President Obama Is Wrong About America. Do Social Programs Really Make us a Great Nation?

American Thinker ^ | 04/25/2011 | Chad Stafko

[SeekAndFind]

President Obama is wrong.  In his highly anticipated deficit speech at George Washington University recently, Obama spoke of Social Security and Medicare and stated, "We would not be a great country without these commitments."

Really?  According to Obama then, America wasn't a great nation prior to 1935 and 1965, the years in which Social Security and Medicare were enacted.

So, for nearly 200 years (1776-1965), America was not a great nation in the eyes of the 44^th President of the United States.  Presidents Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln were among those who led a good nation, perhaps, but not a great one in Obama's eyes.  Despite our growth from an infant republic in 1776 to the dominant nation of the world by mid-20^th century, a period which included victories in two world wars, along with massive technological, industrial, and medical advances, still we were not a great nation according to Obama.

Attempting to calculate the impact America has had upon the rest of the world and to the betterment of the human race would be an exercise in futility, even prior to Social Security and Medicare.  Countless lives have been saved through American medical advancements and breakthroughs.  Production methods have been created and enhanced by American ingenuity and technological innovations, largely from Americans, have transformed the methods and speed by which we communicate around the world. 

These are but a few accomplishments and defining qualities that have made America great.

It is these advancements and the potential for increased quality of life that has attracted and continues to entice so many to the United States.  From 1850-1950, for example, 37 million individuals emigrated to the United States of America.  They did not come to America seeking government programs.  America provided opportunity to seek "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Therein is the greatness of America-opportunity.  It is opportunity to accomplish more than in any other country.

Sadly, President Obama does not define the greatness of America by the opportunities afforded in this country nor by its people, and that's what is disturbing by his comments. 

Instead, Obama defines American greatness by government.  He cites Social Security and Medicare, two government programs that are inefficient and costly to the American taxpayer to the tune of 35% of the federal budget.

Social Security continues to have less and less taxpayers funding the program as a proportion of those benefiting from it, which is hardly a model for success.  In 1950, there were about 16 workers paying taxes into Social Security for every retiree.  The ratio today is about 3-1 and it continues to decline.  So much so that the Cato Institute estimates the ratio will be about 2-1 as Baby Boomers retire and that the actual Social Security payment tax of 12.4% will have to rise to 18% at some point to continue funding retirement benefits.  This is far from a program to boast about based upon those numbers, yet Obama says it makes our nation great.

Medicare is also far from a crown jewel of our nation.  Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute recently told Fox News, "Medicare's long term deficit is somewhere around 85 trillion dollars."

That's not its cost; it is the difference between money in and money out.  Yet, like Social Security, Obama hails Medicare as a government program that adds to the greatness of our nation.

Why, then would President Barack Obama mention two financially disastrous programs as evidence of America's greatness?  It's simple.  Obama is a liberal.  Greatness, in the eyes of liberals, is defined as apparent compassion upon the less fortunate, regardless of the actual results of the government program in question.  The level of burden upon those funding such programs is also irrelevant, just so long as some minimal benefits are given to certain groups of people.

So, Mr. President, you stand corrected!  What makes America great is its people, achievements, and opportunities present within its borders...not its government programs.

Chad Stafko is a writer and political consultant living in the Midwest.  He can be reached at stafko@msn.com

[Jerrybob]

No, but they do take from the haves and give to the have-nots!!!

[blackdog]

Do Social Programs Really Make us a Great Nation?

They do if you're president and your family lived off of those social programs, sending you around the globe like some lifelong Hemmingway junket, paying your primary school tuitions, your college costs, your law school costs, fed you, housed you, fertilized that Marxist gray matter skull of mush laying between your ears, and brought your auntie Zeppitunia to an all expense paid gig in South Boston.

Therein lies the base level hate for the american people.

[Roninf5-1]

The last thing Barry Soetoro, aka Barrack Hussein Obama, and his Globalist Bankster bosses want is for America to be great. They create all these programs to divert our money and our potential into useless non-endeavors. Instead of self-reliant citizens we become compliant, helpless peons. The perfect subjects to rule over.

[PLD]

How many people knew this about the phony and his phony wife?

LAWYER OBAMA

More of the same... it just keeps coming out.

Wadda Guy!!!!

This is from a former Chicago lawyer now practicing law in Tyler, TX.

This is legit. I checked it out myself at https://www.iardc.org Stands for Illinois Attorney Registration And Disciplinary Committee. It's the official arm of lawyer discipline in Illinois; and they are very strict and mean as hell. (Talk about irony.) Even I, at the advanced age of almost 65, maintain (at the cost of approximately $600/year) my law license that I worked so hard and long to earn.

Big surprise.

Former Constitutional Law Lecturer and U.S. President Makes Up Constitutional Quotes During State Of The Union (SOTU) Address.

Consider this:

1. President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a “lawyer”. He surrendered his license back in 2008 in order to escape charges he lied on his bar application.

A “Voluntary Surrender” is not something where you decide “Gee, a license is not really something I need anymore, is it?” and forget to renew your license. No, a “Voluntary Surrender” is something you do when you've been accused of something, and you ‘voluntarily surrender” your license five seconds before the state suspends you.

2 Michelle Obama “voluntarily surrendered” her law license in 1993.

3. So, we have the first black President and First Lady - who don't actually have licenses to practice law. Facts.

Source: http://jdlong.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/pres-barack-obama-editor-of-the-Harvard-law-review-has-no-law-license/

4. A senior lecturer is one thing, a fully ranked law professor is another. Barack Obamawas NOT a Constitutional Law Professor at the University of Chicago.

5. The University of Chicago released a statement in March 2008 saying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) “served as a professor” in the law school-but that is a title Obama, who taught courses there part-time, never held, a spokesman for the school confirmed in 2008.

6. “He did not hold the title of Professor of Law,” said Marsha Ferziger Nagorsky, an Assistant Dean for Communications and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago School of Law.

Source: http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/03/sweet_obama_did_hold_the_title.html ;

7. The former Constitutional Senior Lecturer (Obama) cited the U.S. Constitution the other night during his State of the Union Address. Unfortunately, the quote he cited was from theDeclaration of Independence ... not the Constitution.

8. The B-Cast posted the video: http://www.breitbart.tv/did-obama-confuse-the-constitution-with-the-declaration-of-independence/

9. Free Republic: In the State of the Union Address, President Obama said: “We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal.

10. Um, wrong citing, wrong founding document there Champ, I mean Mr. President. By the way, the promises are not a notion, our founders named them unalienable rights. The document is our Declaration of Independence and it reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

11. And this is the same guy who lectured the Supreme Court moments later in the same speech?

When you are a phony it's hard to keep facts straight.

[massgopguy]

The men who made the United States the foremost industrial force of the modern age were derided by the emerging Marxist movement a “Robber Barons”.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Just in general terms, the liberal view is that America is a deeply flawed nation. We are racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, despoil the environment, etc.

And in general terms, America has only done any good things since the 1960s. In the liberal mind, the movements towards civil rights, women’s rights, homosexual rights, the environmental movement, etc. are the true measures of our committments to equality and opportunity for all.

So I would guess that deep down, Obama and other liberals do not have any great appreciation for American history. In their minds, before about 1965, too many Americans were oppressed and denied rights, and we polluted the environment, so anything that happened before the ‘60s doesn’t matter.

[VRWCmember]

Social Security continues to have less and less taxpayers funding the program as a proportion of those benefiting from it, which is hardly a model for success. ....

Chad Stafko is a writer and political consultant ....

It is really sad when someone who calls himself a writer does not know the difference between "less" and "fewer" and their correct usage.

[Cincinatus]

Do Social Programs Really Make us a Great Nation?

No, they make us a broke nation.

[rlmorel]

Thanks for all the links in one, handy place!

[PLD]

Thank You, but I did not find those links I just copyed and pasted them they were from a friend..Glad you read them also don’t forget to pass it on everyone should know what the Muslim is doing..

[BitWielder1]

The best social program of all time is to let people work and keep the money they earn so they can solve their own problems.

[Little Ray]

No.
If you want more of something, you subsidize it. “Social Programs” subsidize bastardy, failure, illegal immigration, incompetence, and indolence. Naturally, we get more of these things...

[rlmorel]

Will do.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Socialist always define success on the number of people they manage to force into dependence on the government. OTOH, conservatives define success as the number of people who no longer need government assistance.

[chooseascreennamepat]

Name for me ONE socialist nation that is NOT being maintained at the point of a gun!