That is certainly what it seems to be, given his final budget submission to Congress. Ever a troll to the very end, President Barack Obama has turned in a budget that has as much chance of passing as every other budget he’s submitted to Congress, even when the Democrats were in charge. This budget calls for increased spending on Medicaid, education, and clean energy and getting the money to do so from the rich and from banks.
The administration’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2017 also seeks to double its investment in clean energy programs to $12.8 billion in 2021 from $6.4 billion in 2016. “While we have made significant progress in deploying clean energy technologies, accelerating clean energy innovation is essential to addressing climate change,” the proposal says, noting that the U.S. joined with other countries in December in the Paris climate change accord.
And Obama also wants to spend $1.3 billion on international climate change assistance through the Global Climate Change Initiative, including $750 million for the Green Climate Fund, the program aimed at helping poor countries cope with the effects of climate change. Obama has pledged $3 billion to the GCF over several years and he requested $500 million for it in his last budget.
If it sounds all too familiar this campaign season, that’s because it is pretty much how Bernie Sanders plans to rule as president until he amasses the power to destroy Wall Street once and for all, preferably with Thor’s Hammer. It is, as POLITICO describes, a grab-bag of liberal policies. Hillary Clinton, who is a welcome and frequent guest of groups like Goldman Sachs, who pay her tons of money (ostensibly for speeches, in reality for influence), cannot be happy that her buddies on Wall Street are being targeted by her party at a time when she is desperate for the power the presidency provides.
It is all but an endorsement of the socialist policies voiced by Bernie Sanders, and perhaps a shot across the bow for Hillary, who has to tow the line between the socialist trends of her party and her fealty to the big money interests of Washington D.C. And, of course, Hillary can’t attack anything the president does if she wants to keep even a fraction of his coalition of voters together. Oh, and he is the only thing standing between the Department of Justice and an indictment.
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