Last time I checked, the Democrats have a majority of both houses and they run the White House. So I don't think they can really "obstruct" anything.

No one is blaming Obama for causing the recession, and if they were it wouldn't be fair. Who "caused" the credit crisis and ensuing recession is a long list - but it's much more complicated than just blaming Bush.

But it is fair to criticize the stimulus plan such that it takes way to long for most of that money to get into the economy. An alternative like a payroll tax holiday would have a much more immediate effect of getting money into the hands of consumers. That plus more infrastructure might have helped with unemployment. But instead we just continue to watch unemployment tick higher.

It is also a fair criticism to say that Obama's budget is not "pay-as-you-go" and neither is the current drafts of healthcare legislation which will just continue to add more to our debt. All the data is on www.cbo.gov for you to review. Obama's budget alone causes us to run an average annual deficit of close to $1 trillion every year through 2019.

Maybe if Obama would just be honest that he is going to raise taxes ALOT on EVERYBODY, then at least I wouldn't have such a problem with his spin. You cannot run the type of government that Obama is proposing by collecting only 18% of GDP in taxes, which has been the norm for the last 40 years. You also can't increase the tax receipts to 25% of GDP (which is what Obama plans to be spending by 2019) simply by making the "rich" pay more. Rather than be honest with the American people now, the Administration is putting the spending pieces in place now and counting on the tax piece to fall into place later.

I can't speak for you, but I haven't seen a penny of the stimulus money. If there was a payroll tax holiday, I would. And if we said that the holiday would last until the economy started to grow again, people wouldn't view it as "one-time" in nature as the rebate checks were. The Federal payroll taxes the government deducts from our pay beginning with the first dollar we earn, gives the government 15% of our paychecks, which is $20 billion per week. Put that in the consumers hand paycheck after paycheck and the economy would rebound pretty quickly.

Obama thinks that we must first fix the banks and once the banks are fixed the consumers will get credit again and start to spend. Wrong. We need to fix this bottoms up, not top down.

As far as taxing the rich, it's mathematically difficult. I can't speak to the political side. I am using the 2006 IRS data, which is the most recent available, and it shows how Obama's math doesn't work.

Obama said he wouldn't raise your taxes if you make under $250,000. Unfortunately, the IRS data only breaks it out for people making below $200,000 and those making more than $200,000. But the data still proves my point.

In 2006, people with taxable income of $200,000 or more paid $544bn in taxes based on total taxable income of $2.15 trillion. So if we DOUBLED everyone's tax rate who makes over $200,000, the IRS would take in an extra $544bn. That wouldn't cover the CBO's $1 trillion annual deficit. We could raise the tax rate to 100% for everyone making over $200,000 and then we'd rake in an extra $1.6 trillion per year. But I don't think it's practical to raise people's tax rate to 100%. It's more just a hypothetical illustration of what it would take.

If you look at people making over $500,000 per year in taxable income, we could raise all of their tax rates to 100% and take in an extra $1 trillion per year of revenue to help reduce our $1 trillion of annual deficits the CBO is projecting. If you DOUBLED everyone's tax rate who makes over $500,000, you'd only raise an extra $700bn per year.

And remember, the CBO's current projections of $1 trillion average deficits for the next 10 years don't include any healthcare legislation that is yet to be passed and will undoubtedly increase the annual deficit numbers.

Also - it's safe to assume that tax receipts in 2009 and 2010 at a minimum will be much lower than the bull market 2006 numbers I used above.

So you see, the math is pretty simple - the "rich" just don't have enough taxable income where tax increases on them would make a dent in Obama's spending plan. What he said on the campaign trail was increasing taxes on the wealthiest 2%, and the increases he talked about never were in the range of doubling their average rate.

So there's another $3+ billion of taxable income coming from people making under $200,000 per year that has to be taxed more in order for the deficit to get under control.