Thursday, July 9, 2009

Not So Secret

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush thinks that Barack Obama would never have been elected president if he’d told us of his “secret plans” once he got into office.

He would not have gotten elected if he’d said, “My idea is to create a $1.8 trillion deficit for the next fiscal year. My idea is to spend $750 billion [the president’s budget estimate puts this figure at $630 billion] over the next ten years on a government-sponsored, government-subsidized health care policy. My idea is to create a massive cap-and-trade system [based on the idea] that CO2 is [a] pollutant and we need to tax it in a massive way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.”

Yeah, except he pretty much did. The last time I checked, they have newspapers, radio, TV, and internet service in Coral Gables, which is the part of Miami where the former governor now lives. (I used to live about seven blocks from his condo.) So if he was unaware of what candidate Obama campaigned on — a plan for economic recovery from the monstrous deficits (left by the governor’s brother) via a stimulus package, health care reform that includes a public option, and a cap-and-trade plan for reducing emissions — it’s not because he kept it a secret. It was in all the papers.

I think that what bothers Mr. Bush the most is that just about everybody who voted in last year’s election knew exactly what Mr. Obama had planned and they voted for him anyway.