Why ask Why?

Nouriel Roubini, the well known economist that predicated in 2005 the housing bubble would cause an economic crisis in America, says that former President George W. Bush is to blame for America's current economic crisis. Well duh!

Roubini, or Dr. Doom as he has been labeled because of his dour outlook on the state of our economy, claims that there are five factors that have led to our current fiscal condition.

1. We cut taxes.

2. We spent $2 trillion on two unwinnable wars.

3. We doubled discretionary spending. Some conservatives originally aimed to "starve the beast" or big government by cutting taxes in order to force future cuts in spending. But spending grew so out of control in Bush's term that no beast was starved, Roubini said. In fact, the beast was fed.

4. We added entitlement benefits like the Medicare drug benefit.

5. We entered the largest economic and financial crisis ever, which caused a huge increase in the deficit through the "recession deficit" and the cost of bailing out the banks and financial institutions.

According to Roubini, "We destroyed our fiscal sustainability before [President Obama] came to power. We had guns and butter and low taxes. It doesn't work. If you want guns and butter, you should have high taxes during wars."

The "guns or butter" portion of his statement refers to the macroeconomic model, that says that a nation must choose between defense spending or civilian spending, or some combination of both. In other words you cannot throw a big party without paying for it, or, you better have money in your checking account to cover that big purchase.

Of course most well informed and intelligent people (the operative word being "intelligent") understand that when President Obama came to power, he inherited a budget deficit of $1.2 trillion. When Bush came to power, the country had a surplus of $300 billion. But that is not going to get any traction at Fox News. Its easier to play the victim rather than take credit for the mess your political party helped create. And sadly it far easier to stand on the side line and call President Obama an outsider, and "a non citizen of the United States" and vilify him as Satan incarnate rather than help him fix the mess.

Remember, the "Hell No Party" want him to be a one term President, and they are perfectly willing to allow the middle class and the American economy go into the abyss to accomplish their short-term aims.

To be sure there is more than enough blame to go around in Washington, our lack of leadership in Congress has contributed to S & P's credit downgrade which made Wall Street very unhappy last week, which in turn made all our 401k's very unhappy. But re-litigating who should shoulder the blame and how we came to this sad predicatment isn't going to solve the problems we face as a nation.

We are here, and it is now. We need Jobs, Jobs, and more Jobs. The middle class needs help and the time for cute sound bites, and empty promises is over.

The time for "Why Ask Why?" is over.

The time has come for all our elected leaders to do the unthinkable and do their jobs and actually lead...