Op-Ed

The arrogance of Democrat power

David Bossie President, Citizens United
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In the week since Democrats got thumped at the polls, President Barack Obama and soon-to-be former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have shown themselves to be in absolute denial as to why their policies were rejected by the American people. For one, President Obama looked completely disconnected from the American people in his 60 Minutes interview. Secondly, Nancy Pelosi’s lust for power has taken over and she is running for minority leader of the Democrat caucus, and throwing a party to celebrate her “accomplishments” in the 111th Congress.

In his interview with Steve Kroft from 60 Minutes, President Obama was asked if the election was in anyway a rejection of his agenda. He answered the question with his own, “Does it make sense that President Obama gave 95 percent of working families a tax cut?”

Left unsaid is that America is less than two months away from the largest tax increase ever to take place. The Obama tax increases, if not addressed by the lame-duck Congress, will affect every American. If the Obama administration really cared about spurring economic growth through lower taxes, it would have addressed the issue in the first two years of Obama’s presidency. America’s economy is fragile at best and to raise taxes on essentially every American is the wrong policy at the wrong time.

Next President Obama talked about health care and asked, “Does it make sense that we make sure children with preexisting conditions can still get health insurance?”

If the resident and Democrat Congress had produced legislation that just dealt with children and preexisting conditions, I think most Republicans in Congress would have supported it. The problem is that the health care legislation was a huge government expansion that will enable the government to enter the doctor’s office of all Americans. The president and his liberal allies in Congress were tone-deaf to what the American people wanted in health care reform and, in the end, they overreached to please their interest groups.

On the failed stimulus, President Obama asked, “Do we need to rebuild our roads and our bridges and put people back to work so that we have 21st-century infrastructure?”

The waste and abuse of the $800 billion stimulus package will be investigated by the soon-to-be Republican-controlled oversight committee in the House of Representatives. President Obama said that if the stimulus passed, the unemployment rate would not rise above 8 percent, but it has been holding steady at nearly 10 percent for months now. The stimulus was a complete and utter failure and Americans recognized that early on — when will President Obama?

The president is at a complete loss on what to do about the economy going forward. He has continuously said President Bush drove the economy into the proverbial ditch but he doesn’t appear to know how to get us out of it. During the 60 Minutes interview, it was shocking to hear President Obama say that there aren’t many more options at his disposal to try to fix the economy: “You know, one of the things I think you understand — as president you’re held responsible for everything. But you don’t always have control of everything. Right? And especially an economy this big, there are limited tools to encourage the kind of job growth that we need.” The president is wrong on this point and he knows it; tax relief and less regulation worked in the past and can work again, it’s just that the solutions are free market principles and are the exact opposite of the job-killing policies he put into place. Mr. Obama should acknowledge this truth and change course for the sake of the American economy.

Speaking of changing courses, Nancy Pelosi’s decision to seek the position of minority leader in the 112th Congress is like gifting the Democrats with a Christmas fruitcake: it is politely accepted but nobody really wants to have it around. North Dakota Congressman Earl Pomeroy, who was swept up in the Republican tsunami last week, said, “When the team gets thumped, maybe the coach ought to go.” If Speaker Pelosi were aware of the rejection of her leadership, she’d know to sit the next set of plays out.

After losing a jaw-dropping 60-plus seats in the U.S. House and six seats in the U.S. Senate, the Democrats have announced their strategy for the next two years: more of the same. It appears that the Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine will remain intact. Nancy Pelosi will remain the Democrat leader in the House, Harry Reid will remain the Democrat leader in the Senate, and President Obama will continue pushing his big-government, job-killing agenda as if nothing happened on November 2nd.

Let them remain in their state of denial. This arrogant, tone-deaf, out-of-touch strategy will only ensure one thing: America will have a 45th President of the United States sworn-in on January 20, 2013. 802 days to go.

David N. Bossie is the president of Citizens United and Citizens United Productions, and the executive producer of “America at Risk.”