‘Radical’ plans
Republicans have yet to settle on a presidential nominee, but that didn’t stop President Barack Obama from coming out, guns blazing, in full campaign mode Tuesday.
In a speech to newspaper executives, the president characterized “inequality of opportunity” as the defining issue in the looming election and lambasted the Republican budget that passed the House last week as “radical.”
The rhetoric foreshadows Mr. Obama’s re-election strategy. It also provides voters with a glimpse of what they might expect from a second term in which the president is unshackled from the restraints of another White House run.
At this point, Mr. Obama has yet to offer a more detailed analysis of how this nation features “inequality of opportunity” or what he proposes to do about it. But we do have more than three years of Obama fiscal policies to stack up against the GOP’s proposed budget, which has been embraced by the president’s likely opponent, Republican Mitt Romney.
So if the House spending plan — which simply aims to slow the growth of government somewhat, cut taxes and at least address the pending Medicare crisis — is “radical,” how do you describe policies that have piled an astounding $5 trillion on our already ballooning debt in fewer than four years?
What do you call a president who ignores his own blue-ribbon panels and commissions and refuses to address the entitlement spending that has this nation at a fiscal precipice?
How do you describe an administration that embraces tax and regulatory policies that discourage resource development on public land, create uncertainty hindering economic recovery and undercut the market incentives that built this country in to the greatest wealth-generating engine the world has ever known?
Do we dare say “radical”?
