In his radio address today, President Obama spoke of reducing the nation’s deficit:
I ran for President because I believed in an America where ordinary folks could get ahead; where if you worked hard, you could have a better life. That’s been my focus since I came into office, and that has to be our focus now. It’s one of the reasons why we’re working to reduce our nation’s deficit. Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.
(via Jim Hoft.) This is not the first time he has spoken of living within our means. He did so on the campaign trail and did some most notably in his budget speech on April 13. “We have to live within our means,” he said on that occasion. “We have to reduce our deficit, and we have to get back on a path that will allow us to pay down our debt.”
Please, Mr. President, show us the path. He did release a budget in February, one with “record $1.6 trillion deficit,” hardly deficit reduction that. Although he appeared to repudiate that budget with that April speech, he has yet to offer a detailed plan to realize the goals of his rhetoric.
So, Mr. President, put your money where your mouth us. Show us your plan. Present a budget which allows us to live within our means. The Republicans have done so. And you — and your fellow partisans — have attacked them for it. Now, show the same guts they have and detail your plan for fiscal responsibility.
He clearly wasn’t serious then, why would anybody believe it(and sadly many will) when he says it in this campaign.
Which reminds me of:
The Un-American American President
http://tinyurl.com/3zw2maa
This is just more platitudes from the hot air aficionado; he cannot say this with a straight face given the $14 TRILLION deficit.
Thanks TGC, I posted the link from American Thinker on mt FB page.
He doesn’t speak a word of truth. There is not one thread, not one gram, not a single cell of integrity in this man.
unfortunately, he believes that cutting tax rates constitutes government spending and government spending is a tax cut. the guy isn’t qualified to run a car wash and yet he’s the guy in charge.
The government does live within it’s means. The problem is that We the People have demanded what we’re not willing to pay for.
A guy at work who’s pretty smart (mathematician) is nearing retirement and he’s hostile to talk of entitlement reform – saying that seniors who vote in large numbers won’t vote for politicians that talk of cuts. I suspect he’s right.
A plan to genuinely solve this mess would be distasteful to the masses who won’t accept that a controlled crash is better than what we’ll inevitably get later.
Glad I wasn’t drinking milk when I read this… It would be streaming out my nose about now!
Ahem …….. we really don’t know what “within our means” actually is until the government siphons off all “excess” wealth from the people and strips the gears on the printing presses.
Until everyone is flat broke and the economy has stopped breathing, there are still “means” to be collected and spent.
Obama is living within the means available to him just fine, thank you very much.
The Dumbo eared wonder has struck again…..man I can’t stand this guy……
He has NO intention of reducing spending. He wants to spend more. He wants to wreck the economy more. He’s a thug who pulled a big con job over on the country and, sadly, there are loads of people still falling for his crap; they are either too stupid to realize it, or hate this country, too.
Given our existing political dynamics, here is how I foresee it ending:
1) We’ll at least get sub-par inflation adjustments into place on people’s entitlements and pensions – e.g., tied to a government inflation index that understates actual inflation.
2) Then Bernanke & Co. will give us QE 3, 4…19 to cause lots of actual inflation.
3) Eventually, the numbers work out – with everyone much poorer in real terms.
It doesn’t have to be like that. We could return to the free enterprise system – Let incompetents fail, no bailouts, consciously cut both entitlements and regulation, stop Obama’s War on Energy, let producers produce, strong dollar / stop being a currency manipulator ourselves, then maybe punish the remaining currency manipulators (China). Then the economy could grow, in real terms.
ILC – I believe your prescriptions are correct but not going to happen. When the population recoils at the thought of raising the retirement age a couple of years over 75 years, it’s not ready to do anything substantive (instead it will react like the Greeks did – utter surprise that the whole thing fell apart).
I used to think the idea of a nefarious “ruling elite” had a tin-foil hat sound to it but it’s hard to find fault with the notion when sifting through the accumulating wreckage.
Our “leaders”, public and private sector, do not have the nation’s best interest in mind; they have their own interests in mind. The private-sector* middle class is stuck between the ruling elite and the poor (who see the elites as benefactors).
* The “private sector” qualifier is to separate the middle class folks that were smart enough to Get.A.Government.Job.
I used to think the idea of a nefarious “ruling elite” had a tin-foil hat sound to it but it’s hard to find fault with the notion when sifting through the accumulating wreckage.
I tend to subscribe to the theory of not ascribing to coordinated malice that which can be explained through abject stupidity.
People always seem to forget that, given the choice between working today versus working tomorrow, saving for tomorrow versus spending today, and living within your current means versus your imagined future means, people choose the choice that is the most immediately gratifying.
Or, as Hobbes of Calvin and Hobbes put it, “Virtue needs some cheaper thrills”.
The issue, again, with Obama is that he and his ilk cannot conceptualize the piper ever having to be paid. In Obama’s privileged skin-color world, someone else always pays the bill — or, more usually, accuses the piper of racism and intimidates him into walking away empty-handed for his work.
What they don’t realize is that the piper looks at them, realizes they got the benefit of the music without payment, and then starts looking for ways in which he can do the same. The reward of indolence, extravagance, and procrastination in our society is like a woodpile next to a house foundation; it does nothing but encourage rot.
Obama thinks that ATMs cause unemployment and corporate jets cause the deficit. Wonder what he thinks causes cancer?
We must live in with our diminished means so he can live like 18th c. royalty at our expense. Once he leads the way by example I might start listening to him. Who am I kidding, I’ll never listen to this guy
The Handlers for On The Job Training Obama, POTUS have continued to tell him to keep repeating the Mantra “I am really working on it” when it come to the economy, etc. What they fail to realize – or lack the intelligence (ignorance and quite possibly stupidity – i.e., low intelligence) to comprehend is that the philosophy behind the policies of Obama do not promote the “prosperity for or to the people” but, rather, “proliferation of the government” under his/their leadership – i.e.,they get the power and the money for themselves and let the rest of the “producers rot.” The proliferation of government spreads by fooling the great unwashed into thinking that they cannot live without government provided “program.” I am a Native American (that means someone whose lineage started in North America – not an import from Europe or elsewhere and am entitled to a Senior Food Program. I asked the Driver for the program about it – he told me that he could actually deliver meals to my place of employment Monday through Fridays!!! I declined…lol!!! The philosophy of the Left that underlies “redistribution of wealth” fails to take into account the decisions that people make every day which lead to their failures or successes – its not my fault that education and making good decisions (after making a ton of bad ones) has brought me to the middle class – along with a couple of good break during the 70’s.
The actual Ponzi scheme failed because Ponzi took flight. Had Ponzi had the power to tax and stonewall, he could have held on much longer.
People like Cas come here with this logic: We have dug a deep deficit hole and now we must tax people more to sustain the progress on the deficit hole we are digging.
Certainly, if you pour enough fuel on a fire, eventually you concentrate the burn, while starving it from spreading. Feed the monster. The belly of the beast must be satisfied.
In 2004, spending per capita was $7828.32. Recycling this spending per capita this year would result in an expected budget surplus. In fact, because the war in Iraq is cooler than it was back then, there would still be more money to spend on other things now than there were in 2004.