Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Social before economy; who to blame during the next four years?
Topic Started: Oct 26 2012, 05:42 PM (307 Views)
Banandangees
Member Avatar
Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
[ * ]
The The President Sends His Non-Regrets

A revealing interview about his priorities in 2009—and 2013
.

Quote:
 
President Obama doesn't give many interviews these days outside Comedy Central, so it caused a stir Wednesday when editors at the Des Moines Register managed to pin him down and even elicit some news. Specifically, Mr. Obama said he wants to pursue immigration reform in a second term, as well as a budget "grand bargain" with Republicans that includes tax reform.

This will come as a surprise to voters reading the President's just-released 20-page brochure on his second-term agenda, which makes little or no mention of these priorities. Perhaps that's why the White House first demanded that the interview be off the record, making the transcript public only after the Register editor objected in a public blog post.

But the larger reason to be skeptical concerns Mr. Obama's answer to another Register question: Whether he regrets pursuing ObamaCare and other liberal social priorities in his first two years rather than focusing on the economy.

"Absolutely not,"
Mr. Obama told the Iowa journalists. "Remember the context. First of all, Mitch McConnell has imposed an ironclad filibuster from the first day I was in office. And that's not speculation."

Whoaaaa there, big fella. Mr. McConnell was then and still is the Senate Minority Leader, and in 2009 he had all of 40 votes. Mr. Obama could have pursued any agenda he wanted, and the Des Moines editors wanted to know why he didn't focus on the economy first. Yet Mr. Obama's instinctive reaction is to blame Republican obstructionism that never happened
.

In those first days of progressive wine and roses, Mr. Obama managed to peel off three Republican votes for his stimulus blowout in February 2009. He got five Republicans for the trial-bar gift known as the Lilly Ledbetter bill and nine for an expansion of the state children's health program, both in January. That was some ferocious filibuster.

By spring 2009, when Minnesota's Al Franken was seated, the White House had 60 votes and a GOP-only filibuster wasn't even possible. "We have the votes. F-- 'em," declared then-Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, according to the first-100-days chapters of Bob Woodward's new book.

The President is also missing the larger import of the Register's question. As Mr. Obama likes to remind voters now, in 2009 the economy had suffered a financial heart attack and needed to be nurtured back to health. That required careful management and attention to reviving consumer and business confidence.

Yet rather than work with both parties to fashion a growth agenda, he went all-in for a Keynesian spending blowout and subcontracted the details to House Democrats. And rather than wait to see how strongly—and even whether—the economy then recovered, he dove headlong into fighting to pass 40 years of pent-up liberal social policy.

It wasn't merely ObamaCare. The President also tried to impose a cap-and-tax on carbon energy production, end secret ballots for unions via card check, while promising to raise taxes in 2011 until he was stopped when voters elected a GOP House in 2010.

Mr. Obama likes to say he inherited "the most severe economic emergency we've had since the Great Depression," but then he claims that it didn't matter that he staged a two-year fight to remake one-sixth of the economy and threatened to remake another four-sixths.

If recessions following financial crises really are worse than normal, as the President also told the Iowa editors, then why didn't he take special care to postpone legislation that would add new costs to business, undermine confidence and thus weaken the recovery?

Mr. Obama didn't really answer the Register's question, so we will. He didn't focus on the economy because he didn't and still doesn't understand how the private economy works. He doesn't understand that incentives matter, or how government policies and regulation can sabotage growth. He really believes that government is the engine of economic prosperity.

Anyone who thinks the second term will be different should consult Mr. Emanuel's incisive counsel above.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Brewster
Member Avatar
Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
[ * ]
What Rubbish.

Debunked a dozen times, but it just keeps coming back.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Berton
Member Avatar
Thunder Fan
[ * ]
Are you denying the Democrats didn't control Congress the first two years of the Obama presidency? Are you denying the Dems didn't control the Congress the two years before that?


Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Banandangees
Member Avatar
Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
[ * ]
Brewster
Oct 26 2012, 10:49 PM
What Rubbish.

Debunked a dozen times, but it just keeps coming back.
What in the article is not fact?
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Brewster
Member Avatar
Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
[ * ]
Banandangees
Oct 27 2012, 05:58 AM
Brewster
Oct 26 2012, 10:49 PM
What Rubbish.

Debunked a dozen times, but it just keeps coming back.
What in the article is not fact?
I'm not going to go through it all again.

Pick a paragraph.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Banandangees
Member Avatar
Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
[ * ]
The article is not that long Brew. What is not factual?
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Berton
Member Avatar
Thunder Fan
[ * ]
He won't answer. He has no reasoned, logical, or factual answer.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
« Previous Topic · Fire And Ice General Discussion · Next Topic »
Add Reply

Website Traffic Analysis