I just watched president Obama's press conference. There are some points that have to be made about it. Here they are, although not in any particular order:
1) If Michele Bachmann had said the same things, the headline from the media would be that Bachmann had misstated the facts. Obama actually said that high income people in the USA pay income taxes at a lower rate than at any time in his lifetime. Then he said that tax rates are lower than any time since the 1950's. This is just blatantly wrong, and you would think that the president of the United States would know this. During the 1980's the top income tax bracket was 28%. At the moment, the top bracket is 35%. Also during the 1980's, the deductions for high income folks were not phased out as incomes rose; that deduction phase out is in place now. In other words, the top tax rate after taking into effect the loss of deductions is about 35% higher now than it was 25 years ago. If you look at the 1950's the top bracket then was at 70% for most of that decade. How Obama could say that the current rates are the lowest since the 1950's in truly strange. Even though Obama was clearly wrong with these rather important facts, my guess is that we will hear little, if anything, from the main stream media about the mistake.
2) Obama finally came out in favor of passing the free trade agreements with Korea, Colombia, etc. These agreements have been held up by Harry Reid and the Democrats in the Senate for many years. That's correct, for many years. Obama has now pointed out that holding up these agreements has cost American jobs and prevented further job growth. I am glad that he finally is moving forward to push the passage of the agreements, but one might validly ask where he has been until now.
3) Obama once again said that we need to have changes to entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. Once again, however, he did not say what changes he could endorse. The American people are entitled to know what changes Obama supports.
4) Obama pushed some tax increases on corporate jets, oil and gas companies and the like. While his language was designed to make the Republicans look like plutocrats, it made me wonder if Obama was preparing to throw in the towel on trying to raise taxes. Changing the tax rates on corporate jets will obviously hurt an industry which is heavily American. Nevertheless, it involves very little tax revenue. Modifying taxes for oil and gas companies will just result in higher prices at the pump for all Americans. Still, there may be some changes in connection with taxation of oil and gas companies that could pass the House. Obama may just be trying to make it look like he got big concessions from the GOP while actually throwing in the towel on the point. After all, this is what he did last December on the extension of the income tax rates. Indeed, it was funny to hear Obama talk about extending the partial payroll tax holiday as his own idea when the truth is that the Republicans insisted on that change being part of the overall deal last December over the objections of the Democrats.
5) On Libya, Obama did his usual. He created a straw man rather than dealing with the true question. Obama pointed out that the War Powers act was passed after Vietnam where tens of thousands of Americans died in a lengthy war. To hear Obama talk, unless the war under consideration is the size of Vietnam, the War Powers Act does not apply. Clearly, that is not only wrong, it is laughable. Does Obama think that president Bush could have gone into Iraq without the approval of Congress? That was a peanut of a war compared to Vietnam. Nevertheless, Obama would clearly agree that congress had to and did approve of that war. Obama, however, never addressed why the Libya war is not millitary hostilities under the War Power Act.
UPDATE: Politico is reporting that while Obama said that his older daughter is 13,she is actually 12. Maybe we should look to see if there are any serial killers who are 13 and claim he was confused about it.
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