Bus odyssey: Administration just does not seem to get it -- STOP SPENDING

Last week, when you were watching the stock market drop like a stone, did you sit there and think, "Gee, I would feel so much better if President Barack Obama were here to tell me why this whole potential economic disaster is not his fault?"

Were you one of the many people who watched his speech midweek and then ran to the phones to sell your holdings in the volatile market?

Well, no need to worry. the president has decided that he is going to come to you -- just in case his lack of plans and leadership did not scare you enough the first time.

The president is on a multi-state economic tour right now, which began, amusingly enough in GOP candidate Michele Bachmann's home state of Minnesota and proceeded to Iowa, the site of the recent Republican straw poll.

Is your spidey sense for politicians who are manipulating the truth to their own devices starting to tingle?

And lest you think that the campaigner-in-chief really is out to let everyone know his grand plan for how he is going to undo the out-of-control spending he unleashed when he took office and how he is going to fix the fact that no one can find decent jobs, listen to some of the cuts from his stump speeches.

So far, all he is talking about his why the near-default was not his fault -- even though it was he who kept changing the agreement and who called in his henchman in the Senate to make sure at least one of the many proposals for cutting spending and getting the country back on track got a quick vote before there could be any debate.

If you have not already figured it out, this is nothing but a damage-control, campaign-swing tour of America -- it is blatant, and despite what the White House claims, absolutely a candidate for re-election tracing the steps of his future rivals to make sure he has his say.

And now for the clincher ... guess who is paying for it? That's right. The taxpayers -- to the tune of millions of dollars in buses, security and other creature comforts necessary for a cross-country jaunt.

Why now? Simple. You can't let your rivals get all the attention. Spin is important when you have to dupe a country into believing that you have anything that even resembles a plan for fixing what is broken in this economy.

President Obama could have taken the millions he is spending and done something real with it -- fixed a school, repaired a road or funded Meals on Wheels in a community for a year.

Instead, he has just added another unnecessary expense to the burgeoning deficit.

If that doesn't make you see red, then nothing will, no matter which side of the aisle you are on.

Published in Editorials on August 16, 2011 10:42 AM