Posted on 01/28/2010 9:01:37 AM PST by TruthHound
Only ten? Maybe the Associated Press got as tired as everyone else listening to Barack Obama’s lengthy State of the Union speech last night and stopped paying attention after an hour. AP’s headline focuses on the “toothless commission” that Obama demanded, but the other nine fails on their fact-check test are just as interesting and revealing (via Geoff A):
President Barack Obama told Americans the bipartisan deficit commission he will appoint won’t just be “one of those Washington gimmicks.” Left unspoken in that assurance was the fact that the commission won’t have any teeth. …
OBAMA: “I’ve called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. This can’t be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem. The commission will have to provide a specific set of solutions by a certain deadline. Yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans.”
THE FACTS: Any commission that Obama creates would be a weak substitute for what he really wanted — a commission created by Congress that could force lawmakers to consider unpopular remedies to reduce the debt, including curbing politically sensitive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. That idea crashed in the Senate this week, defeated by equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. Any commission set up by Obama alone would lack authority to force its recommendations before Congress, and would stand almost no chance of success.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Let me add at least one other whopper that the AP doesn’t mention. Obama repeatedly insisted that he inherited massive budgetary problems from George Bush, but the Con Law professor may want to retake his high-school civics class. Congress passes budgets, not the President, and the last three budgets came from Democrats. In three years, they increased annual federal spending by $900 billion, while the admittedly profligate and irresponsible Republican Congresses under George Bush increased annual federal spending by $800 billion — in six years. And during the last three years before taking office as President, Obama served in the Senate that passed those bills, and he voted for every Democratic budget put in front of him.
One year into his Presidency and Obama is an old joke. Sub the word lie/s for the word joke/s:
A man is sent to prison for the first time. At night, the lights in the cell block are turned off, and his cellmate goes over to the bars and yells, “Number twelve!” The whole cell block breaks out laughing. A few minutes later, somebody else in the cell block yells, “Number four!” Again, the whole cell block breaks out laughing.
The new guy asks his cellmate what’s going on. “Well,” says the older prisoner, “we’ve all been in this here prison for so long, we all know the same jokes. So we just yell out the number instead of saying the whole joke.”
So the new guy walks up to the bars and yells, “Number six!” There was dead silence in the cell block. He asks the older prisoner, “What’s wrong? Why didn’t I get any laughs?”
“Well,” said the older man, “sometimes it’s not the joke, but how you tell it.”
Not only that but during the second term of President Bush, at the mid term the dems took the majority in the houses. So to paint this as a total Bush thing is something that needs to be shouted out.
P4L
Obama is like an appliance repair guy. You hire him to do maintenance on your washing machine, and for 2 years he is paid to make it work. The 3rd year it breaks, and he spends a year trying to fix it, but fails.
And at the end of that year, he complains that it’s too hard to fix, that it was broken long before he was asked to fix it. To which any sane person responds: What did I pay you for for the two years you maintained it? Why did you take the job of fixing it if you were incompetent to do so? What am I paying you for if you can’t do anything but complain about how bad it is broken?
‘...during the second term of President Bush, at the mid term the dems took the majority in the houses. ..’
exactly! This is something that the Republican leadership should be talking about every chance they get....but, alas, the pubbies, once again, seem to miss opportunities ..
AP badgering Obama? Well, what else do you expect from that radical, right-wing, partisan propaganda machine!
Obama’s estimated annual budge deficit stands at $1.8 Trillion, they are putting out a figure of 1.3 now, which seems to be budget gimmickry.
So, Obama markets a freeze, but this plan is anything but a freeze. He is calling for $ 250 Billion over 3 years of spending cuts with a 1 year delay. That is approximately $83 Billion of spending cuts per year for 3 years.
However, at the same time he is adding jobs stimulus of an additional $83 Billion for his “jobs” program. This is in addition to the former porkulus stumulus of over $800 Billion. Further, there is still about $400 Billion obligated but unspent of the original stimulus.
I tried to explain this “freeze” to my 13 year old yesterday. I stood him in front of the refrigerator and opened both doors. I advised him that the fridge represented 1.8 Trillion dollars of annual budget deficit, the difference between out revenues coming in and our outlays going out.
Then I said Pres. Obama is proposing to “freeze” spending of 83 Billion dollars per year for 3 years. So I take out gallon of milk and a tub of butter. This represents a rough approximation of the percentage cut in spending to the overal deficit. Then I say we will spend 83 Billion additional on a jobs stimulus. So, I put the milk and butter back in the fridge.
He understood the gimmickry of the spending “freeze” quite well. But we weren’t done, I told him that the spending cut plan wouldn’t take place until next year. So we now have to drive out and buy more milk and butter to put in the fridge. The cost of the gass represents the interest on the debt.
Frank Luntz’s focus group on Hannity was very revealing. Out of about 30 people, pretty much a popular cross-section, the vast majority saw it as just so much hot air & chutzpah.
Congress may overturn an executive order by passing legislation in conflict with it or by refusing to approve funding to enforce it. In the former, the president retains the power to veto such a decision; however, the Congress may override a veto with a two-thirds majority to end an executive order.
The list, ping
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