Posted on 03/01/2013 8:32:16 AM PST by pabianice
Obama to speak about just concluded meeting with Boehner regarding Sequestageddon. Will take no questions from the press.
I posted this in other threads, but it needs to be emphasized...
Deroy Murdock of the National Review made an astute observation in his article published today.
If Obama was really interested in governing and is really concerned for the good of the country, he should know what to cut and what to preserve without any of the so called pain he keeps talking about.
Instead, he is simply interested in playing politics and demonizing Republicans.
This is for all low information voters ....
Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Tom Price (R., Ga.) co-authored the Decrease Spending Now Act. It would shift to debt relief a whopping $45 billion in tax revenues now stalled in dormant federal accounts.
“Hundreds of billions of dollars are borrowed and then left unspent because Congress routinely bites off more than it can chew,” Rubio stated. Added Price: “Leaving billions of taxpayer dollars to gather dust in federal coffers only encourages fiscal irresponsibility. By rescinding this unspent and unobligated money — funds that the government clearly can do without — we can contribute to the larger goal of breaking the government’s habit of borrowing and spending money we cannot afford.”
Senator Rand Paul would cut $85 billion annually by not replacing departed federal employees ($6.5 billion in savings), bringing the $128,226 in average yearly federal civilian compensation closer to the private sector’s $64,560 (reducing $32 billion), curtailing federal travel by 25 percent ($2.25 billion), limiting Pentagon research to military applications ($6 billion), requiring competitive bids on government contracts and paying market wages on federal projects ($19 billion), and halving foreign aid ($20 billion).
The Public Interest Research Group and the National Taxpayers Union jointly identified $1 trillion in ten-year savings through 56 budget cuts that liberals and conservatives should love. These range from killing a $10 million biodiesel-education grant to a $160 billion modernization of federal computer systems. The $77 billion Crop Insurance program should be uprooted. The feds own some 55,500 buildings that are “not utilized or underutilized.” Sell them. Even giving them away would save taxpayers $17 billion in maintenance expenses — on empty buildings!
PIRG and NTU urge Medicare to calibrate excessive labor and office-space outlays with the actual prices that prevail in lower-cost communities. Savings: $47.6 billion.
Rather than spend $179,750 per hour to fly Air Force One from rally to rally to demonize Republicans, Obama should sit still long enough to send Congress a budget request. The federal Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 mandates that the president’s spending plan reach Capitol Hill by the first Monday of February. Obama’s last two budgets arrived late, and this year’s is AWOL. Before Obama barks at Republicans yet again, he should start doing his job.
Obama keeps harping about teachers, police, firefighters not being paid, airplane delays, and the hollowing of our defense when there is so much FAT that can be cut.
Same $h!+ different day.
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
"I deem [this one of] the essential principles of our government and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration:... The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:322
"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
"Is it now high time for the people of this country to explicitly declare whether they will be free men or slaves. It is an important question which ought to be decided. It concerns more than anything in this life. The salvation of our souls is interested in this event. For wherever tyranny is established, immorality of every kind comes in like a torrent, it is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice.” - Samuel Adams
And:
“The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.” - Samuel Adams
Update from TX: So far, no signs of mass starvation or plagues of locusts
Gee. He’s late.
Imagine that...
The "press" should decline to broadcast his self-serving bloviations.
There’s a big purple blur where his lips should be so he must be lying.
What I’m hearing is that it isn’t an immediate disaster but all future disasters are the fault of the republicans.
“Gee. He’s late.”
He’s busy with Reggie Lewinsky. I mean Reggie Love.
He’s on.
“The good news is that the American people are tough enough to get through these cuts. We will get through these cuts. We shouldn’t be making arbitary cuts to government spending. It’s unnecessary and inexcusable when people are looking for work. The pain will be real; lives will be affected in many ways. Jobs in and near the military will be cut. Border security will be cut. A ripple effect. People will have much less money in their pockets, damaging or economy more and more. We will see growth cut; a loss of 750,000 jobs (!) Every time we get more economic news it will be worse and worse. None of this is necessary but because the Republicans have allowed it. They refuse to cut tax loopholes for the rich; they believe this is more important than helping the middle class. We can responsibly lower the deficit without hurting children and college students. Some Republicans could solve this problem. Some Repubs in Congress want to help the rich rather than do the right thing. In the coming days and weeks I will keep on reaching-out to them and say ‘let’s fix this’ because the greatest nation on Earth does not do this. I was pleased to see the House pass the Violence Against Women Act, something we have been pushing for for a long time. I think there are other areas in which we can do better: pre-school expansion, immigration reform, transportation, they all deserve a vote. This is what America voted for in November.”
Medicare is the problem.
[That and SS are the 2 WE have been paying into for decades. If Washington would quit writing IOU’s and stealing from the trust fund, Medicare/SS would NOT be the problem.]
Women, minorities to suffer most.....
My uh gosh uh he is uh uha babbling uh uh on uh and uh uh on.
[Harvard should demand their diploma back.]
I am sick to death of hearing this man talk. He does nothing else. Just shut up already!
Boehner had a chance to make his case a few minutes ago but instead he made a terse comment and walked away. Meanwhile Obama jawbones and comes across to the low information types that he’s trying to accomplish something. Another lost opportunity.
"How much are you involved in cutting the deficit?"
We need to focus on sensible deficit reduction. I am prepared to do hard things but I cannot ask students, elderly to bear the entire burden of it. The rich need to contribute more. I understand it's hard for Republicans to do what is right, not paint horns on my head. It doesn't make sense to replace this set of arbitrary cuts with more arbitrary cuts. This doesn't cut the deficit responsibly. In going forward, upon reflection, as constituents see the damage Repubs are doing, we need a plan that is comprehensive and makes sense until common sense prevails. But what is true now is that Repubs have made a choice that we will not accept a dime's increase in revenue while insisting that they will nit cut tax loopholes. Boehner has identified them; it is not impossible. If Repubs understand that tax loopholes are destructive we can move forward. There are members of my party that violently resist any changes to Medicare; we are going to have tough politics. The key to this whole thing is to keep in mind that we are not here fpr political advantahe but for American families who have been battered pretty hard in the past four years. This is a loss for the American people.
Is this a Republican problem?
I have put forward a plan to address the balanced approach we need but have been rebuffed by Boehner who has said, 'no more revenue.' If anyone has a better idea, let meknow.
Obama is dumbfounded, doesn’t know what to do, asks reporter what he should do.
[That, sadly, is a summary of his presidency.]
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