Obama Will Focus On Deficit
Oct 24, 2010 Political
Barack Obama said that he will spend the next two years focusing on the deficit. This is the same Barack Obama who has run the deficit sky high during his first two years. It also happens to be the same guy who said he would halve the deficit by the end of his first term. That simply will not happen. The deficit is simply too high and it will be impossible, barring manipulating the CBO with numbers, to halve it.
If Obama plans to focus on the deficit like he did jobs (he was going to focus like a laser beam) then we are even more screwed. The article discussing Obama’s plans lays out what he intends to do in his second term as he faces the reality of not having a majority in the House:
Obama will try to make gains on deficit reduction, education and energy. He will enforce his health care and financial overhauls and try to protect them from repeal should Republicans win control of Capitol Hill. He will use executive authority when blocked by Congress, and steel for scrutiny and investigations if the GOP is in charge. Yahoo News [emphasis mine]
Basically, Obama plans to do what he wants and if Congress does not give him his way then he will use executive orders to get what he wants. Fat chance this will work for long because Obama does not have the authority to appropriate money via executive or any other authority. Congress has sole responsibility for appropriating money and I have a feeling that Republicans will stop appropriating money for those things that Obama demands or tries to get using executive authority.
Congress has the power of the purse and though a Republican led Congress might not have enough votes to override an Obama veto, it will certainly have the power to withhold money.
Isn’t it funny how Barry Obama, the man-child, was so against the “abuse” of executive power by George Bush but will abuse it himself to get what he wants.
I predict Republicans will pick up more than 55 seats in the House and will have a large enough majority to prevent Obama from doing any more damage to this country.
The only unanswered question is; will they have the testicular fortitude to actually do so.
Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: deficit, executive authority, majority, Obama
The Health Care Shell Game
Mar 19, 2010 Political
The CBO numbers came out and Democrats are giddy. They believe the numbers reported mean that the health care takeover bill will save money and reduce the deficit. This is far from the truth. The CBO can only grade what they are given and they are only given items that are expected to give the desired result. It is a shell game that all politicians play when they want to hide the true cost of any legislation.
The reality of the health care takeover is that it will increase the deficit. The doc-fix is something that has been going on for a long time. In order to reimburse doctors the amount needed for Medicare patients, a separate bill is introduced each year to fix the problem. The fix is usually added to some other spending bill to reduce the cost of Medicare. Last year it was added to the Defense bill so the cost, on paper, was not borne by Medicare.
The doc-fix was supposed to be a part of the health care takeover bill and it should be. It would have been a permanent part of health care so that there would be no future need for doc-fixes. But that fix caused a deficit so the Democrats removed it from the bill and made it a separate piece of legislation. The money must still be spent but removing it from the health care takeover bill kept the CBO from scoring it against the bill. Keep in mind, this is still a cost that must be borne no matter what bill it appears in.
The CBO states, despite what Democrats claim (Obama made the claim today), that the health care takeover would increase the deficit. This is an assessment based on including the doc-fix in the health care takeover bill.
The Congressional Budget Office said Friday that rolling back a programmed cut in Medicare fees to doctors would cost $208 billion over 10 years. If added back to the health care overhaul bill, it would wipe out all the deficit reduction, leaving the legislation $59 billion in the red.
The so-called doc fix was part of the original House bill. Because of its high cost, Democrats decided to pursue it separately. Republicans say the cost should not be ignored. Congress has usually waived the cuts to doctors year by year. Yahoo News
Republicans are correct in saying that this cost should not be ignored because it is a cost associated with health care. Democrats are deliberately ignoring it to give the false impression that the health care takeover bill will reduce the deficit.
It will actually cause the takeover to be 59 BILLION dollars in the red. That is 59 Billion more dollars added to the deficit.
This is a shell game being played in order to get this takeover passed. The bill is not about health and it is not about care. It is about control. Once the government controls health care it will control the people and this is what Democrats want, control over you.
Keep in mind that VP Biden said that the government would control the health care companies (it is about control) and Nancy Pelosi said that this was the start and that more would be done after this passes. They want the public option and this is what she is talking about. When Obama was being skewered by Bret Baier this week he disclosed that this is a start and that they were working incrementally to get more. He has stated in the past that the public option was the goal and he alluded to that in the interview. He pointed out that Canada did not get where it is all at once, that they did it in steps. This health care takeover is the first of many steps to get to a public option and take complete control of our lives.
To ensure that we are controlled by the government the bill puts the IRS in charge of checking on each of us every month to make sure we are insured. If we do not have insurance they will fine us and take the money from any refund due or otherwise fine us. The government will use the IRS to enforce the dictatorial rules on us and that will cost about 10 BILLION more dollars that will have to be paid but will not be counted against the cost of the legislation even though the expense is a direct result of it.
The process is unconstitutional and it is contrary to what a free people expect. Once government controls our lives we have lost our freedom and this is what Democrats want.
We also need to understand that Obama is in favor of using the same jaded and unconstitutional processes to pass the rest of his agenda. How far will this go? How far does it have to go before Americans revolt?
I do not know the answer but I know that I will not relinquish my freedom without a fight.
And all true Americans feel the same.
We will teach these people that they work for us and that we are not their servants.
One way or another they are going to learn this lesson.
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Tags: constitution, deficit, health care, irs, lies, Obama, shell game
By His Own Definition Obama Is A Failed Leader
Dec 12, 2009 Political
I was watching one of the shows on Fox last evening and a Democrat was gushing over Obama’s leadership and how wonderful he was as a leader but Barack Obama is not a leader. Obama could not lead a group of people out of a burning building. Sure, he has followers but more like the Pied Piper had followers. I imagine that people follow him but only out of morbid curiosity.
It does not matter what I think about Obama’s leadership (even though I have more leadership experience than he does) what matters is what Obama says about leadership and what he said is that he is not a leader or more accurately, he is a failed leader.
The Democrats are set to raise the debt ceiling to 14 TRILLION dollars. They say only raise it 1.8 trillion to make it sound better but they are raising it to 14 TRILLION. This is the Democrat party that voted as a group not to raise the debt ceiling when Bush asked for it. Obama was one of the Senators who voted against it and he gave an impassioned speech (he is good at speeches) on the floor in opposition to raising the debt ceiling:
“Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren,” Obama said in a 2006 floor speech that preceded a Senate vote to extend the debt limit. “America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.” The Hill
OK Obamabi, if Washington was shifting the burden of bad choices onto the backs of our children when the debt ceiling was being raised to a lower amount back then, what changes anything now that you are raising it higher?
If it was a debt problem back then why is it not a debt problem now? And the kicker is, Obama said that this was a failure of leadership which means that raising the debt ceiling now, to an even higher level, is a failure of leadership.
I know that B-HO is now running around saying that deficits are bad and we have to curb spending but he spent like there was no tomorrow and ran up huge deficits in 11 months. He has spent more than any other and we still have three years to go.
So let’s be clear, Obama has stated that raising the debt ceiling is a failure of leadership and he is raising the debt ceiling. Therefore, it is a failure of his leadership. Additionally, those Democrats who voted en masse not to raise the limit are going to vote to do it now. This is all coming from the people who brought you the collapse of our economy, the Democrats who were in control when it happened. The Democrats who promised the most transparent, honest, ethical, and open government (Pelosi made that promise) are the ones who crashed the economy and are hiding everything. The Democrats who told you America’s debt problem and raising the debt ceiling were the results of failed leadership are now the leaders raising the ceiling. They have failed us and Obama is a failed leader.
But it will be hard to convince Democrats of this. There is a woman named Deborah White who wrote a scathing post about the Republicans and spending and discussed how responsible Democrats were. Her post came when Republicans raised the debt ceiling to 9 Trillion so I wonder how she will handle this Democrat raise to 14? I am willing to bet that White will not change what she wrote even though Obama has broken all the records and exceeded the things she discussed as bad when Republicans did them.
Democrats like to point to the so called four straight years of surpluses in government revenue just prior to 2001. Of course there was no excess because of intergovernmental debt and because of the way they count but if I give the Democrats the benefit of the doubt on this and agree then I would have to be willing to admit that Republicans “balanced” the budget and created surplus. If there was a surplus then Newt Gingrich was responsible for it because Congress is responsible for the budget. Liberals credit it to Clinton but presidents do not have the authority to spend or money (or not spend it). Congress makes the budget, not the president.
So we went from being fiscally responsible and balanced when Gingrich did it to overspending after Gingrich was gone to a collapse once Democrats took over…
And we have gotten a man, who by his own admission, is a leadership failure.
I am willing to bet that some liberal will comment here and say it was Bush’s fault or different because Obama must save us all…
Related Items:
USA Today
Cleveland.com
Osmoothie
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Tags: debt ceiling, deficit, failed leadership, Obama
New York Times Errs In Reporting Protest
Sep 13, 2009 Political
There was a huge protest in DC with an estimated 1.3 to 2 million** people descending on the Capitol to protest out of control government and its out of control spending. The protests were about the health care overhaul as well as the stimulus, the cap and trade and all the other items that have led to a deficit of 1.3 TRILLION dollars. People have awakened to how out of control government is, a condition that is not specific to any one party. Government has been out of control for years and Republicans have been as bad as Democrats when it comes to fiscal responsibility.
We now have the party of big government and the party of bigger government from which to choose.
The New York Times though, saw it differently. They reported that the protest was against Obama. This is how most liberals (except those who were at the protest) see any condemnation of government. It, to them, is against Obama.
As President Barack Obama flew to Minnesota on Saturday to rally support for his health care plan, a sea of protesters filled the west lawn of the Capitol and spilled onto the National Mall on Saturday in the largest rally against Obama since he took office, a culmination of a summer-long season of protests that began with opposition to the health care overhaul and grew into a broader dissatisfaction with government. Statesman.com (reprint of NYT story) [emphasis mine]
The protest was not against Obama and was not a conservative only event though I am sure his ego leads him to believe this. Certainly the partisan NYT holds this view as does the Washington Post which reported that:
Tens of thousands of conservative protesters, many complaining that the nation is racing toward socialism, massed outside the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, angrily denouncing President Obama’s health-care plan and other initiatives as threats to the Constitution.
The protest no doubt consisted mostly of conservatives but there were many liberals and moderates as well. The common thinking in the ivory towers of the media is that no logical person would oppose this government (and in their view, Obama) so it must be the conservatives who are protesting.
Lost in all of this are the Democrats in Congress who oppose the legislation. They have the numbers to get done what they want but are unable because their own oppose the legislation. This is because their constituents, people of all political beliefs, let them have an earful during the August recess.
The media wing of the Democratic party would have America believe that the only people opposed to the government’s actions are conservatives and that the protests are against Obama. Both of these statements are incorrect and show a lack of journalistic integrity.
Americans of all political stripes are concerned about the out of control spending of the government and of the way that item after item is rushed through with little debate and with no one reading what the bills contain. People are also tired of being lied to.
Americans do not want the bills for the government’s inability to exercise fiscal restraint passed on to their children and grandchildren.
People have had enough and are demonstrating to show politicians their distrust and dissatisfaction.
They have that right under our Constitution in the same Amendment that allows freedom of the press.
It is too bad that the press lacks the integrity of the people who protest.
**This number is from earlier reports that were attributed to ABC News. ABC is saying it never made those estimates. The numbers now reported are from 75,000 to healthy 6 figures depending upon who you ask. The issue in the post is how the news attributed this to a protest against Obama by conservatives, which is a lie. But since someone was kind enough to point out the number issue I wanted to make it clear.
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Tags: deficit, lies, Obama, protest, spending, washington dc
Poll Numbers Tell The Tale
Aug 10, 2009 Political
The Pretender King’s numbers are coming in- I mean the polls are taken hourly, like a critical patient’s pulse, and the pulse is getting weaker all the time. Good. This is why the Resident wants to push bills through fast, constantly breaking his pledge of “transparency” with all the recidivism of a serial child- molester unable to control his urges.
Not that I can blame him, as distasteful as his bills are, not to mention deceitful to the American people. I mean, if he wanted to (and he should have), he could have settled the economy much sooner, and indeed, it can, and should be argued that he should not have done anything else until that little niggling problem was fixed.
After all, as the Ford Motor Company used to say, That was Job One. And it has become a job he has failed at- I say that with complete confidence that I am right, because only in a Hussein- World could you lose 247,000 jobs in a month and claim a victory because the “unemployment” figures falsely show a .1% “improvement”. This is because of all the people who have quit looking for jobs, and thus are not counted in the numbers.
Mr. Walker, who as president of the nonpartisan Peter G. Peterson Foundation since 2008 has spearheaded an effort to raise public awareness about the country’s long-term fiscal problems, said that the American people are “ahead of their elected officials” in understanding the need to rein in spending before expanding health care coverage.
“They get it,” he said. “Costs are out of control, and they threaten the future of this country. And you cannot reduce cost by expanding coverage. That’s an oxymoron.”
washingtontimes.com
Oh yeah, we get it. The American people are not as dumb as the Liberal Left would like to hope. They were counting on the Silent Majority staying compliant and focused on their flat- screen TVs. Sadly for the socialist left, this is not to be.
A majority, 57 percent, said health care reform should be abandoned if it will “significantly” add to the deficit. Mr. Obama has promised that any reform will not add to the budget imbalance, but 72 percent of the registered voters surveyed by Quinnipiac said they did not think Mr. Obama would be able to deliver on that vow.
A National Public Radio poll of 850 likely voters in late July showed that 48 percent thought the president’s policies have increased the federal deficit and done little to slow job loss, while 45 percent said Mr. Obama has blunted the recession and set a foundation for recovery. The poll also showed 47 percent opposition to the Obama health care reforms in Congress, with 42 percent support
washingtontimes.com
The polls are growing against the Resident and his power- grab policies. While I think a solid majority of people can say that there could be improvement in the Healthcare industry, there is no need to dismantle the whole show, especially if it adds to the debt without fixing the economy first. Many people do not know that there is a provision in HR 3200, in which the government is authorized to reach into your bank account electronically to pay for the “Healthcare”. That sounds overly intrusive to me, but I am just that way, I guess.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll of 1,011 adults on July 30 showed that 42 percent thought the current health care reforms were a bad idea, while 36 percent thought them a good idea. More surprisingly, Republicans in Congress were more trusted to fix the budget deficit by a 31 percent to 25 percent margin, a drastic turnaround from January, when Democrats held the edge by a margin of 42 percent to 20 percent.
washingtontimes.com
How strange- Republicans are more trusted when it comes to money- duh! Perhaps because the Liberals in government have shown that they neither know the value of the money they have been entrusted with, nor value the trust they had from the American people. Ignorant on both counts, and snobbish to boot. Not a good attitude.
So they call the people in the Town Halls “Unpatriotic”, and “Nazis”- way to go, Botox Betty. Think you can alienate some more people? Quite possibly, as it is my opinion that the Botox is affecting her brain. How else to explain her behavior?
“What’s going on is there is increasing concern, which in some cases has turned to outrage, with how far out of touch and out of control Washington has become,” Mr. Walker said.
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, also noted that polling was a problem for the Democrats’ attempts to delegitimize their opposition.
“If the polls were showing 80 percent support for Obama’s health care plan, if the polls were showing increasing support for Obama personally, then you could say, ‘Hey where are these people coming from?’ ” Mr. Norquist said. “But every poll shows that support for his plan or what they’re talking about doing on health care is plummeting, personal support for Obama is plummeting.”
washingtontimes.com
Yes, the polls are sliding down, but will this , combined with the town hall meetings be enough to begin to turn the tide, or will the liberal left cram this bill through Congress despite the will of the American people? This problem remains on the cusp at this moment.
A lot will depend on how the town halls go. Even in dissent, we must get the message across that this smells to high heaven, and must be changed. We must do this respectfully, however, and leave the thuggery to the union goons that Pelosi has called on to man the chairs in the halls, to minimize the criticism. Give these goons a chance, and they will show their true colors.
That alone can and should turn the tide irrevocably in the proper direction.
And that direction is towards Freedom of Choice.
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Tags: deficit, disapproval, polls, wrong way