Obama’s Budget Renews “Sharing is Caring” Economics

by Jackie Moreau on February 15, 2012

in Blog, Features

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The ideal of responsibility has endured a severe loosening under the current administration’s incessant touting it as something to be “shared.”  We heard this rhetoric echoed throughout Obama’s speech introducing his 2013 budget: “We’ve got to renew the American values of fair play and shared responsibility.  The budget that we’re releasing today is a reflection of shared responsibility.” This “shared responsibility” (i.e. socialism) has never been a traditional American value.  Individual responsibility is the ancestral principle that has strengthened America into prosperous world power she is today. It is this concept that sets the stage for fair play.  However, the Obama administration’s refusal to “walk away from the promise of clean energy” will require the continuous life-support of the American peoples’ shared tax dollars that it has never survived without.  This is patently unfair.

One of the most irrational responsibilities Obama envisions to be shared for is manufacturing of electric vehicles.  On the supply side, the President wants “America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high tech batteries”; on the demand side, he aims to have million Americans driving electric vehicles by 2015.  The problem is that he wants all 138 million taxpayers to pay for these goals. If consumers actually had a choice into which pork-piggy bank their taxes were allocated, their homework into the electric car industry would encounter several speed-bumps:

  • Fisker Automotive, the California company that scored a $529 million government subsidy to produce the plug-in Karma, recently had to shut down operations due to their delivery quota failure.
  • A123, Fisker’s lithium-ion battery supplier and winner of a $249 million DOE loan, is on pins and needles with their investment of at least $20.5 million into Fisker, their #1 client.
  • Ener1 Inc., the parent company of EnerDel that received a $118 million DOE grant to make batteries for electric cars, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

OK, so the creation of the electric car industry has had a bumpy road.  But even if these companies get their acts together, their product is still too expensive for the average 99%-ers to enjoy:

Well, at least we still have those ole reliable fossil fueled cars… right? Wrong!  Since Obama refuses to walk away from a clean energy utopia, he certainly won’t let you drive away from it either (unless it’s in a plug-in).  Don’t forget, we’re in this together!  With Washington’s proposal of tighter standards fuel economy standards, the U.S. Information Energy Administration projects that there will be zero automobiles costing $15,000 or less, with an estimated 7 million buyers forced out of the market for new cars.  So much for fair play.

Clearly, this budget is not for the budget-minded.  Obama’s economy is being built for the wealthy to last, not you.  So try not to think about your taxes being drained for the car you’ll probably never own.  Go to your happy place when your plug-in-owning neighbors pass you in traffic by way of HOV lanes, enjoying priority electric-only parking spots right next to store entrances.  Your patriotic environmental martyrdom made those tax credits possible! After all, in Obama’s America, sharing is caring.

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