http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-spokane/president-s-budget-speech-dishonest-even-by-modern-political-standardsThe Wall Street Journal had harsh words for President Obama's budget speech. Calling it "dishonest even by modern political standards," the Journal noted:
Did someone move the 2012 election to June 1? We ask because President Obama's extraordinary response to Paul Ryan's budget yesterday—with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions—was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama's fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign.
According to President Obama, the country really stunk until 1965, and did not become great until big government entitlement programs like Medicare came along:
We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard times or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff, may strike any one of us. “There but for the grace of God go I,” we say to ourselves, and so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities. We are a better country because of these commitments. I’ll go further – we would not be a great country without those commitments.
He also relied on the old liberal playbook of raising taxes and demagogging those who think Washington spends too much. Instead of providing leadership, he only added fuel to the fire.
Recently, Rep. Paul Ryan introduced a plan that would address the things driving the nation's debt. Instead of offering an alternative, the President did what he always does - pit one American against another. The Journal wrote:
Mr. Obama did not deign to propose an alternative to rival Mr. Ryan's plan, even as he categorically rejected all its reform ideas, repeatedly vilifying them as essentially un-American. "Their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America," he said, supposedly pitting "children with autism or Down's syndrome" against "every millionaire and billionaire in our society." The President was not attempting to join the debate Mr. Ryan has started, but to close it off just as it begins and banish House GOP ideas to political Siberia.
But conservatives are not the only ones unimpressed with the President's performance.
Ed Morrissey writes at Hot Air that some on the left were not too happy, either.
Clive Crook, senior editor of The Atlantic, called Obama's speech "...a Waste of Breath":
Obama had a difficult assignment in this speech, partly because of the exaggerated hopes for it (see previous post). Even allowing for that, it was weak both politically and substantively. My instant unguarded reaction, in fact, was to find it not just weak but pitiful. I honestly wondered why he bothered.
His primary criticism is that while the President attacked Rep. Ryan's plan, he had no alternative:
There was no sign of anything worth calling a plan to curb borrowing faster than in the budget. He offered no more than a list of headings under which $4 trillion of deficit reduction (including the $2 trillion already in his budget) might be found--domestic non-security spending, defense, health costs, and tax reform. Fine, sure. But what he said was devoid of detail. He spent more of his time stressing what he would not agree to than describing clear proposals of his own.
His rebuttal of the Ryan plan was all very well--I agree it's no good--but the administration still lacks a rival plan. That, surely, is what this speech had to provide, or at least point to, if it was going to be worth giving in the first place. His criticisms of Ryan and the Republicans need no restating. And did the country need another defense of public investment in clean energy and the American social contract? It wanted to be told how fiscal policy is going to be mended: if not by the Ryan plan, with its many grave defects, then how?
Economist Laurence Kotlikoff - who supported Obama in 2008 - panned the President's speech for the same reason, arguing Obama simply kicked the budget can down the road:
In his speech on our nation's long-term budget crisis Wednesday, President Barack Obama identified the problem, but he failed to provide concrete solutions.
Indeed, when it came to describing how he would fix federal health care spending, Obama stayed pretty close to his budget document in which he said that Medicare and Medicaid costs would come down because they'd come down and, if they didn't, a panel of experts would tell Congress to lower them.
Give us a break. This is simply a continuation of kick-the-can down the road, which leaves ever larger government bills for our kids to pay.
He argues further that Obama's speech lacked in substance:
I voted for and even campaigned for the president, and my jaw drops every time I hear him speak. But eloquence is no substitute for substance. We need real leadership now, not after the next election.
Agree or disagree, at least Kotlikoff presented a proposal he says will fix what he calls our biggest debt driver - basic health care.
Leadership - something Paul Ryan demonstrated with a real plan that addresses a very serious problem - is not this President's strong point.
Instead, he relies on the tired formula of raising taxes, increasing spending, and blaming George Bush for whatever ails the country. It's a formula Democrats have used for at least ten years.
Democrats have also shown the strategy they think will win in 2012. According to Democrats, Republicans want to kill women with cuts to Planned Parenthood, and kill seniors by making Medicare solvent. Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts claimed Republicans are out to destroy the entire planet.
Next, they'll claim Republicans want to destroy the entire space-time continuum.
This dishonest, irresponsible, jaw-dropping rhetoric did not work in the 1990's, but Democrats are convinced it will work now.
The Journal concludes by writing:
Mr. Obama ludicrously claimed that Mr. Ryan favors "a fundamentally different America than the one we've known throughout most of our history." Nothing is likelier to bring that future about than the President's political indifference in the midst of a fiscal crisis.
But dithering and fiddling in the middle of a crisis has been the hallmark of President Obama's career in the White House.
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