I watched president Obama speak tonight and was amazed. Here was the president of the United States of America making a national address from the White House that was really just another campaign speech. It was bizarre. Obama spoke about a fantasy world in which he is the one who wants to cut spending. Obama first spoke about the great need to cut the federal deficit and about how strongly he felt about accomplishing that. This is the same president who called for and got from a Democrat Congress the greatest spending increases in history. Obama tripled the annual deficit and kept spending at that level year after year. Indeed, Obama sent a budget for next year to Congress that had spending increases, not cuts. He also asked for months that Congress give him an unconditional increase in the debt ceiling, one that had no cuts attached to it. To their credit, the Republicans in the House said that the days of unlimited spending were over. The GOP insisted on spending cuts to offset the increase in the debt ceiling. At that point, Obama decided that in order to avoid any meaningful spending cuts, he would call for tax increases. Just last December, Obama had agreed with the Republicans that increasing taxes when the economy is weak is a very bad idea. But, as they say, that was then and this is now. So Obama went all out to promote the need for additional taxes on millionaires and billionaires (who include people making $200,000 per year or more.) He also railed against the tax breaks given to owners of corporate jets, breaks that only exist because Obama and the Democrats pushed them through in the Stimulus to help promote job growth.
The craziest thing about Obama's speech is that the Democrats have already agreed to drop tax increases as part of the final bill to increase the debt ceiling. That happened three days ago. Now the president is on national TV telling the nation about the need for an approach that all sides have dropped. Obviously, Obama was not serious in this statement. He knows that tax increases are a non-starter at this point. But many of the folks who tuned in are not aware of the state of the negotiations. So Obama played the great compromiser for them. It was another of his phony performances. But it was a dangerous game that will not promote progress in the negotiations. It did make clear, however, that Obama's goal in his speech was to promote his re-election, not the well being of the country.
Another bizarre moment came when Obama told us that Americans have never stood behind leaders who had strong principles and stuck to them; no, Americans have always wanted leaders who were prepared to and did compromise. As those words were read off the teleprompter by Obama, I wondered what Abraham Lincoln, our greatest president, would think of them. Lincoln had strong principles that the country had to be preserved and slavery ended. He stuck to those principles through many dark and bloody years as the Civil War raged across the continent. He did not compromise with the Confederacy. He did not negotiate some lessened form of slavery. He stuck to his principles and carried the nation with him. And he is someone who is still revered today as a man of greatness. Living during the same era as Lincoln, Henry Clay was known as "The Great Compromiser". He engineered the compromise of 1850 and some other notable agreements that just put off the resolution of the issues of slavery and secession. He is remembered today by historians, but there are no monuments to him, no highways, schools or cities named for him. The truth is that Americans do not remember compromisers. Americans remember and honor those who stick to their principles. Obama is just wrong here.
Following Obama's speech, John Boehner gave a short address which pretty much put the lie to everything that Obama said. The House GOP already passed a bipartisan bill to raise the debt ceiling. Obama and the Democrats stopped it in the Senate. The House GOP has another plan that it will put forward tomorrow. Obama does not like it because it will bring the issue back for a vote in six or seven months when another debt hike will be needed. Obama finds that inconvenient for his election campaign, so he threatens to veto the very bill which would resolve the crisis that Obama created.
One last note: it has been eight months since the debt ceiling issue began to be debated. In all that time, Obama has never put forth a detailed proposal. In all that time, no Democrat has put forth a detailed proposal until Harry Reid did today. The GOP, on the other hand, has put forth four separate detailed plans, each of which has been killed when the Democrats said no. Nevertheless, Obama has the nerve to go on national TV and blame the GOP for intransigence.
Hopefully, the American people will see through all of Obama's nonsense. Obama really has to go!
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