Failing to provide plan detailing the tough decisions he’s made, Obama faults Republicans not making tough decisions
This is beyond chutzpah.
When House Speaker John Boehner announced that he was pulling out of debt negotiations, the president (in a press conference) said that he had “not seen the capacity for the House Republicans in particular to make those tough decisions“.*
Wow, just wow. This coming from a man who has not yet put forward his plan. The Republican House has — and with bipartisan support. And they made the kind of tough decisions they didn’t please everyone. No sooner has the House passed the bill, then the Democratic National Committee chair attacked one of her congressional colleagues for his vote, saying it would “increase costs for Medicare beneficiaries.”
This from a woman who, like the president, refuses to commit to a specific proposal.
“I’m not sure,” writes Bryan Preston (also via Jill*),
I’ve ever had less respect for the person occupying the Oval Office than I do, watching Obama’s comments right now.
His party had total control for the first two years of his presidency, and he and the Democrats squandered that time pushing ObamaCare and running up the debt.
Preston also reports that when asked, “What’s your plan?” he dodged the question. Do hope some editorialists in the MSM take him to task for failing to provide a plan. But, do not fret, do not fear, Michelle Malkin does just that:
Some are reporting this as “Boehner walks away” in order to make Boehner look like the unreasonable villain, but in reality Obama and the Democrats haven’t yet put anything on the table, so they’re the only ones who have been doing the walking. The Democrats so far have offered the Republicans nothing from which to walk away, and clearly don’t want their fingerprints on any deal.
Exactly. Jazz Shaw elaborates, showing that the president has no intention to change course, but will continue instead to pass the buck:
The president looked in an absolute snit when he took to the podium. It’s difficult to imagine that this was carefully prepared text. His “solution” at this point is to call congressional leaders back to the talks in the morning and toss it into their laps.
Read the whole thing. He’s got a lot of commentary.
*Via Jill at Pundit & Pundette who have also included Boehner’s statement; seems the Ohio Republican is standing firm against tax hikes.)
NB: Changed the title right after posting this.
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Obama has offered 3-4 trillion in spending cuts in exchange for getting 1 trillion in revenues. It attacks the deficit from both ends. The Republicans control 1/3 of the government. The deal is heavily tilted towards the Republican preference for cutting spending and not raising taxes. Pretending like the impasse has anything to do with Obama or the Democrats is absurd – this is way sweeter a deal than the Republicans have any right to expect given how much of the government they control, they just refuse to compromise on anything. Like I said, they control 1/3 of the government, but want the government to do things they’re 100% satisfied with. That’s completely unreasonable.
Comment by Levi — July 23, 2011 @ 6:01 am - July 23, 2011
And I have a quick question for you; if, at the end of all of this, Obama decides to use the 14th amendment option and raise the debt limit anyway, and we get through this spot with no agreement about spending cuts, shouldn’t you be upset at the Republicans at this point? Wouldn’t it be better to accept a deal involving 3-4 trillion in cuts that you love and 1 trillion in taxes that you hate, as opposed to getting nothing?
Comment by Levi — July 23, 2011 @ 6:07 am - July 23, 2011
“Wouldn’t it be better to accept a deal involving 3-4 trillion in cuts that you love and 1 trillion in taxes that you hate, as opposed to getting nothing?”
No. I don’t want to “compromise” with democrats, I want to defeat their policies. As we have seen in the past any new taxes are followed by new spending. My hard earned money is my property for me to decide how to spend even if I spend it stupidly.
Comment by Richard Bell — July 23, 2011 @ 6:50 am - July 23, 2011
Sheer, abject cowardice on the part of the Democrat Party.
And again, nobody seems to have explained why they accomplished nothing in the two years they held both houses, other than Obamacare and astronomical spending.
….and more finger-pointing than the Salem Witch Trials.
ABC News’ Jonathan Karl demonstrates how completely petulant and dishonest our president has proven himself to be:
Comment by Eric Olsen — July 23, 2011 @ 6:50 am - July 23, 2011
It is so clear I don’t see how anyone is missing the point. Obama’s plan:
1.) The debt ceiling is the issue. Raise it or we will shoot kittens until you do.
2.) Raise taxes now and we will urge Congress to cut spending later. If you do not raise taxes now we will shoot puppies until you do.
3.) We will cut spending in an orderly and constructive way unless it involves government jobs or damages the economy of any area larger than Cromer’s Corners.
Instead of dealing with the debt ceiling, the Republicans have insisted in fighting the recession, attacking the deficit and striving to balance the budget. What is that all about?
Your turn, Levi.
Comment by Heliotrope — July 23, 2011 @ 8:59 am - July 23, 2011
You won’t have to compromise when you have full control of the government. As it stands, you control one half of Congress. Would you rather have nothing at all than something?
Also, what new taxes will you have to pay? What, are you some kind of multi-millionaire?
Comment by Levi — July 23, 2011 @ 9:06 am - July 23, 2011
The man-child is proving how inadequate as the leader of the free world; he still wants to vote “present” then take credit for everything.
Comment by Sebastian Shaw — July 23, 2011 @ 9:16 am - July 23, 2011
I’d like to know what the Republicans have done to ‘fight the recession.’ Are you so naive as to think that any Congressional Republicans would support any kind of policy that improves the economy ahead of the 2012 elections? Republicans are counting on the economy to stay in the toilet for the next 16 months and you know it.
They’ve handled it quite capably, I will have to admit. The Democratic President is now clamoring for deficit reduction and cuts to social services. If that gets anywhere, the economy is only going to get worse. Deficit reduction doesn’t create jobs. But the Republicans have boxed themselves into a corner with their base who don’t want to see anything that Obama agrees with get passed. You guys are in danger of this stuff backfiring, just like in the 90s.
Comment by Levi — July 23, 2011 @ 9:19 am - July 23, 2011
Levi: Thinking in terms of 90′s Dems & Reps simply does not give a good and clear understanding of the current situation.
Comment by BBC — July 23, 2011 @ 9:23 am - July 23, 2011
Spin on it, Levi.
Comment by Heliotrope — July 23, 2011 @ 9:23 am - July 23, 2011
Aw, poor Levi. Everything bad was caused by Boooooooooosh who fades into memory and won’t answer the taunts of the bully-in-the-pulpit who learned his craft from the God-damn-America whacko theologian in the pulpit.
Now Levi is blaming the majority in the house for screwing up the stimulus after the fact and not curing the economic mess that The Won has intensified by driving the economy over the cliff.
Levi is terrific at battling ghosts while whistling past the grave yard. He never met a crisis that wasn’t created, intensified and left unsolved entirely by Republicans.
The Republicans agreed to the debt ceiling increase in exchange for Cap, Cut and Balance and The Won ordered Reid to scrap it without debate before it became an embarrassment to the Regime. In my day, we called such people droppings in the hen yard. And Levi is their cheerleader.
Comment by Heliotrope — July 23, 2011 @ 9:37 am - July 23, 2011
Obama has offered 3-4 trillion in spending cuts in exchange for getting 1 trillion in revenues.
No, he has not. Obama has not offered up any specfic cuts. He threw out a number to the press, but he has not presented any plan for spending cuts. I defy you to point to a link that describes what the president has proposed to cut.
Comment by V the K — July 23, 2011 @ 9:38 am - July 23, 2011
Do you realize that if Demonrats still controlled the House, we would not even be having this discussion? If Nanny Rictus Botoximplants were still Speaker, the debt ceiling would have been raised with no strings attached and there would be no fiscal restraint whatsoever.
Comment by V the K — July 23, 2011 @ 9:40 am - July 23, 2011
Levi,
“Also, what new taxes will you have to pay? What, are you some kind of multi-millionaire?”
I’m one of those people who pays appox 55% of my income to federal, state and local governments. An amount that is insane to all but progressives.
Comment by Richard Bell — July 23, 2011 @ 10:14 am - July 23, 2011
This point needs to be repeated ad nauseum. The president’s defenders keep saying “he offered trillions in cuts”, but they are unable to give concrete examples of where and when he would cut anything. Ryan’s roadmap isn’t perfect, and there are lots of things to discuss, but it provides details of what will get cut. The president has done no such thing and needs to get called on it. Not that that will happen, of course.
Comment by physics geek — July 23, 2011 @ 10:29 am - July 23, 2011
Neither do tax hikes. And “creating jobs” as it’s popularly termed, will not fix the economic hell we’re in right now. I know, I know, Clinton had a tax hike blah blah blah…. But notice that no one, not even Krugman, will specifically argue that the Clinton tax hikes CREATED job growth. The best jobs numbers for his administration occur during the late 90′s as a result of the internet bubble, and that is some four years after he raised taxes. The Keynesian acolytes never actually say it, but what is inferred is that tax hikes don’t impede job growth.
The economy will still grow even with a tax hike.
Personally, I don’t think that letting the Bush tax cuts expire is going to make much of a difference one way or another to the economic situation. In the 70, extremely high tax rates were part of the problem. Going from a rate of 70 to 30% is a tremendous change, and will dramatically increase cash flow within an economic dynamic system. But the change back and forth from 39 to 35 and back again simply isn’t big enough to change much. Don’t get me wrong, i’m not advocating FOR tax hikes, just saying that this small amount of adjustment will not make a differences. It’s not a game changer one way or another.
The biggest problem right now is that there is no incentive for anyone to start hiring because (A) there is not enough capital flow in the general economic system to justify starting businesses (everyone, banks and consumers, are still being tight-wads), and (B) it’s easier to make $$$ by investing rather than inuring all the cost of starting and running a business.
Must go eat breakfast now.
Comment by Sonicfrog — July 23, 2011 @ 11:44 am - July 23, 2011
Levi, please point to a document which details those plans. It must not read to be worked out by a committee, but show the actual cuts.
Thanks!
Comment by B. Daniel Blatt — July 23, 2011 @ 11:52 am - July 23, 2011
But the change back and forth from 39 to 35 and back again simply isn’t big enough to change much. Don’t get me wrong, i’m not advocating FOR tax hikes, just saying that this small amount of adjustment will not make a differences.
I believe just that change alone is supposed to, if projections are correct, pull roughly $40 billion per year out of the private economy.
Not small potatoes.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — July 23, 2011 @ 1:27 pm - July 23, 2011
At this stage, I think regulatory reform is far more important to creating jobs. The EPA, the NLRB, and several other anti-business bureaucracies need to be closed down or, at a minimum, defanged. Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley need to be repealed. Obamacare needs to be repealed, or its mandates on business repealed at a minimum. Obsolete affirmative action mandates from the 60′s and 70′s need to be repealed in acknolwedgment of the fact that institutional racism has largely been eliminated.
Tax rates need to be lowered for the USA to be globally competitive, don’t get me wrong, but I think the regulatory burden is currently even worse than the tax burden.
Comment by V the K — July 23, 2011 @ 2:30 pm - July 23, 2011
Wow, guys. I’m not online as much when I’m not at work. You didn’t leave anything for me!
Well except this. Hush Levi, adults are talking.
Ryan plan: CBO scored.
CCB: CBO scored.
Obama plan: “We don’t score speeches.”
Comment by The_Livewire — July 23, 2011 @ 7:05 pm - July 23, 2011
Considering that GDP is somewhere around 14.8 trillion… 40 billion is kind of small potato(e)s.
Comment by sonicfrog — July 23, 2011 @ 11:50 pm - July 23, 2011
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