President Obama said that the United States does not face an “immediate crisis in terms of debt,” and Republicans are twisting that to mean that he’s dismissing the debt the way the GOP dismisses the truth. If they had their way, we’d be changing our motto to “In austerity we trust.”
John Boehner went on the Tee Vee Machine and said that the debt crisis is “looming,” but agreed that it wasn’t “immediate.”
Nor is there a great deal of evidence to back up Boehner’s distinction between an “immediate” and “looming” debt crisis. The long-term projections of mounting debt he and other D.C. lawmakers rely on are in fact riddled with dramatic assumptionsand uncertainties about the future behavior of both Congress and the economy.
Martha Raddatz interviewed Boehner on ABC’s This Week. Here’s a snippet:
Aww, did you hear that? There was a Moment of Fuzzy followed by a Moment of Trust followed by a Moment of Agreement… followed by many Moments of Same Old Thing:
Raddatz:
Where’s your trust level with the president?
Boehner:
We have a very good relationship. We’re open with each other, we’re honest with each other…
Raddatz:
So do you trust President Obama?
Boehner:
Absolutely.
Raddatz:
Absolutely.
Boehner:
Absolutely. There’s no issue there.
Raddatz:
…How long do we have to solve our [debt] problem?
Boehner:
…It’s not an immediate problem.
Raddatz:
…So you agree with the president on that.
Boehner:
Yes…
Of course, right after that “yes,” Boehner became less agreeable. Wouldn’t want to be too bipartisan, now would we?
Mitch McConnell is a lying, evasive GOP Sunday talk show hypocrite. He plunked his ample derriere down on every Sunday talk show chair in front of every Sunday talk show camera he could, stared us in our collective face and lied and evaded his fool head off.
Or as I like to call it, business as usual.
Transcript time (video below):
We have a debt the size of our economy, which makes us look a lot like Greece.Wrong. Austerity, the GOP panacea for all things budgetary, would make us “look a lot like Greece.” How hard a concept is this?
“They do not want him to succeed. There`s no question about that. They are assert that spending more money is wrong. We really need to be spending a lot more money, fixing up our infrastructure and creating jobs and making the economy run better.“
Next.
And it’s a shame that the president doesn’t embrace the effort to reduce spending. He has.
Next.
Why should we have to be bringing him to the table? Why isn’t he leading us in the direction of beginning to solve our long-term debt and deficit problem? It’s perplexing to me that the president of the United States, elected to lead the country, is so reluctant to engage on the most important issue confronting our future. I hate to quote David Gregory, but… “Going back to the summer of 2011 it’s the president who said, “Hey, to all of you Republican leaders, if you didn’t have such a hard time saying yes to me, the president, we could have solved some of these problems.”
Now we know he’s good at campaigning, but when does he put the campaign aside and start governing and addressing the single biggest issue confronting America and its future?Or to put it another way, Obama has been reaching out to Americans, face to face, and in turn, they’ve shown their support and have given Congress an abysmal 18% approval rating. As for governing, you specifically, and your party, conspired to obstruct his every move since Inauguration Night.
You yourself made blocking his attempts to govern and making him a one term president your number one priority. And guess what? You lost:
Next.
My goal is always to try to accomplish progress. To achieve things for the American people.By doing what? Blocking productive legislation? Cutting programs for the poor, the elderly, the ill while supporting massive spending on the military? You call this the “pro life” party? More like the Pro Kill party: Kill Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, education, civil rights, clean energy, democracy as we know it, and face it, more Americans. McConnell’s idea of “progress”: Taking money from those who need it, from his fellow citizens, and instead of feeding them, he’d rather feed more wars, more death, feed into the biggest military budget in the world.
The world’s top 5 military spenders in 2012. Figures sourced from the SIPRI Yearbook 2012.
The single biggest issue we have right now is this massive, massive debt hanging over the heads of our children and grandchildren. And where did that come from exactly? Oh yeah. Bush’s time in office during which he and your pals stuck two wars and your precious tax cuts on a credit card creating “massive, massive debt hanging over the heads our children and grandchildren” after causing the biggest recession since the Great Depression.
Via Ezra Klein at the Washington Post.
Next.
And while he made accusation after absurd accusation, while spewing all that blatant hypocrisy and double talk, time after time he refused to directly respond to David Gregory’s questions. This man is a disgrace. Watch:
James Kvaal, Policy Director for Obama for America, breaks down Mitt Romney’s misleading claims on the national debt and how President Obama took action to stop this economic free fall inherited form the previous administration.
As Rep. Speier notes, facts are irrelevant to the GOP. They make stuff up, state it as fact, their statements get reported, quoted, and as they make their way through the news cycle, become headlines. Self-perpetuated hype and fabrication weave their way into the news as if they’re real stories… backed up by absolutely nothing.
Or as I like to call it, Fox “News” [sic].
Unfortunately, other networks run with these lies, too, and that’s why poll after poll reflect support for liars like Romney, or Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Misinformed voters believe what they’re told without bothering to fact check.
It looks like Greg Sargent is picking up where Speier left off with his “How Mitt Romney gets away with his lying”. Please read the entire post. Here are a couple of pertinent points:
The Tax Policy Center’s Roberton Williams summed it up perfectly in a quote to me:
“The bottom line is that whatever baseline you use, until Romney makes good on his promise to pay for his tax cuts, he would increase the deficit far more than Obama would.”
… Yet the vast majority of news consumers who now know that Romney has accused Obama of lighting a “prairie fire of debt” that threatens to engulf our children and our future haven’t been told about either of them.
Former President Bill Clinton addresses this (at about 15:00), including the outlook for the U.S. economy, entitlement reform, tax policy and deficit reduction at a Fiscal Summit event sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation (Source: Bloomberg):
Willard Romney and Paul Ryan would take the mess resulting from the Bush tax cuts and make it trillions of dollars worse, all on the backs of the poor. Imagine that for a moment.
What exactly did Bush’s corporate-friendly policies do to this country? Here are some visual aids, courtesy of the Rachel Maddow Show:
Re ” Obama gives and gets in tax cut plan,” Dec. 7
The Republicans don’t like gays or Muslims, and they are not too crazy about atheists either. They especially dislike those lazy parasites who had the audacity to find themselves out of work after the Bush administration lost 3.5 million jobs in its last six months and a further 3.26 million jobsbefore Obama could get it turned around.
The national debt skyrocketed to more than $11 trillion when Obama walked in the door. It is still rising primarily because of the cost of the Bush tax cuts, two wars and Medicare Part D, yet Republicans are demanding we borrow $700 billion more to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.
Is there anyone remaining for Republicans to offend? Oh yes: the wealthy.
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