To the Editor:

The ad from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS organization, funded by anonymous sources, about “no more blank checks” for Obama, epitomizes what is wrong with politics in our country. It plays to our fears, uses two lies and counts on our ignorance of our legislative process and our amnesia about anything older than last week not notice the lies.

The first lie is that Obama gets to write “blank checks.” Presidents do not write any checks. They can request checks by the budget they propose, but Congress actually has to write the checks according to our constitution. If you think spending is out of control, blame your senators and representatives that authorized that spending.

The second lie is it’s all President Obama’s fault. Bush took office with a budget surplus and a deficit around 6 trillion dollars. Legislation enacted during Bush changed that surplus to over 7 trillion more dollars of new debt. 42 percent of that debt increase was from the Bush tax cuts, and 40 percent of it was from “war on terror” policies including 2 wars. Only 6 percent came from increases in discretionary spending and 12% in entitlement increases. These figures are from the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Obama did not cut all the jobs either. According to the Commerce Department, U. S. corporations added 2.4 million jobs from 2000-2009 but they were all overseas. At home these corporations were cutting 2.9 million jobs. In fact the 50 CEO’s who received the largest bonuses in pay in 2009 were the same CEO’s who cut the most jobs.

It is also important to remember that the TARP program that helped Wall Street but has failed to trickle down to Main Street was signed by Bush on Oct. 3, 2008 and more than half spent before Obama took Office.

It seems we could reduce our debt much more by cutting the “blank checks” creating 82 percent of the problem rather than killing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security (12 percent of the problem) and the social safety net for the unemployed.

Corporate profits are up 88 percent since the “great recession” was declared over by economists in June of 2009. Wages are up only 1 percent by contrast. Guess who has the money to support deceitful ads like those from Crossroads and to fund Tea Party candidates who are willing to throw the elderly, children, the poor and the disabled under the bus to protect special privileges for millionaires and billionaires.

Jane Harrison

Wayesville