Barack Obama’s decisive victory has afforded him with significant political capital that he will almost certainly exploit during his first few months in office. With Nancy Pelosi in-charge of the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives and Harry Reid leading the Democrat-controlled Senate, Obama’s ‘change’ agenda will likely fly through Congress.
What kind of “change” can we expect to see? Things like tax increases for small businesses, tax ‘refunds’ to people who pay no taxes, socialized medicine, new restrictions on energy use and production and a massive growth in government spending.
Obama has indicated that his first priority will be issuing $1,000 checks to families earning under a certain income threshold and increasing taxes on families and small businesses earning over $150,000 or $250,000 per year (depending on who you listen to). Following that, he says he’s looking for a massive overhaul of our health care system and big changes to our tax system.
Most everyone wants to see changes in health care and the tax code. The question nobody seems to be asking is what kind of change does President-Elect Obama have in mind?
Using history as a guide, single-party rule as we are faced with in a couple short months leads to a certain arrogance in policy-making, unchecked unilateral decision making sometimes with disastrous results. Meanwhile the minority party has little input but to stand by and say “see I told you so,” when things go awry.
Again, looking to the past to predict the future, the ultimate consequence of this scenario is a massive rejection of the party in power by the voters. Mid-term elections tend to go badly for the party that has monopolized power. With Democrats now firmly in the driver’s seat of our federal government, if anything goes wrong, there’s no one else to blame.