How Easily Democrats Are Forgetting 9/11

Recently, Bill Clinton was campaigning for Barack Obama. In his speech he touted the fact that he created 22 million jobs during his administration and how, when he left office, he left with a budget surplus. Barack Obama has similarly commented on Bill Clinton's accomplishments. At the same time, they trashed the Bush administration on job creation and for creating budget deficits.

Certainly, they are right on the numbers. The Bush administration hasn't done well on job creation and maintaining a budget surplus. Democrats would certainly point to the wastefulness of the Iraq war as an underlining cause.

But, never once do the Democrats, especially Barack Obama, ever mention the recession handed to George Bush by Bill Clinton or the compounding impact of 9/11 on our economy. They never mention how it literally took until the end of 2005, just 3 years ago, for things to start turning around. All those Bush tax cuts were aimed at restoring this country after trillions were lost in this economy. They were done to create jobs that were lost to the economic downturn. They fail to mention how unemployment numbers around and below 6 percent are still historically low. They fail to mention all the spending and tax cuts that were done to stimulate the economy; just as we are spending billions, today, to fix the subprime credit crisis. Barack Obama and Bill Clinton seem to forget how businesses and air travel were seriously affected by 9/11. They forget how much money had to be dumped into Homeland Security and the TSA to protect and strengthen this country against another attack. They always talk about the Iraq war but, conveniently forget about all the costs associated with Afghanistan. Billions were spent to beef up airport and seaport security. Hundreds of government buildings and facilities around the world were modified to avoid drive-up bombers; and, thousands of security personnel were hired to secure our airports and government buildings. Lastly, they fail to recognize that 10 million low-income people don't have to pay any income taxes today, thanks to the Bush tax cuts that supposedly only benefited the rich.

For the last 6 years, the Democrats have complained that containers aren't being individually examined at seaports. One can only imagine what the deficits would be like today if they, rather than Republicans, were in charge of Congress from 9/11 to 2003. Do you really think we would be limited to the amount of union TSA workers that we have today? Not hardly. The Democrats would have easily seized on 9/11 as a means of payback to the unions by having security personnel "manually" unload and examine every single container that came into our ports. That fact, alone, would add thousands of more union employees on the government tab and would have brought our sea trade to a standstill.

It just seems like the Democrats conveniently forget 9/11 when it comes to the deficit spending and jobs. 9/11 seriously hurt our economy. It cost this country a fortune in spending for new and preventative measures. What had to be done with taxes and spending had to be done. The Bush administration did what was expected of it. They had to get this country back on an economic footing and provide protection for us all. Despite the current housing/credit crisis, this country did get back to economic growth. We haven't had another attack for 7 years. And, the deficit had been going down as the tax revenues reached record levels.

It is too bad that the politics of winning the White House has to minimize the impact of 9/11 and all that we suffered as a country as a result of it. 9/11 was a horrible loss of lives and an event that changed America's sense of security forever. What ever happened to the slogan of "We will always remember"?