Yes, Barack. We know.
It’s too bad you weren’t elected president in a tinpot dictatorship. Then you wouldn’t ahve to worry about these minor legalities – like a Constitution.
Obama tripled the deficit his first year with the failed Obama-Pelosi stimulus plan.
In Obama’s second year the deficit topped a trillion dollars again.
It was unprecedented.
The Obama deficit this year may reach $1.29 trillion. (The Captain’s Comments) Barack Obama and Democrats also added over One Trillion Dollars to the Federal Budget in the last 4 years.
That’s at least a 30% increase in federal spending in just 3 years. Despite this, the Whiner-in-Chief blamed Bush again today for the record debt and deficit.
Via FOX Nation:
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It turns out we don’t have to do anything radical to solve this problem. Contrary to what some folks say, we’re not Greece, we’re not Portugal. It turns out that our problem is we cut taxes without paying for them over the last decade. We ended up instituting new programs, like a prescription drug program for seniors that was not paid for. We fought two wars, we didn’t pay for them. We had a bad recession that required a Recovery Act and stimulus spending and helping states, accumulated, and there’s interest on top of that. And to unwind that, what’s required is that we roll back those tax cuts on the wealthiest individuals. That we clean up our tax codes so we’re not giving out a bunch of tax breaks to companies that don’t need them and are not creating jobs. We cut programs that we don’t need and we invest in those things that are gonna help us grow. And every commission that’s been out there has said the same thing and basically taken then same approach within the margin of error. So my general view is that if the American people looked at this they’d say, “Boy, some of the decisions are tough, but they don’t require us to gut Medicare or Social Security. They don’t require us to stop helping young people to go to college. They don’t require us to stop helping families who have a disabled child. They don’t require us to violate our obligation to our veterans. And they don’t require us to stop, quote/unquote, ‘job-killing’ tax cuts. They require us to make some modest adjustments to get out house in order. And we should do it now.” With respect to Senator McConnell’s plan, like I said, I think it is a … it is constructed to say that if Washington operates as usual and can’t get anything done, let’s avert Armageddon.
For the record… Bush reduced the deficit from $412 billion to $162 billion in 4 years with tax cuts.
And, if Obama was really concerned about “instituting new programs that were not paid for” he never would have rammed through Obamacare.
thegatewaypundit.comI tossed that question out on Twitter this morning and no one had an answer. Verum Serum and Ace have been thinking the same thing and they don’t have answers either. Simple question: If, as the White House insists, hitting the debt ceiling would be the economic equivalent of an asteroid hitting the Earth, and if the only way to avoid that (i.e. the only way to get something through the House) is with a scaled-down bill that would raise the ceiling only until mid-2012, why isn’t the Lightbringer okay with that? Granted, it would mean he’d have to face another asteroid next year in the middle of the campaign, but so what? How is that a reason to let this asteroid hit right now?
To put it another way, is there any policy reason why Obama won’t agree to a short-term deal or is this really as horribly cynical as it looks — that he simply refuses to do anything that might complicate his reelection campaign, even if that means a default by the United States? Jake Tapper pressed Carney about that in today’s briefing — which is worse, default or a short-term deal? — and Carney actually said, no joke, “Both are bad; I can’t choose which is worse for you.” In a sane world, that answer would shatter the White House narrative that hitting the ceiling is an avoid-at-all-costs risk since, evidently, the Perpetual Campaigner thinks another slugfest over this next year is a greater risk than defaulting now would be. The only policy rationale I can come up with for his position is that, in the middle of a brutal campaign, the two sides will be even further dug in than they are now such that there’ll be zero chance of a deal next year compared to the very, very slim chance that there is for one now. But who knows if that’s true: If the presidential race is tight at the time, which is likely, brinksmanship will be extremely risky for both sides lest a default occur and their party be blamed by the public right before the election. In fact, if the economy is still sluggish and the GOP nominee is benefiting in the polls, Republicans will have added incentive not to risk their political advantage by going to the wall on the debt ceiling. So there’s no reason to think Debt Ceiling II would necessarily be bloodier than Debt Ceiling I. The only sure thing is that it would take away time from Obama to fundraise and campaign, which, I guess, is worth gambling the full faith and credit of the U.S. government on.
Chuck Schumer, among other liberals, has innocently wondered whether the GOP is deliberately trying to tank the economy for political advantage, so let me repay the kindness here. Is Obama drawing the line on short-term deals because he thinks that, if it comes to this, he might be able to spin a default next month for electoral gain? There’s already reason to believe that voters will blame the GOP if we hit the ceiling; if that’s so, then O has a ready-made scapegoat for his biggest political liability next year. Unemployment still above nine percent come fall 2012? Why, that’s the Republicans’ fault for letting America default, the DNC will say. If only we’d reached a debt-ceiling deal, you see, then we never have had that jolt and unemployment would be below eight percent and dropping. That’s what Obama’s economists will claim. You trust his economists to tell you the truth about unemployment, don’t you?
Needless to say, the House’s next move now should be to pass a short-term debt-ceiling increase keyed to something like $1.5 trillion in spending cuts and dare Obama to veto it. That would accomplish the same thing as McConnell’s plan, basically, by putting the decision on the ceiling squarely in The One’s court. If he’s so appallingly self-centered that he’d veto an opportunity to avert default simply to avoid making his own life tougher next year, then let’s make sure everyone knows that. And if House Republicans are unhappy with such a small bill, good news: The “big” bill was kind of a joke anyway. I’ll leave you with this video of Reid dumping on Eric Cantor on the Senate floor this morning, which is the latest attempt by Democrats to confound the Republican caucus by driving a wedge between him and Boehner. That’s another example of them putting politics above policy: If getting something passed to avert a default is paramount and the House is the big stumbling block in that endeavor, all this does is slow things down further by aggravating tensions among the GOP and reducing Boehner’s “moderate” leverage. And yet, here Reid is anyway. Go figure.Majority Leader Eric Cantor chuckled on Thursday when he talked about Obama’s dramatic meltdown a day earlier.
Obama abruptly stormed out of a meeting with Congressional leaders after Cantor told the president that Republicans would not vote for his proposed tax hikes.Cantor got a kick out of it.
The National Review reproted:
thegatewaypundit.comFor months, Cantor has been a force in high-stakes talks, from the debt-reduction discussions led by Vice President Biden to the current Cabinet Room confabs hosted by President Obama. On Wednesday night, the ongoing efforts, he says, unfortunately veered into the personal when the president criticized the Virginia lawmaker for opposing tax increases.
The president “got very agitated,” Cantor told reporters Wednesday night at the Capitol. Cantor added that Obama then told him not to “call my bluff,” and said that he would take his argument to the “American people.”
Reflecting on the episode Thursday afternoon, Cantor chuckles over how dramatically the president behaved. He chalks up the heated conversation to politics more than anything. “They’re just not serious,” he says. “Even those things identified in the Biden talks have been cast aside, only touchable if we raise taxes.”
“I was willing to compromise,” Cantor contends. “I said, Mr. President, we want to do it right. I said, I agree with you, we ought not to go beyond August 2. But because the votes are not there in the House, I asked whether he was willing to come off his statement that he will veto that. That’s what led to the blowup.”
…For all the news stories about Republican sniping, Cantor says it’s the Democrats who are in disarray. “It seems, now, that the president drew an arbitrary line at $1.7 trillion; then Reid and [House Democratic leader Nancy] Pelosi drew a line and said we’re at $1.4 trillion. Anything above that, they say, they’re going to need new revenues, new tax hikes on the table.”
Cantor shakes his head at the ever-evolving numbers in the Democrats’ offerings. Despite their inconsistent message, he says that he will continue to attend the summits, doing what he can to help broker a favorable agreement. “We need a short-term solution that meets the goals the speaker has set out,” he says.
There are rumors that relations between Boehner and Cantor are tense. The majority leader swats back that charge. “We’ve had a very productive working relationship,” he says. “We meet regularly, at least three, four times a week, maybe more. I have a very open dialogue with him. Both of us are team players. We share a philosophy of governance.” Boehner, he says, walked away from a “grand bargain” with Obama “for the same reason I walked away from the Biden talks: Democrats insisted on tax increases.”
This is really disturbing. What kind of a man does this?
Driven by ambition, Barack Obama used his dying mother as a prop for one of his final campaign ads.
Obama lied about his mother’s stuggles with insurance companies to get elected. He lied about her insurance situation to ram through Obamacare. None of it was true.
The Blaze reported:
Tuesday, The Blaze reported on President Barack Obama‘s alleged mischaracterization of his mother’s, Ann Dunham, arguments with her insurance company as she lay dying (Obama claimed the insurance company wanted to deny her coverage based on a pre-existing condition). Now, the White House is declining to challenge the charge that Obama fabricated the story in an effort to convince Americans to support his Democratic health care reform plan.
In his initial report on the story, The Blaze’s Christopher Santarelli wrote:
A new book by New York Times reporter Janny Scott sheds new light on the life of Barack Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, including her final years. Scott found while assembling information for “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” that Dunham in fact did have health coverage for her ovarian cancer, based off Dunham’s own past correspondence.
If these allegations are true, Obama‘s statements about his mother’s care were based on outright lies, fabrications — or, at the least, incorrect memories regarding what had actually occurred. Throughout his 2008 presidential campaign and during the political battle over the contentious health care legislation, the president utilized his mother’s story to instill pathos in audiences. In 2010, he said:
“I do remember the last six months of her life, insurance companies threatening that they would not reimburse her for her costs.”The New York Times explains that the president and the White House, at this juncture, are not refuting Scott’s conclusions:
The White House on Wednesday declined to challenge an account in a new book that suggests that President Obama, in his campaign to overhaul American health care, mischaracterized a central anecdote about his mother’s deathbed dispute with her insurance company.
The insurance companies didn’t take advantage of his mother. They bent over backwards to assist her during her final days.
Obama lied.
But it did buy him some sympathy votes. That’s what he was looking for.
Michelle Malkin has more on Obama’s horrific fable.
thegatewaypundit.comLibyan rebels were accused this week of training children as young as 7 to fight on the front lines against Gaddafi.
Crossfire: Boys help rebel fighters carry automatic weapons in Misrata, Libya, after a gun battle with Gaddafi troops. (Daily Mail)
The Libyan rebels were also accused this week of looting shops and clinics and torching homes of regime supporters.
Seattle PI reported:
Libyan rebels fighting to oust Moammar Gadhafi have looted shops and clinics and torched the homes of suspected regime supporters in some of the towns they seized in the country’s western mountains, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.
The findings come as the rebels have enlarged the area under their control in the west and inched closer to a key supply route to Tripoli…
…In one case cited by the report, the rights group witnessed five houses on fire in the village of Qawalish, which was seized by the rebels on July 6, and gunmen loading their truck with supplies looted from a shop.
A few days later, nine more houses had been set alight.
So, it only makes sense then that the Obama Administration granted the Libyan rebel leaders full diplomatic recognition as the governing authority of Libya today.
It’s an Obama world.
Say, didn’t Jay Carney once work in journalism — you know, that profession that Speaks Truth to Power, holds government accountable, afflicts-the-comfortable-while-comforting-the-afflicted? It seems that either he has forgotten that Speaking Truth to Power requires at the very least Asking Questions to Power first, although Carney didn’t forget to play his Moral Authority Card yesterday when telling the White House press corps that they wouldn’t be allowed into the debt-ceiling meeting. They had rudely transgressed by “shouting” questions at Barack Obama:
When asked today why TV crews and print reporters were barred from the pool covering the White House meeting with congressional leaders on the deficit, Carney responded by pointing out that the administration has held two press conferences in the past two weeks and allowed TV cameras into the spray earlier this week.
“People shouted questions at him,” Carney said. He then added, “The purpose of the meeting is not to create a circus, but to negotiate, so today we’re doing stills only.”
The White House Correspondents’ Association has protested exclusion of print and TV from pools — and several reporters in the briefing room took Carney’s comment as an annoyed expression of presidential displeasure with shouted questions. …
“I used to be where you are, and I used to ask questions,” the former journalist reminded his press corps.
First Obama stomps out on the meeting yesterday because Cantor kept asking Obama questions, and now the entire White House press corps has to go into time out for the same reason. This may be the most thin-skinned President since Richard Nixon.
hotair.comIn what I am sure is going to be a recurring theme, a bi-partisan group of lawmakers have introduced legislation that will repeal a section of Obamacare that is proving to be unpopular. (I know, I know…the bill in its entirety is unpopular, but I’m referring to the parts of the bill that are SO unpopular that even now as partisans duke it out, they agree on this).
It seems that a provision of the new health care law that was meant to reduce costs has instead, wait for it, RAISED costs and produced excess waste and waiting time:
Lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced bipartisan legislation Thursday to remove restrictions on tax-exempt health spending accounts, the latest provision of the healthcare reform law to come under attack by Democrats.
The bill would nix a provision that since January has required a prescription for buying over-the-counter medicines with medical savings accounts such as Flexible Spending Arrangements and Health Savings Accounts. The language was added as a way to keep the bill’s costs down because it was estimated to save $5 billion over 10 years by cutting down on unnecessary drug purchases.
Of course, those who are familiar with the thinking that incentives drive behavior would predict that requiring people to get a doctor’s note for over the counter medication to save money would increase the amount of people going to the doctor understand that this idea is a non-starter. But those who don’t understand this [liberals] are somewhat shocked at the development:
But it appears to have had the opposite effect of increasing people’s use of medical services. Indeed, many doctors complain that they’re seeing patients for the sole purpose of writing out prescriptions for over-the-counter medicines.
Whatever you may think of Fox’s news coverage, I don’t think political leaders should be able to pick and choose who covers the things they do and say. But apparently Obama thinks he can:
JudicialWatch.org, a conservative, non-partisan foundation which seeks accountability in government, has obtained emails going back to the Fall of 2009, when the Obama White House was in a battle with Fox News Channel. At issue: whether the Obama White House had excluded Fox News from interviews with Obama Administration officials.
One email, dated Oct. 23, 2009 went like this:
“I’m putting some dead fish in the fox cubby — just cause.”
That was from Jennifer Psaki, Deputy White House Communications Director to Jenni LeCompte, then-Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs in the Treasury Department.
In another email the day before, from Dag Vega, Director of Broadcast Media at the White House, to LeCompte, Vega informs LeCompte that “…we’d prefer if you skip Fox please.”
This goes against the administration’s position that it did not set out to exclude Fox News from getting access to Treasury official Kenneth Feinberg. That denial followed a decision by NBC News, ABC News, CBS News and CNN to stand together and refuse an interview with Feinberg if Fox News was going to be blocked.
In other words, the Obama administration lied about this. What’s more, this isn’t the only time the Obama administration has tried to control the way the media covers it. Just yesterday White House Press Secretary Jay Carney had to answer questions about why some reporters were having their access restricted.
Carney’s answer? The President doesn’t like the way they ask questions.
So much for the most transparent administration ever.
sayanythingblog.com
Is there a health insurance horror story disseminated by the White House and its allies that ever turned out to be true? Obamacare advocates have exercised more artistic license than a convention of Photoshoppers. Now, a prominent sob story shilled by President Obama himself about his own mother is in doubt. It’s high past time to call their bluffs.
The tall-tale-teller-in-chief cited mom Stanley Ann Dunham’s deathbed fight with her insurer several times over the years to support his successful push to ban pre-existing condition exclusions by insurers. In a typical recounting, Obama shared his personalized trauma during a 2008 debate: “For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”
But there was something fundamentally wrong with Obama’s story. In a recently published biography of Obama’s mother, author and New York Times reporter Janny Scott discovered that Dunham’s health insurer had in fact reimbursed her medical expenses with nary an objection. The actual coverage dispute centered on a separate disability insurance policy.
Channeling document forger Dan Rather’s “fake, but accurate” defense, a White House spokesman insisted to the Times that the anecdote somehow still “speaks powerfully to the impact of pre-existing condition limits on insurance protection from health care costs” — even though Dunham’s primary health insurer did everything it was supposed to do and met all its contractual obligations.
No matter. Expanding government control over health care means never having to say you’re sorry for impugning private insurers. Democrats have dragged every available human shield into the contentious debate over Obama’s federal takeover of health care. Personal anecdotes of dying family members battling evil insurance execs deflect attention from the cost, constitutionality and liberty-curtailing consequences of the law. The president’s Dunham sham-ecdote is just the latest entry in an ever-expanding catalogue of Obamacare fables:
– Otto Raddatz. In 2009, Obama publicized the plight of this Illinois cancer patient, who supposedly died after he was dropped from his Fortis/Assurant Health insurance plan when his insurer discovered an unreported gallstone the patient hadn’t known about. The truth? He got the treatment he needed in 2005 and lived for nearly four more years.
– Robin Beaton. Also in 2009, Obama claimed Beaton — a breast cancer patient — lost her insurance after “she forgot to declare a case of acne.” In fact, she failed to disclose a previous heart condition and did not list her weight accurately, but had her insurance restored anyway after intense public lobbying.
– John Brodniak. A 23-year-old unemployed Oregon sawmill worker, Brodniak’s health woes were spotlighted by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as a textbook argument for Obamacare. Brodniak was reportedly diagnosed with cavernous hemangioma, a neurological condition, and was allegedly turned away by emergency room doctors. Kristof called the case “monstrous” and decried opponents of Democrats’ health care proposals as heartless murderers. The truth? Brodniak not only had coverage through Oregon’s Medicaid program, but was also a neurology patient at the prestigious Oregon Health and Science University in Portland (a safety-net institution that accepts all Medicaid patients). Kristof never retracted the legend.
– Marcelas Owens. An 11-year-old boy from Seattle, Owens took a coveted spot next to the president in March 2010 when Obamacare was signed into law. Owens’ 27-year-old mother, Tiffany, died of pulmonary hypertension. The family said the single mother of three lost her job as a fast-food manager and lost her insurance. She died in 2007 after receiving emergency care and treatment throughout her illness. Progressive groups (for whom Marcelas’ relatives worked) dubbed Marcelas an “insurance abuse survivor.” But there wasn’t a shred of evidence that any insurer had “abused” the boy or his mom. Further, Washington State already offered a plethora of existing government assistance programs to laid-off and unemployed workers like Marcelas’ mom. The family and its p.r. agents never explained why she didn’t enroll.
– Natoma Canfield. The White House made the Ohio cancer patient a poster child for Obamacare in 2010 after she wrote a letter complaining about skyrocketing premiums and the prospect of losing her home. After Obama gave Canfield a shout-out at a health care rally in Strongsville, Ohio, and promised to control costs, officials at the renowned Cleveland Clinic, which is treating her, made clear that they would “not put a lien on her home” and that she was eligible for a wide variety of state aid and private charity care.
Since Obamacare passed, the amount workers pay in health care premiums has soared an average of nearly 14 percent; thousands of businesses have sought waivers in search of relief from the law’s onerous mandates; medical device makers have slashed jobs and research; and the private individual health insurance market is in critical condition.
Post-Obamacare truth is bloodier than pro-Obamacare fiction.
michellemalkin.com
Which, of course, prompted the Obama administration to try and throw its own Council of Economic Advisers under the bus:
The White House on Tuesday sharply disputed a report that uses data from President Obama’s economic advisers to claim that jobs created or saved by the stimulus bill cost taxpayers $278,000 each.
The report released by the president’s Council of Economic Advisers late Friday ahead of the July 4 holiday weekend estimated the Recovery Act saved or created between 2.4 million and 3.6 million jobs by the end of March 2011. Spending equaled $666 billion by that time.
“That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job,” according to the Weekly Standard, a Washington, D.C.-based magazine. “In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the ’stimulus,’ and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.”
The Obama administration’s response? It’s all lies, and the stimulus bill wasn’t just about jobs anyway:
“The Recovery Act was more than a measure to create and save jobs; it was also an investment in American infrastructure, education and industries that are critical to America’s long-term success and investment in the economic future of America’s working families,” White House spokeswoman Liz Oxhorn said in a statement to FoxNews.com.
And here you thought the stimulus bill was about creating job through “investment” (read: spending) on infrastructure, education, etc. Guess it all depends on what your definition of “stimulus” is.
Regardless, this cost per job created/saved is undoubtedly law because it uses the bogus jobs created/saved metric. If you calculated the number just on new jobs which didn’t exist before the stimulus, then the number would be much higher.
Of course, the stimulus itself is a failure. We have millions fewer jobs now than when the recession started.
sayanythingblog.com
