Posted on 08/26/2010 2:58:24 PM PDT by RobinMasters
Mort Zuckerman, who once endorsed Barack Obama for the presidency and allegedly helped write one of his speeches, uses his perch at US News today to blast the White House as the most fiscally irresponsible government in US history. Zuckerman includes Congress in this indictment as well, blaming Democrats for driving the US towards an unprecedented debt crisis, and Republicans for only coming to fiscal responsibility out of midterm politics:
There are two warning signs of a budget crisis: rising debt and the loss of confidence that the government will deal with it. This administration is on the verge of fulfilling both conditions. In fairness, there is no majority coalition in Congress for deficit reduction today. It is also true that the growth of public debt has been driven by a dramatic diminution of tax receipts due to the recession, the extra spending to avoid sinking into a self-perpetuating depression, and all those billions we invested to save the financial sectors from their sins.
Voters see the politicians most vociferous about reining in the federal budget as those who are out of power and want to use it against the majority party. Too many politicians claim they are all for balanced budgetsbut only by reducing the other partys priorities. Republicans want to reduce social spending. Democrats want to reduce military spending. It is Washington as usual.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Mort’s actually been squirming about this for the better part of the year. I at least give him credit for, essentially, admitting he was wrong.
Laugh him off of the stage. How could so many have been this stupid.
Leftwing liberals/socialist are ALWAYS wrong yet hold themselves in such self esteem proclaiming they know better than us - I hate elites!
Well Mort, you see, this time, the right people STILL didn’t do it.
Why don’t you try ANOTHER socialist?
/sarc off.
This time, the Dems got everything they wanted, and drove our economy straight into the pit. I’m sure a lot of the “useful idiots” are quite confused. They were sure when socialism was tried the right way by the right people utopia would come.
I will bet you a lot of people were too stupid to learn a single thing, but I bet a lot of people had their eyes opened.
CaptainK, you nailed it.
Ha! I think you nailed it. They chose the wrong person. If they had chosen the right socialist, everything would have worked out. So, now they will busy themselves looking for the right person.
“....and all those billions we invested to save the financial sectors from their sins. “
Well most every big bank has not only paid back what they owed but the govt. made a pretty penny selling the warrants they got when they (in some cases forced) made the loans. Now if by financial sectors we mean Fannie and Freddie that bit of social engineering belongs entirely on the govts. shoulders. Are we speaking of the repackaged mortgages that the agencies all too willingly repurchased,mortgages that never would have been made in the first place if not for Fannie and Freddies mandate to supply housing for those that could not afford it?
The only place i can find blame in the financial sector is AIG who took on risk beyond any reasonable level. If they weren’t buying every piece of CDS out there the Wall Street firms would never have written as much as they did.
Cities? States? Feds? GM? They all promised out more than they could afford to unions and pose a problem well beyond what the financial sector ever did.
To finish my thought,fiscal irresponsibility by this administration is first and foremost health care. Second is the perpetuation of the illegal problem which ‘cheap’ labor notwithstanding,is costing us billions every year. To that we owe a succession of administrations. Bailing out the UAW was horrible but whats worse is the precedent it set for the public unions which are a much larger problem.
Demonizing business and creating massive uncertainty ranks way up there as well. Nobody will want to hire with that mutant clown in office.
The fact that he voted for the muslim tells me I should never trust anything he says again. Unless he says “I screwed up! I was duped! I’m an idiot for voting for obama!” The first step in getting over a problem is admitting you have one.
Way too little, wayyy too late, Mort. You can kiss my grits!
Mort is a Canadian by birth - so his fondness for Oblamer was congenital. Zuckerman was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and entered McGill University at the age of 16. Had he been born in the middle provinces, he might have had a different point of view.
I notice on The McLaughlin Group that he pronounces “been” as “bean.” A real throwback to black and white movies of the 30’s.
Yeah, sure, Mort, after you helped the post turtle.
First, the first stimulus was not the first stimulus it was the third or fourth stimulus going back to George Bush, but who's counting? Instead, let's give Zuckerman credit when due, the last stimulus did not prevent high unemployment so why commit stimulus again? I would add, all the stimuli did not cure the depression in housing which is only worsening. It did not cure the looming bankruptcies among the states which are only growing more ominous. It has not created a robust recovery, in fact, as Zuckerman points out, the economy is in danger of slipping back into a double dip or might even sink us all into a depression.
Those are the things we know. To justify the stimulus the administration has advanced things we do not know like jobs "saved." But the truth is we have no idea whether the stimulus "saved" jobs are not. Nor do we know if TARP or the stimulus (porkulus) saved our financial structure or not because it is impossible to prove. But we do know that the stimulus, the unprecedented budget deficits, the unprecedented deficits which have occurred without a budget because the Democrats are afraid to advance one, and all the rest of the mindless Obama spending, are hurtling the country toward a sovereign crisis to rival the disaster in Greece.
So if we know that stimulus is not producing jobs, does not bring the economy out of recession, does not restore housing, but does threaten the country with financial disintegration, why would we do it again?
There is another matter about which Zuckerman has spoken more or less honestly: the real problem is entitlements. So when he says, "In fairness, there is no majority coalition in Congress for deficit reduction today" he is being disingenuous in one sense: if every Republican voted against spending there would still be no "consensus" but Democrats like Zuckerman-although perhaps not Zuckerman himself-would call Republicans the party of "no" for doing so. The Democrats control everything still. But in a larger sense, Zuckerman has it right, there is no consensus to control the big entitlements such as Social Security and especially Medicare and it is these entitlements which must be addressed if we are to avoid bankruptcy and ruin.
In fact, in a triumph of Orwellian speak, Obama himself invoked the looming deficits in Medicare to justify even greater spending for Obama care. The Republicans at least can point to the splendid work being done by Paul Ryan in Congress with his reasonable plans to adjust Social Security and Medicare, save those programs, and permit the country to grow its way out of this mess without increasing taxes. Republicans can also point at the Democrats who are running to form by demagoging Ryan's good work.
Yes, Mort Zuckerman has it right, the Obama administration is the most irresponsible administration in American history. Historians will have to judge whether the irresponsibility is the product of ignorance or malice. History will judge whether the Obama administration is deliberately trying to wreck the American economy to impose a non-capitalist system but the voters will judge in November whether to give the administration and the academics calling for more stimulus free reign to commit more and more irresponsible fiscal irresponsibility against us all.
Let’s give credit where credit is due. All Obama did was sign congress’s bills. We can correct most of their mistakes in November. Constitutionally most of the power is in the House.
Today I saw him on CNBC saying we needed to spend more money on infrastructure to stimulate the economy.
I used to like Mort. Now I think he is an idiot.
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