Various right wing pundits, talk show hosts and commentators like to throw around the term Socialism when referring to President Obama’s policies. So is the man a Socialist? Only he knows the answer to that because the truth lies in his heart. The rest of us are left to judge by the suspiciously Socialistic way he has turned on the spigot to government spending.
FDR was a piker compared to BHO.
In a recent discussion with Jason (podcast #92), Pat Buchanan brought up some numbers that he believed placed Obama squarely in the Socialist camp. The United States government has traditionally spent about 21% of the Gross National Product. Add in state and local governments and it goes up to 33%. These numbers held fairly stable throughout the Cold War.
Those numbers are high, no doubt, but not as high as the European Nations. Under Obama’s first budget the percentage spent by the Federal Government is going to land in the 27-29% range. Add in the state and local spending and you’re looking at about 40% of GDP being spent by governments on various levels. We’re approaching nearly half of our economy at the mercy of politicians and bureaucrats.
In Mr. Buchanan’s mind, we are walking down the road to Socialism right now. We learned how difficult it is to scale back programs once they are implemented from our collective experience after FDR’s New Deal. Once begun, programs rarely ever go away. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican, Democrat or somewhere in between.
Self interest and pork barrel projects trump common sense every time.
Flickr / rightee
