I find it interesting seeing President Obama blasting the House Republicans for their attempts to rein in profligate spending by attempting to cut a piddling $60 billion from the present budget, when he himself has run the country deep into the red with his $1 trillion-plus annual deficits.
To quote the President, twice: "Elections have consequences" and "We won". Both of those quotes have come back to haunt him. The GOP swept the House and gained seats in the Senate, a clear message the American people don't like what he, Pelosi, and Reid have done to us, our economy, and our pocketbooks. Yet he is unwilling to allow cuts of any kind even if those cuts amount to nothing more than a rounding error in comparison to the entire deficit.
He says wants to be able to bring about a 'compromise' with the GOP. Unfortunately it appears his definition of the term is still "Sit down, shut up, and vote the way I tell you to vote."
What an arrogant ass.
To quote the President, twice: "Elections have consequences" and "We won". Both of those quotes have come back to haunt him. The GOP swept the House and gained seats in the Senate, a clear message the American people don't like what he, Pelosi, and Reid have done to us, our economy, and our pocketbooks. Yet he is unwilling to allow cuts of any kind even if those cuts amount to nothing more than a rounding error in comparison to the entire deficit.
He says wants to be able to bring about a 'compromise' with the GOP. Unfortunately it appears his definition of the term is still "Sit down, shut up, and vote the way I tell you to vote."
What an arrogant ass.
I'm totally with you on spending cuts. I think we just disagree on what is worth keeping and what should be cut.
I must disagree, or at least partly. It is partisanship born of arrogance.
When the President tells the GOP "We won", implying that neither he nor the Democrat majority Congress need to listen to anything the Republicans have to say, that's arrogance.
While the Dems have their own opinions about the budget crisis, for the most part they're wrong. We do not have a revenue problem. We have an expenditure problem. Raising taxes during a recession, and particularly at a time when we have such a fragile economy, is exactly the wrong thing to do. It will merely make things worse and short circuit the very slow recovery. Somehow the Democrats seem to think there's a lot of extra money floating out there, ready for the taking. There isn't
We need ~$1.6 trillion in cuts just to balance this year's budget. That deficit is almost 40% of of the entire budget. There's no way we could possibly raise that kind of money by raising taxes. It would be necessary to double everyone's taxes and tax those who presently don't pay taxes and even then it won't be enough. How far do we go?
I don't know about you, but when I have a budget shortfall I cut back on my spending. I don't whip out the credit cards and spend even more money I don't have. The government is in the same position, but it keeps running its 'credit cards' to the max, and then gets more of them. Eventually the bill will have to be paid. From what I've seen of the Democrat response to the crisis, they believe someone else will pay the bills somewhere down the road. The problem is that we are fast approaching the end of the road. Unfortunately that hasn't stopped the Democrats and the President from wanting to press down even harder on the accelerator.
I don't think it's so much arrogance as partisanship. Dems have their own opinions on how to fix a budget crisis, and they involve less cuts and more taxes, things that Republicans and the Tea Party are not in favor, a clear divide along partisan lines. I don't think it is correct to blame the economy and the budget crisis on Obama. This has been at least 4-5 presidential terms in the making. But I'll agree that Obama has not done anything to fix what I perceive to be the real problems behind this crisis, nor to reign in the spending that I believe is entirely unnecessary (Iraq, Afghanistan, now Libya - a total waste of money and human lives, for example). So unless you want to tell me that Republicans accepted defeat in 2008 and were all helpfullness and compromise because 'that's what the people want', then don't start expecting the Dems to just slink away because of the 2010 election results. You and I both know that is not how this works.