RNC posts 2004 video of Obama calling the deficit under Bush “an enormous problem”
As Republicans this week extend their attacks on President Obama for the increasing federal debt, the RNC’s “rapid response” team has dredged up old video of then-Senate candidate Obama elaborating his views about the federal deficit during a 2004 debate.
In the course of his response to a moderator’s question about the “monstrous federal deficit,” Obama says it’s “an enormous problem” brought about by the Bush White House, which he calls “the most fiscally irresponsible administration in certainly my memory.”
“We have gone from trillion-dollar surpluses to trillion-dollar deficits in the blink of an eye,” Obama said. “Not all of those costs are the fault of the administration — obviously, 9/11 occurred and the decline in the economy. But what is also true is that it was aided and abetted by a set of fiscal policies that I think were on the wrong course.”
Washington Extra – Patriotic millionaires
As Democrats and Republicans hunkered down on opposite sides of the Capitol on Wednesday, showing no signs of a compromise on slashing the deficit, a group called the Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength made its move.
Nearly 140 members wrote a letter to President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress to “do the right thing” and “raise our taxes.” Next they hit up the bipartisan “super committee,” laboring under a Nov. 23 deadline to reach agreement on the deficit or trigger unpalatable budget cuts.
One of the corporate patriots said if Congress ended Bush-era tax cuts it would affect him and his fellow millionaires in his group “about as much as a dead fly interrupts a picnic.”
Another added “those of us who can afford it should step up. That is our message to the super committee. We hope they listen.”
Yeah, well, good luck with that. With just a week to go and members expressing some pretty serious doubts about a deal, the super committee twelve sound like they can’t even listen to each other.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Deficit committee locked in budget stalemate
Really?
Does anyone believe this kind of propaganda anymore?
If you want to donate money to charity or the state nobody would stop you…
Well, come August 3rd Boehner will have a tear jerk story to tell about how he couldnt sit around for another 8 years of spendimg when Bush 2 did so much to balance the budget build a fence around mexico, free the people of Iraq, Afghanistan. Pakistan, Iran, and the great state of denial.
Stark realities of U.S. life without credit
Amid the political fingerpointing over which party will catch the blame if Congress fails to raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit, comes the stark reality of what bills get paid after Aug. 2, if the U.S. government can’t borrow more money.
A group of House Republicans wrote a letter to President Barack Obama on Thursday to say there would be plenty of money from tax receipts to make interest payments to creditors, pay Social Security retirement benefits, cover Medicare health payments and pay U.S. military troops.
Senate Democrats at a news conference made clear that once those bills were paid, little would be left for anything else.
“It would require the Treasury to make some very dark and difficult choices,” said Senator Charles Schumer, a member of the Senate Democratic leadership.
The U.S. monthly revenue totals $172 billion, while its monthly obligations total $307 billion. Payments for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, interest on the debt, troops and defense needs will gobble up the entire monthly income.
There would be no money for student loans just as young people are heading back to school, no money for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, border security, health research, food inspections, Schumer said.
“You don’t have anyone at the border, anyone doing food inspections, anyone in the FAA (air traffic control) towers. America would come to a grinding halt,” Schumer said.
The real problem is that the military means the USA bought to achieve world hegemony have failed. Spectacular (and very expensive) tactical defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan: We failed to plunder Iraq’s oil, and we failed to gain control of the pipeline route into Central Asia from the Taliban.
The 20th century was not kind to defeated empires. No reason to believe the 21st will be different.
Washington Extra – Beware of frank
When officials in Washington describe talks as “frank,” the usual translation is: “didn’t go my way.”
President Barack Obama emerged from a meeting with congressional leaders on the deficit and proclaimed: “People were frank.”
Uh-oh. Doesn’t sound like the president’s persuasive personality prevailed.
So they’re all going to meet again on Sunday, when Obama said he wants to see everyone’s “bottom lines” so they can engage in “the hard bargaining that’s necessary to get a deal done.”
Deals on issues of this magnitude usually go to the wire in this town, and Aug. 2 is still more than three weeks away…
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Live coverage: President Obama’s speech on debt reduction
President Obama will explain his vision for tackling the long-term U.S. deficit and debt in a speech in Washington at 1:35 p.m.
Washington Extra – A vision
One thing clear about President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated speech on reducing the long-term deficit is that the White House believes it will be a vision to behold.
“The president will lay out a vision and that vision will be clear,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said. But he refused to provide details and said to stay tuned.
Will there be numbers? Is it a plan? White House correspondents asked seeking clarity.
“I think that you can describe a vision as a plan,” Carney said. “I will not then go from there to get into specifics about what that vision-slash-plan-slash-concept will include.”
Obama will meet with congressional leaders to lay out his vision before delivering the speech tomorrow.
Will they find it simply divine or a mirage?
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Washington Extra – 9 below
Don’t underestimate the PoliPsych impact of the unemployment rate falling below 9 percent for the first time in nearly two years.
That number is the one which resonates with the public when candidates talk about jobs on the campaign trail.
The economy is still shaking off the doldrums so the White House did not want to be seen as publicly reveling in what must have been a privately gleeful moment after the 8.9 percent February unemployment rate was revealed.
President Barack Obama said the employment report showed progress in the economy, “but we need to keep building on that momentum.”
Republicans were certainly not going to praise economic data with a Democrat in the White House and a presidential election next year.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said the unemployment rate “is still too high and we need to continue our efforts to make sure private sector employers have sure footing to invest in new employees and expand their businesses.”
Congress will be looking for creative ways to cut the deficit.
Washington grow up? Don’t hold your breath
President Barack Obama said he wants a mature discussion between politicians of all stripes as the White House and members of Congress try to make tough decisions on spending and taxes necessary to run the government and deal with a ballooning budget deficit.
“My hope is that what’s different this time is, is we have an adult conversation where everybody says here’s what’s important and here’s how we’re going to pay for it,” Obama told a news conference Tuesday.
Don’t hold your breath.
Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008 with a pledge to seek common ground between Democrats and Republicans, but his time in office has been marked by bitter fighting and few issues garnering bipartisan support.
Obama’s healthcare overhaul — dismissed as ”Obamacare” by Republicans — passed with no Republican votes. His economic stimulus plan had only minimal backing from the rival party. The Democratic president released his latest budget proposal Monday, but Congress never passed last year’s spending bills and some Republicans have vowed to shut down the government if Obama does not support their plans to cut spending.
Political discourse during Obama’s presidency has also been marked by name-calling such as Obama’s references to “Wall Street fat cats” during his fight to pass financial regulatory reform, and precedent-breaking incidents such as a Republican congressman shouting, “You lie!” at Obama as he addressed a joint session of Congress.
Democrats and Republicans worked together to pass several pieces of legislation in December during the “lame-duck” session of Congress that followed the Republicans’ sweeping victory in legislative elections in November.
Washington Extra – A snowball’s chance?
American voters made their feelings very clear last week. U.S. government borrowing is too high and needs to be reduced. How sad, then, that the presidential commission tasked with coming up with a credible plan to cut the deficit is already being dismissed as a non-event.
“This is the most predictable economic crisis we have ever faced,” Erskine Bowles rightly said today as he unveiled his joint proposals with co-chair Alan Simpson.
What is lacking, though, is not a realization of this fact, but the political will and bipartisanship to find a solution. Already, some members of their own commission have expressed skepticism about the plan or dismissed it entirely, while the wider audience in Congress is hardly rushing to embrace the ideas.
The commission was supposed to show the way to bipartisanship and magically supply the missing political will. It is already clear that has not happened.
Bowles and Simpson challenged critics of their plan to come up with better ways to cut the deficit. Somehow, that too seems like a vain hope.
And yet, perhaps, as the White House said, this is “just a step in the process,” or, as Senator Judd Gregg put it, “just a starting point.” Perhaps American politicians will surprise me.
Here are our top stories from Washington today…
Very stupid critique. Running a deficit when the economy was in good shape was not smart. But when the economy sank into the Great Recession at the end of the Bush presidency, it was necessary to run a deficit to rescue the economy. If Bush had not run up the deficit, when it was imperative to have one, the pain would have been much less. But this is too complex for GOP rank and file to understand.