The Second Coming

Hallelujah! The Messiah’s number one domestic agenda item passed both houses of Congress and is now law despite bipartisan opposition from the American taxpayers. Of course, while the media continues to salivate over President Obama’s “historical victory” of ObamaCare, they remain waiting breathlessly for their savior’s next move.

Will he tackle the contentious debate over immigration reform? Does he still have the political clout and arm-twisting capabilities from his Senate majority leader, Harry Reid (D-NV), to muscle through cap and trade legislation that passed the House in June, yet has been an impasse in the Senate for almost a year? Will Mr. Obama finally put those evil capitalist Wall Street bankers in their place and push for financial regulatory reform?

Frankly, it’s absolutely meaningless attempting to prognosticate what exactly the president’s next move will be. Of course politically, in his first State of The Union Address on Jan. 27, he declared, "Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010." Unfortunately, for the good of the U.S. economy, this was yet another display of the Obama teleprompter rhetoric that has begun to be repetitious and predictable considering he delivers a “major” speech almost daily.

Mr. Obama took his “jobs” proclamation a step further by saying, “So tonight, I’m proposing that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat,” (bipartisan applause).

Never mind that changing the original legislation would be unconstitutional due to Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution or the “Take Care Clause” (which would be anomalous coming from a former Constitutional professor) that explicitly states, “he (the president or vice president if the president is ill or unfit to govern) shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Essentially, the president feels as if he can arbitrarily distribute unspent or repaid capital from the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) that was passed under the Bush administration in September 2008. TARP’s initial purpose was, “to prevent the complete collapse of the U.S. (and global) financial system, and not just to increase bank lending to consumers and businesses,” according to Economics of Contempt. It certainly was not to be used for a completely disparate government program.

The implications of such an idea very well may set a new precedent for future legislation. Regardless if the president’s intentions to rectify the economy weren’t nefarious, the principle that the Executive Branch could potentially change legislation that is already law to fit its agenda is yet another attempt by the government to take from our liberties.

If the president were really concerned about the economy, he’d stay the hell out of it. His desire to emulate FDR is disturbing and may mean our unemployment rate, currently at a destitute 9.7 percent, will only recover to 8.2 percent by 2012 according to Mr. Obama’s own Council of Economic Advisors.

Meanwhile, President Obama’s foreign policy may be bleaker than the outlook of the global economy. While the Obama administration finds it necessary to castigate our only true ally and democracy in the Middle East, Israel, over building 1,600 apartments in its capitol in East Jerusalem, Iran seems to get a pass on its nuclear proliferation adventure that is not only an existential threat to Israel, but also to the U.S.

And there’s questioning why Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have consistently been in the low to mid 40s?

On Jan. 25 in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, Mr. Obama affirmed, "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." If that were true, then with all due respect Mr. President, you may be right about occupying the White House for only four years, however, your interpretation of being “really good” could seemingly mean the second coming of the weakness that defined the one-term presidency of Jimmy Carter. Prodigious tax rates, calamitous inflation and incompetence when negotiating with Iran; in the spirit of Easter, I’m searching for the second coming of Ronald Reagan. And for the Israelis, in commemoration of Passover, be pragmatic and vigilant in strategizing your exodus, because the Pharaoh is determined not to let you free.