Can The American taxpayer afford four years of the Obama Administration?  Consider this, in just over four months, President Obama has spent $787 billion on a stimulus bill, proposed an eye-popping $3.6 trillion budget for the next fiscal year, taken over a massive $700 billion Wall Street bailout program, pledged $275 billion in federal aid to stem the tide of home foreclosures, and created

other billion-dollar programs to help grease the economic wheels.  Additionally, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve announced financial-rescue steps that could send up to $2 trillion coursing through the economy.  This does not include the impending Federal Healthcare plan.  In all, the plans would raise the federal portion of the U.S. economy to some 31 percent, more than twice the level after eight years of FDR's historic New Deal spending.

"All Americans have a stake in making this work," says Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.   Translation: we will confiscate much more money from every American taxpayer to make this reckless spending work. 

The mainstream (print and network) media had provided an extra measure of oversight to past administrations, especially if Republican, by calling into question where money is being spent.  We need only to recall President George W. Bush’s budgets to evoke the accusations of cronyism and rewarding the wealthy.  Where are the media attack dogs when we need them most?  C’mon Carville, O’Dowd, Dionne, JR, Krugman!  What your guy is doing is perhaps the biggest scam in history; Bernie Madoff has nothing on this administration.

Using taxpayer dollars to pay back ACORN for getting him elected is brazen enough, but the billions paid to the United Auto Workers union and the National Education Association, cloaked in bailouts and federal programs is borderline criminal.  Never mind Big Labor’s continuing all-out push to take away workers’ right to a secret ballot in the workplace with Card Check, which is officially and misleadingly known as the Employee Free Choice Act.   Where are the calls for an independent prosecutor?

Let’s examine the payback to the NEA, first.  This first installment to the NEA will be paid in the form of the “Zero to Five” program.   Next to universal health care, President Obama’s top domestic goal is government financed pre-school for all three- and four-year-olds, regardless of family income. Obama promised his supporters at the National Education Association that he will spend billions on his “Zero to Five” early childhood education initiative, while assuring taxpayers of a $10 return for every dollar spent on the program. But there is no evidence that expanding the time American children spend in state-run schools will produce any educational benefits at all. On the contrary, two states – Georgia and Oklahoma - that have been offering state-funded universal pre-school for more than a decade were among the 10 states that made the least progress on the 2006 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP)– the only standardized exams administered nationwide.

Georgia spends more than $325 million annually on its pre-school program, which serves more than half of all four-year-olds in the state. But a recent study by Georgia State University found that most of the program’s academic gains are lost by the end of first grade. In fact, Georgia pre-kindergarden students were indistinguishable from students who did not attend pre-school at all, leaving nothing to show for the state’s $4,200 per pupil annual expenditure.

The same lack of discernible progress was also found in Oklahoma, where more than 70 percent of four-year-olds are enrolled in state-funded preschool at a cost of $7,400 per student. Fourth-grade NAEP reading scores actually declined in Oklahoma since universal pre-kindergarden began in 1998, thus returning a negative return on Oklahomans’ $139 billion per year. 

With the data from two “test states” readily available, why would we want to replicate these results on a national level using federal dollars?  The answer is simple; what “Zero to Five” is likely to do is drive small, privately-owned pre-schools out of business in order to create more jobs for NEA members – who will be the real beneficiaries of this latest educational scam.

The UAW payback’s first installment is much farther reaching, and dwarfs the NEA’s, by comparison.  Masked behind the auto industry bailout, is the willfully negligent use of taxpayer dollars to purchase two troubled automotive giants to give to the UAW.   How nice it must be for the unions to have a mega-powerful BFF (best friend forever, for those without teenagers), with a printing press.  Under Team Obama, this bailout has morphed into full-scale government ownership. $20 billion of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money is already invested in GM, with another $50 billion on the way. And that number could easily double unless GM car sales miraculously climb back to 14 million this year. That's highly unlikely, with sales presently hovering around 9 million a year and declining.  

 The insanity didn’t end there; the administration also will block the importation of GM’s smaller cars, built in Europe and elsewhere, into the U.S.  This will result in an enormous capital expenditure by GM (the taxpayers) in order to retool existing plants to build tiny cars that have little demand here.   UAW president, Ron Gettlefinger defended this move by saying on the PBS Newshour

 “We, quite frankly, put pressure on the White House, the task force, the corporation. We had other constituent groups out here with us trying to make the point that we've got to go back to an industrial base in this country.”

“So what we did in this particular case was we got the corporation to agree that they would build a small car platform in this country. And incidentally, no manufacturer to date builds what's referred to as a B-car in this country, which is smaller than a Focus or a Cobalt or a Caliber. Now we've got that commitment here.” Great Ron!  Now all you need is a market for them.  Oh, wait, your BFF Barak already took care of that by mandating new, unattainable mileage standards. 

If the UAW, as a major stakeholder in both Chrysler and GM, is to survive in the short term, it would be wise to put pressure on its puppets in this administration to make wholesale changes to the Obama energy policy.  The success of these automakers depends on revenue, which means building and selling luxury cars, SUVs and trucks.  If the administration does not change its stance on oil exploration and nuclear energy, the cost of gasoline is certainly going to skyrocket, notwithstanding the hyper-inflation sure to come from Obama’s reckless monetary policy.  When gas is cheap, U.S. automakers profit.  Oh, but then there’s the payback to the environmental lobby – the so called scientists who depend on the federal government for every dollar they earn.  You see how this all works?  Forget about doing what is best for the hard working Americans who make this country work.  The return on the interest groups’ investment in the “Chosen One” is far better for the country.

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