By Boston Herald editorial staff
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Now that President Obama has gotten the hang of boxing in and neutering congressional Republicans, why stop?
In fact, Obama wants it all — the virtually limitless power to spend and pass along the bills to every man, woman and child in the country.
“I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed,” he said New Year’s Eve as Congress was attempting to avoid the tax-hike portion of the “fiscal cliff.”
Notice how suddenly it’s congressional spending that is out of control — not Obamacare or the vast expansion of unemployment insurance, which is rapidly becoming yet another entitlement program, or even his pet green jobs programs. The president seems prepared to fix the blame for profligate spending on a Congress that has admittedly been far too compliant with his big government agenda. So having given the president what he wanted in terms of big-money programs and tax hikes, Congress now gets the back of his hand.
And Obama wants our duly elected legislative branch to relinquish one of the few checks it has on the executive — the power to approve increases in the debt ceiling. The government actually reached the $16.4 trillion debt ceiling days ago, but federal officials are busy using all the tools in their accounting arsenal to cook the books until February — when we will once again face another “crisis.”
That gives Obama a full month to out-maneuver Republicans and convince voters, the markets and perhaps even the rating agencies (although we have trouble imagining that level of naivete on their part) that only he should have the unbridled power to control the government’s ability to borrow money.
And if you’re thinking about a fox guarding the hen house, you’d be on the right track here.
“If Congress refuses to give the United States government the ability to pay these bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy would be catastrophic,” he insisted. “People will remember, back in 2011, the last time this course of action was threatened, our entire recovery was put at risk. Consumer confidence plunged. Business investment plunged. Growth dropped. We can’t go down that path again.”
The answer? Well, that would be for all members of Congress to check their principles (not to mention their cojones) at the door and roll over and play dead because the commander in chief demands it.
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