Obama's Budget Deficit Speech Shows He's Willing to Say Anything

Obama's and Democrats' crass rhetoric plays right in Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's Hands

April 14, 2011 RSS Feed Print

President Obama's speech yesterday started out fine—he described the depths of our national debt problem fairly well in the first third of the address—but then the wheels came off the wagon when he began to describe Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's 2012 budget proposal, which was unveiled last week.

He began by saying Ryan's plan would result in "up to 50 million Americans [losing] their health insurance," because the GOP would "end Medicare as we know it." Then he just couldn't help himself: He said those millions would include grandparents who couldn't afford to go to nursing homes, poor children with Down syndrome, and autism, and the profoundly disabled. "These are the Americans we'd be telling to fend for themselves," he told the nation yesterday. What he didn't say is that not reforming Medicare—by keeping "Medicare as we know it"—we would actually be hurting our most vulnerable citizens, because Medicare "as we know it" is not sustainable. Disagreeing with Republicans on Medicare is fine; throwing the profoundly disabled into the debate is a bad move.

Similarly, in February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before Congress that Republican cuts to foreign aid would be "devastating" and "detrimental" to our national security. Then, last month, the head of U.S. Agency for International Development, Rajiv Shah, told a House Appropriations subcommittee that those same cuts to foreign aid would "lead to 70,000 kids dying." Yet foreign aid accounts for only 1 percent of the federal budget, according to 2010 Office of Management and Budget figures. To say reducing less than 1 percent of the budget would be "devastating" to national security doesn't pass the smell test; saying Republican cuts would actually kill tens of thousands of children doesn't pass the decency test. When Obama and members of his administration make statements like these, they show that they're willing to say just about anything to keep the spending going. That's a big mistake. [See editorial cartoons about President Obama.]

Here's another mistake: allowing outside groups to take the rhetoric even further. The liberal group American Family Voices ran a television ad here in Washington, D.C., which aimed to stop GOP cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency. In it, a man in a suit (no doubt a Republican) places three jars, labeled "dioxin," "mercury," and "arsenic," in front of a baby. An announcer says, "If the EPA wasn't cleaning millions of toxic particles out of the air, they'd be going, well, somewhere else." At this point, the man feeds the baby a heaping spoonful of arsenic, and the baby swallows it. I'll bet most people turn off their TVs in disgust. I know I did. [Check out a roundup of political cartoons on the budget and deficit.]

The error in calling Republicans child-killers, in third-party ads or congressional testimony, is that it plays right into Ryan's hands. His budget contains specifics for reducing the deficit, cutting Pentagon spending, reforming welfare, saving Medicaid and Medicare, rewriting the tax code, and putting tough long-term spending caps in place. Unlike Ryan's plan, Obama's leaves reforming Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security for another day while attacking Republicans on the "autistic kids" front. Before Ryan released his plan, he predicted that Democrats would do exactly what they're doing. "We are giving them a political weapon . . . to use against us in the next election, and shame on them if they do that," he said.

Tags:
Harry Reid,
Paul Ryan,
deficit and national debt,
Nancy Pelosi,
healthcare reform,
Congress,
Barack Obama,
democratic party,
2012 presidential election,
national security terrorism and the military,
republican party,
energy policy and climate change

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For those actually willing to read and analyze the report rather than rely on what the meida and pundits say:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10851/01-27-Ryan-Roadmap-Letter.pdf

junior of DC 10:24PM April 26, 2011

I wish I could join you in condemning Obama's remarks, but I cannot. I’m an old school conservative as in ROCKEFELLER REPUBLICAN, and I don’t care much for the activities of Dick Armey and the Koch Brothers who seem to be carrying on their father’s attempts to free corporate interests of any governmental controls whatsoever. So that is my perspective.

Having given full disclosure, I must now protest your column.

When I first started reading editorial commentary as a twenty something, I recall that the reporters and editors writing it usually took the trouble to take the recent history and back-round of events into consideration when arguing their editorial opinion. I’m shocked that you do not bother to mention that there is no chance of passage for this bill. Nor do you mention that the numbers in the proposal do not add up in -even the loosest reckoning. That is a failure of reporting. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office might have been consulted before you criticized the President's response to this silly document.

Make no mistake, I am a conservative that would like very much to see a smaller tax burden and less government. But, as person who has had business with the insurance industry throughout my career. It amazes me that a journalist who is entrusted to opine regarding federal budget policy fails to note the basic reality inherent in Mr. Ryan’s proposal: that turning Medicare into a voucher program will result in a vast transfer of tax generated monies into the hands of an aggressively profitable private industry. An industry whose recent handling of the monies of their policy holders nearly lead to the collapse of the entire transatlantic financial system.

As a conservative I want lower taxes that are grudgingly spent. Giving-over Social Security to the investment management industry, and Medicare to the multinational insurance corporations is not conservatism it is a special interests wolf in conservative clothing.

Saumarez Fitzwilliam of NY 5:49PM April 26, 2011

Please, get your fact right before you spout off.

Federal spending % (2009 - CBO figures):

Interest - 6%

Misc - 12%

Discretionary - 19%

Defense - 20%

Medicare and Medicaid - 23%

Social Security - 20%

Currently M&M have unfunded liabilities of over $107 TRILLION, and last year alone rose $5 trillion.

"Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin."

( Quote: Barack Obama on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 in a town hall meeting.)

To your hysteria about Ryans voucher program:

From National Center for Policy Analysis ( article by John Goodman, April 19, 2011)

"Despite the hysteria over the idea of Ryan’s concept of “premium support,” the idea actually originates with left-of-center economists Henry Aaron and Bob Reischauer (see Ezra Klein) and we already have it in Medicare. It’s called Medicare Advantage and about one-fourth of all Medicare enrollees participate in it. In addition, the subsidies for private plans sold in ObamaCare health insurance exchanges will also morph into premium support. We also already have something similar to Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) — the Obama administration’s hope for controlling costs for Medicare. They are called Medical Service Organizations (MSOs) and they service Medicare Advantage plans — the plans ObamaCare has targeted for defunding"

If it is such a bad idea as you want to claim, why did the Dems write the same sort of program into the healthcare law?

junior of DC 5:22PM April 26, 2011

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