Posted on 01/10/2009 9:10:12 PM PST by stevie_d_64
In my exclusive interview with Barack Obama airing tomorrow on This Week, the president-elect told me that fixing our economy over the long term will require sacrifice from every American and scaling back some of his campaign promises.
"Our challenge is going to be identifying what works and putting more money into that, eliminating things that don’t work, and making things that we have more efficient. But I’m not suggesting, George, I want to be realistic here, not everything that we talked about during the campaign are we going to be able to do on the pace we had hoped," Obama told me in his first interview since arriving back in Washington, DC as president-elect.
I asked the president-elect, "At the end of the day, are you really talking about over the course of your presidency some kind of grand bargain? That you have tax reform, healthcare reform, entitlement reform including Social Security and Medicare, where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good?"
"Yes," Obama said.
"And when will that get done?" I asked.
"Well, right now, I’m focused on a pretty heavy lift, which is making sure we get that reinvestment and recovery package in place. But what you described is exactly what we’re going to have to do. What we have to do is to take a look at our structural deficit, how are we paying for government? What are we getting for it? And how do we make the system more efficient?"
"And eventually sacrifice from everyone?" I asked.
"Everybody’s going to have to give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game," Obama said.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.abcnews.com ...
Yes, a well-informed analysis.
Mr. Obama is Mr. Thompson.
But who is John Galt? I reckon that we must be.
Well, I just asked my mom, and she said her SS benefits have already been cut. Something about a corrections for negative inflation. They gave her an increase, and a month later took it back.
My mom says they took back her SS increase recently because of deflation.
Thomas Paine
To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.
Margaret Thatcher
Love the Obama as Urkel pic, swiped!
Never thought of it that way - but it's very true. Let's pray there's enough of us...still banking on several "Galt's Gulches" sprinkled around to rebuild ...
Wait until you see the comments on Stephanopoulos’ column!
blogger:
Re: “Everyone needs to get some skin in the game.” We are all bones out here. . . Can the value of the dollar get so low that foreign country’s will not except it?
And another blogger:
“Maybe Obama can give up the vacations to Hawaii as well. At least give the appearance of “sharing” the pain that the American people are feeling. How many parents can afford to rent a 30 million dollar house on their vacation?
It seems that Obama has no problem asking everyone to share the load as long as it doesn’t include him giving up anything or his precious religion (government) having to do with slightly less. Perish the thought that government should actually share in the misery that he wants to spread around.
And Where is all of the wealth that Obama promised he was going to spread around during the campaign?”
To read more good and angry ones:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/01/obama-calls-for.html#comments
My Mom - God bless her - while she was alive, could never get ahead because whenever there was an increase on her SS benefits - the government senior housing in which was on a rolling scale - always upped the rent cause now she had more money! What a bunch of crock!
She was a hard-working upstanding, law-abiding citizen all her life - and our government and legislators did this to her and other senior citizens! What a surprize!
Believe it, change is coming...
Whether you like it or not, is beside the point...
It took me a while to figure out a good response to a very good point you made about this little part of his statement...
All I can see is that in the bigger scheme of things, the more people with their blood, sweat and tears (and skin) in the tenuous economy that will be the norm for many years to come, and that every little crisis will effect it in the wrong way...
The more Americans will be whipped and scarred for being forced into this tenuous existance and experience the punishment for others (governments’) feduciary mis-management...
The IOU’s are starting to come in, and the less those who are truely responsible get scarred and can put as many of us in the way, the better for them...
“When in the course of human events is becomes neccessary...”
But what is unfortunate is that there are too many Americans who are so intellectually and politically lazy to see what they have done, and that there are too few of us to stop it...We are unfortunately going to have to ride this one out...And hope we can regain some semblance of conservatism in government, or we are heading for more trouble...
But I’m preaching to the choir...
Good point...
This appointment will allow the U.N. international thugocracy to come in and dictate their influence thru treaties and other agreements that will cripple a lot of our freedoms we have been able to protect for a very long time up to now...
Be wary of the international gun control group IANSA and other environmental groups being able to bring down the best thing to happen to civilization since it has been recorded...
The people, and particularly those that have done things right, have already paid enough. It’s time for the deadbeat democrat base and the politicians to give a little for a change.
The IOU’s are starting to come in.Or, as Obama's mentor/pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright said,
"The chickens are comin' home to roost!"
Some will find this refreshing in that they will be led to believe he is speaking their language, when in reality the jargon may have varied meanings, like “skin in the game.”
Is he going to require corporate executives have personal assets invested in their own companies? Or how about invested in the bailout organizations, such that if they finally fail...these people lose their monies? Is that legal, because if they know their going to bankrupt...can they legally sell off? I honestly don't know enough at that level how it works, normally.
“Skin in the game,” from my viewpoint could mean making these companies an easy grab for the government.
And the lingo he is using is way too vague, varied, and volatile to be coming from a President.
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