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September 9, 2011

Quick Picks On Obama's Campaign Speech Last Night

Topics: Political News and commentaries

For those who chose not to waste their time last night watching the president's campaign speech before Congress but still want to get a sense of what the speech amounted to, here's a quick roundup, beginning with the AP's Fact Check:

The AP's Calvin Woodward and Tom Raum: FACT CHECK: Obama's jobs plan paid for? Seems not:

President Barack Obama's promise Thursday that everything in his jobs plan will be paid for rests on highly iffy propositions.

It will only be paid for if a committee he can't control does his bidding, if Congress puts that into law and if leaders in the future -- the ones who will feel the fiscal pinch of his proposals -- don't roll it back.

Underscoring the gravity of the nation's high employment rate, Obama chose a joint session of Congress, normally reserved for a State of the Union speech, to lay out his proposals. But if the moment was extraordinary, the plan he presented was conventional Washington rhetoric in one respect: It employs sleight-of-hand accounting.

Andrew Stiles - Sessions: Speech "Makes a Mockery" of Debt Deal

The president's $450 billion jobs "plan," Sessions said, "makes a mockery of the recent debt limit deal." The Budget Control Act cut $7 billion from next years appropriations. That Obama now wants to pile on hundreds of billions of dollars in new debt is inexcusable -- akin to "a second stimulus package." And the first stimulus effort, Sessions said, was "one of the most spectacular policy failures in modern history."

Hugh Hewitt - The Speech That Broke The Patience of the Country?

President Obama's speech on Thursday night bordered on parody. His repetition of long-overused talking points combined with his repeated attacks on job creators and his incessant demand to "pass it right now" produced a mixture of arrogance and absurdity so transparently political that it lacked any capacity to cause political movement or to change anyone's opinion on any issue.

Doug Mataconis - Obama Jobs Speech Tough On Rhetoric, Light On Substance

... this speech wasn't about proposing something that Congress could actually pass. If that was the goal, then the President would be talking about sitting down with Republicans and coming up with a jobs plan. This is a campaign speech pure and simple, it was about firing up the base and trying to win back the independents. The proposals the President made last night were little more than rehashed versions of things that have been made for the past two years, some of which were actually passed into law in 2009 and failed to do much of anything to stimulate the economy.

W. James Antle, III - Putting Straw Men Back to Work

If non sequiturs could create jobs, an economic boom would soon be upon us. Trying to sell Congress on his jobs agenda before the NFL season's opening kickoff, President Obama uncorked a combative stemwinder filled with odd inferences and false choices.

Erick Erickson - Last Night, President Obama Sowed the Seeds of His Own Destruction

... Barack Obama has largely proposed a plan key portions of which can pass with bipartisan support. And they will pass with bipartisan support. And there will be a grand bipartisan signing ceremony. Lots of pictures will be taken.

No jobs will actually be created. The recession will double dip. But Barack Obama will have gotten his bipartisan jobs plan. So he will not be able to blame the GOP. He'll have to blame mother nature again.

And then there's this from Jim Geraghty: "We Need Time to Recover From Obama's Speech About How to Spur Economic Recovery"

As Tim Williams put it, "Obama's schtick is so tired and recycled, it's hard to come up with fresh smart-aleck comments."

I didn't think this was the worst speech Obama gave. It's not even that all of the ideas in it are all that terrible. It's just that they're reheated leftovers, reruns, small-ball initiatives that are likely to be as effective as every other stimulus program that repaves sidewalks or funds research on exotic ants. We're a $14 trillion economy that makes everything from timber to jumbo jets to firearms to smart-phone apps to Hollywood movies to every food product under the sun. The notion that some grab-bag of tax credits and federal grants is going to kick-start a hiring binge to put 14 million Americans back to work, or that the economy is one tax credit for hiring veterans away from recovery, is laughable.

Daniel Mitchell at Cato - Obama's Economic Policy: From Tragedy to Farce:

My reaction yesterday was mixed. In some sense, I was almost embarrassed for the President. He demanded a speech to a joint session of Congress and then produced a list of recycled (regurgitated might be a better word) Keynesian gimmicks.

But I was also angry. Tens of millions of Americans are suffering, but Obama is unwilling to admit big government isn't working. I don't know whether it's because of ideological blindness or short-term politics, but it's a tragedy that ordinary people are hurting because of his mistakes.

As for my own take? I pretty much summed it up back on August 30th ... well before the speech was delivered ... when I said that it's insanity like this that has me wondering if 2012 is going to come soon enough to save what's left of America when Obama is finally ousted out of the WH.

Other coverage: Check out what a National Review Online panel has to say about Obama's speech - here.

Posted by Hyscience at September 9, 2011 7:09 AM

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