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  1. #1
    Senior Member PatrioticMe's Avatar
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    William McKenzie: Democrats face their own peril

    02:35 PM CDT on Monday, March 9, 2009

    Political chatterers are atwitter about whether Rush Limbaugh should speak for Republicans, but Democrats shouldn't derive too much pleasure from their opponents' woes.

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    They'd better worry about whether Barack Obama is setting up their party for defeat in the 2010 midterm elections.

    It's almost impossible to write those words given Obama's popularity and Republicans' aimlessness. But that's exactly why Democrats should fret. Presidents often make the wrong moves when they have the mojo, not when they've lost it.

    On his way out, George W. Bush said he should have tried to reform immigration, not Social Security, after his 2004 re-election. Bill Clinton made his own miscalculation by tackling health care before Americans were ready.

    Those calls cost them, but they didn't carry the risks Obama faces today. He could throttle the economy's recovery by so ratcheting up federal spending that investors no longer believe we can control deficits. If that happens, and I sincerely hope it doesn't, America will look like Argentina during its debt crisis. And Democrats will go south fast.

    There was a rational argument for a big stimulus, although the $787 billion was cast too far and wide. And Obama's first budget looks as if he's using a painful recession to drive home Democratic wish lists on health care, energy and other priorities.

    The price is high. His budget rises to $3.5 trillion next year. Part of that is for a $630 billion health care initiative, part for $646 billion in alternative energies.

    He outlines ways to finance those increases, but if they don't work, who's to say we can withstand such spending? (Even though Obama says his plan cuts the deficit after four years, he only returns it to $530 billion, still way beyond deficits we ran before this economic mess.)

    The markets have yet to rally behind him. For my family's sake, I hope they do, but if they don't, we'll have added tons more debt and created no sustainable recovery. What then?

    We'd all prefer to avoid that, which is why Democratic moderates like Sen. Evan Bayh are so pivotal. With many of their jobs on the line 2010, they're naturally the ones to tone down Obama's ambitions – and test what he learned at his recent fiscal accountability summit. Do they really want to be the ones on whose watch the deficit doubled, which is what happens next year under Obama's budget?

    Ron Kirk, the former Dallas mayor confirmed as U.S. trade representative, could prove an important Cabinet member. Having governed one of America's most business-oriented cities, he's a moderate Democrat who knows the danger of over leveraging.

    Here, then, is a suggestion for Democratic moderates:

    Instead of working on getting more Americans health plans, push to overhaul Social Security and put some savings in the bank. Investors would see we are serious about our $56 trillion long-term debt, largely is a function of too many promises to Social Security and Medicare. That debt portends a much bigger crisis than this one.

    David Walker, the former Government Accountability Office head who now leads the Peterson Foundation's effort to reduce the debt, made that point to me last week. "We can't rely on foreign savings forever," he said of the Chinas of the world buying our debt.

    A bipartisan survey for Walker's group shows more Americans want to deal with the debt than health care. And GOP Sen. Judd Gregg, GOP Rep. Frank Wolf and Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper told journalists last week that Congress could develop a Social Security consensus.

    Republicans could help, but Democratic moderates really hold the keys to the kingdom, as Walker told me. Democrats don't need Republicans to pass Obama's spending outline by their April 3 deadline. But they can't pass it – or anything else – without their moderates. They control Democrats' destiny, which faces its own surprising perils.

    William McKenzie is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist and a moderator of Texas Faith. His e-mail address is wmckenzie@dallasnews.com.

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  2. #2
    Senior Member Captainron's Avatar
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    I'm going to leave a comment there when I get some more time. I know there is a lot of chatter right now on entitlements. How can we keep giving SSI benefits to an increasing number of senior citizens from other countries?
    "Men of low degree are vanity, Men of high degree are a lie. " David
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  3. #3
    Senior Member grandmasmad's Avatar
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    We BETTER keep the Social Security in tact....I am 11 months from full retirement age....I worked for it and I better get it
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    Senior Member gofer's Avatar
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    Rasmussen Approval Trend:

    March 4th +15
    March 9th + 6

    This is lowest rating ever.

    Obama's rating is following the Dow

  5. #5
    ELE
    ELE is offline
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    Just when you think it can't get worse, it does.

    It seems as if Obama and his political thugs in Washington want us to be devastated. They bankrupted us for generations to come, raised our taxes, are giving billions of our tax dollars to the illegals that have invaded our country, they have insulted our allies and are reaching out to the "nice" Talaban. Anyone see a pattern?
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

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