Obama’s War on the Suburbs

01 Aug, 2015 by Peter Jedick

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In case you missed it, while the national media was obsessing over Caitlyn Jenner, the Supreme Court and the Confederate Flag, President Obama recently initiated a new program where the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will begin monitoring our nation’s neighborhoods to make sure that we all have our fair share of “low income families,” i.e. public housing. Never mind the fact that most of our public housing projects are already havens for gangs, drug dealers and car thieves.

The African-American, Democratic mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, called them “thugs” when they were rioting and looting in her city. Our African-American, Democratic former U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, called Jeffery Williams a “punk” when he was charged with shooting and wounding two police officers in Ferguson, Missouri.

Whatever you want to call them President Obama believes that those of us who live in the suburbs need more of them. In my book, HOW DEMOCRATS BANKRUPTED AMERICA, I argue that it is precisely this inner city lifestyle that is responsible for our nation’s huge $18 trillion debt.

Every day my newspaper’s crime blotter is filled with examples of shootings, muggings and burglaries, mostly taking place in our inner city “hoods.” And they are only the tip of the iceberg. Instead of expanding these crime ridden, entitlement dependent neighborhoods into the suburbs, we should try transforming them into safe, prosperous, tax paying communities. And the best way to do that is to stop subsidizing unwed mothers.

The details of HUD’s new regulations are murky, kind of like Obamacare, but they want communities to come up with plans to “affirmatively further” diversity. In other words, we need more low-income families in our nation’s suburbs and small towns. The idea is a combination of affirmative action and school busing, a couple of failed liberal blasts from the past.

What President Obama neglected to tell the American people is that there is already a program in place to accomplish his stated goal. It is called Section 8 subsidized housing. It allows any low-income family who qualifies to live anywhere that a landlord will accept Section 8 rent money. Most Americans do not understand this program or realize how many Section 8 units already exist in their neighborhoods, even though their taxes are supporting them.

My argument is that Section 8 housing is one of the pillars of our welfare state that needs to be dismantled. Why? Because it is much easier to qualify for Section 8 housing if you are an unemployed unwed mom with at least a couple of offspring. And it is these dysfunctional families that are the source of most of our nation’s social ills.

It is all the result of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” He is the one who invented HUD and a whole array of federal programs that were supposed to eliminate poverty in America.

Spoiler alert: We lost that war.

After throwing billions of dollars at the problem for over 50 years there are now over 14 million children in America who live in poverty. This is the wellspring from which most of our juvenile criminals develop. They are the ones who commit the crimes, disrupt the schools and fill our nation’s jails.  These are not pleasant nor PC statistics, but they are reality.

Not only do these Federal programs cost billions of dollars to administer but they also erode the tax base. It is why cities like Detroit are unable to pay their bills and now look like Port-au-Prince.

Our once great nation has reached the tipping point where we don’t have enough Americans paying taxes to cover the costs of supporting our inner city residents. They contribute little in taxes but demand a myriad of expensive public services. It is why we went from owing $310 BILLION under President Kennedy to $18 TRILLION under President Obama.

America is at a crossroads.  We are in danger of becoming another Greece or Puerto Rico that is unable to pay its debts. We need a President in 2016 who will shrink HUD’s powers instead of expanding them. Then we can reverse this trend and find some new solutions to our financial problems other than constantly raising our nation’s debt limit. We need to do it before it bankrupts the futures of our children and grandchildren.

Peter Jedick is a Cleveland-based, best-selling author and historian. HOW DEMOCRATS BANKRUPTED AMERICA is his fifth book.  www.peterjedick.com