Obama's Speech :: Political News and commentaries

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April 13, 2011

Obama's Speech

Daniel Foster has the text of the president's speech.

I listened for a few moments, but after hearing the word "investments" a few times (Democrats code word for spend money while pretending to offer cuts), I changed the channel to cartoons ... never watched them before but figured in this case they were more real than what I was hearing from Obama.

If you have the stomach for it, you can watch the speech ... along with live chat ... at WNYC.

You'll find some good budget and spending data in Where Do Your Tax Dollars Go? A Long Story in 5 Quick Graphs.

Jake Tapper compare's President Obama's speech at the GOP House retreat in January 2010 to his rhetoric today.

The Daily Caller sums up the presiden't speech by saying it's a vague framework for saving $2,000 billion and taxing an extra $1,000 billion by 2023, but is also a brightly drawn blueprint for campaign-trail criticism of Republican candidates. I won't be at all surprised if this assessment is spot-on.

Streiff over at RedState says you can read the entire text of the speech but all you really need to know about Obama's plan to pull us out of our crash dive into bankruptcy is:

Today, I'm proposing a more balanced approach to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over twelve years. It's an approach that borrows from the recommendations of the bipartisan Fiscal Commission I appointed last year, and builds on the roughly $1 trillion in deficit reduction I already proposed in my 2012 budget. It's an approach that puts every kind of spending on the table, but one that protects the middle-class, our promise to seniors, and our investments in the future.

Notice we're no longer talking about debt reduction over 10 years ... it's now out to 12, and as for that $1 trillion in deficit reduction he talked about in his 2012 budget ... well, you know that story already.

Hot Air's assessment of Obama's 'deficit-reduction' plan is that instead of offering specifics on cuts, Obama instead offered specifics on ... more spending:

For a budget-cutting speech, it certainly seemed that Obama was a lot more interested in defending spending than defunding government. Of course, that depends on what part of government we're cutting. Obama spent most of his time looking at the Pentagon instead of anywhere else. ...

Daniel J. Mitchell aptly points out the speech's class warfare approach to tax policy, and says the most disturbing feature may be a provision that punishes the American people with higher taxes if politicians overspend.

Called a "debt failsafe trigger," Obama's scheme would automatically raise taxes if politicians spend too much. According to the talking points distributed by the White House, the automatic tax increase would take effect "if, by 2014, the projected ratio of debt-to-GDP is not stabilized and declining toward the end of the decade."

Kevin D. Williamson calls the president's deficit-reduction speech "depressing" and a flop, and says Obama either does not really get the scale of the problem or he has decided to punt.

Jim Geraghty offers seven quick thoughts on the most important speech of Obama's presidency since the last one and points out that Obama, who is spending three times faster than Bush ... blames Bush for the deficit. Although all 7 of his quick thoughts are pertinent, his 7th point is perhaps the most appropriate: The self-proclaimed "responsible adult" didn't offer a budget to go with this speech.

Via Ramesh Ponnuru, Jake Tapper takes a trip down memory lane and quotes Obama from Jan. 2010: "We're not going to be able to do anything about any of these entitlements if what we do is characterize whatever proposals are put out there as, 'Well, you know, that's -- the other party's being irresponsible. The other party is trying to hurt our senior citizens. That the other party is doing X, Y, Z.'"

Paul Ryan calls the president's speech excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our fiscal crisis.

Race42012 has a summary of what Romney, Cain, and Pawlenty have to say about the speech.

Personally, I think Wizbang sums the speech up best ... aptly calling it a "neo-bolshevik, revisionist hyperbole that just droned on and on."

Now that you've heard some of the comments from some that live in the real world ... you can look forward to hearing how Obama's advocates in the left-wing media spin the speech.

Posted by Richard at April 13, 2011 2:19 PM

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