy: raising taxes on all forms of energy consumption. And any financial reform that fails to address the government’s role in the financial failures of the past several years misses the root cause of the problem.
The Obama Administration has chosen to contend relatively insignificant issues while allowing the truly important, really difficult issues to boil on the back burner. We do not elect a president to handle the easy issues, the ones that will gain him votes and ensure his re-election. We elect a president to grapple with the truly weighty issues that require the power and prestige of the President of the United States. He should be handling the issues that could mean the difference between war and peace, and between economic depression or prosperity.
Article 2, section 2 of the Constitution defines the duties of the President of the United States. First among those duties is that of Commander in Chief of the armed forces, the president’s duty to ensure the safety of the American people. Nowhere in that section of the Constitution does it mention that the president has a duty to take over and run failing automobile companies for the benefit of his labor union supporters, reducing risk-taking on Wall Street, or managing the health of the American people.
And while the Obama Administration has been busy attending to the trifling issues it has addressed thus far, it has been essentially silent and inactive in the face of the Iranian nuclear challenge. The resounding silence and failure of leadership from the nation once regarded as the leader of the free world amounts to tacit approval of the Iranian regime’s ascension to nuclear status.
The Obama Administration continues to campaign instead of governing. It has identified its favorite issues and labeled them as “crises” that must be addressed, while the Middle East moves closer and closer to war and calamity. The “crisis” of Americans without health insurance pales in comparison to the question faced by Israeli citizens faced with a nuclear Iran. The failure of the American President to act on that threat will almost surely result in an Israeli response, a response likely to plunge the region into war.
Even if Israel does not strike, can we expect the Saudis to acquiesce to a nuclear Iran just across the Persian Gulf from their oil fields? What would be the result be of a nuclear armed Saudi Arabia? How difficult would it be for nuclear material to find its way from the Saudis into the hands of radical jihadiis if the Saudi Arabia had a bomb? Meanwhile, the Obama Administration concerns itself with the health insurance “crisis.”
Domestically, the Obama Administration has taken a similar stance with regard to the truly weighty issues of the day. With Social Security and Medicare facing unfunded liabilities in the coming decades in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars, the Obama Administration has done nothing to improve the situation. Instead, it has rammed a new entitlement (Health Care Reform) through Congress that is certain to increase the unfunded liabilities despite administration rhetoric to the contrary. They could have recommended difficult solutions and provided the leadership we desperately need, but instead the Obama Administration has taken the easy route and simply spent more of our money, allowing the nation’s budget deficit to explode into regions we may never be able to repay.
Along the southern border of the United States, millions of illegal immigrants flood across the largely untended border bringing with them crime, drugs and the violent influence of the Mexican drug cartels. Americans living in the border states do so in fear of this invasion-in-progress. Islamic terror groups are using the President’s acquiescence to infiltrate the country, according to a recent Department of Homeland Security memo. Meanwhile, the President and his Secretary of Homeland Security, have chastised the State of Arizona for passing a law that encourages the enforcement of federal immigration law, a law Mr. Obama is charged with enforcing by Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution. Again, he dithers while real crises boil around him.
We live in an increasingly hostile world and face many difficult problems in both international and domestic affairs. We need a president who is willing to take on the truly meaningful issues and provide the leadership required to deal with them. We need a statesman for the job of the most powerful man in the world, not a perennial Chicago politician who can’t stop campaigning for an office he has already won. Mr. President, there is a lot to do. Get to work.
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