Obama Attempts Epic Sales Job on His Big-Spending Record
President Obama plans to use the State of the Union to rebrand himself as a “fiscal conservative”:
“Obama plans to use the State of the Union to present himself as a fiscal conservative.” (Peter Baker, “The White House Looks for Work,” The New York Times, 1/19/2011)
However, no sales job by the president about his newfound “fiscal conservatism” is going to fool the American people, who know all too well what Obama has stood for over the last two years – reckless spending, rising debt and higher deficits:
STIMULUS
“CBO estimates that enacting the conference agreement for H.R. 1 would increase federal budget deficits by $185 billion over the remaining months of fiscal year 2009, by $399 billion in 2010, by $134 billion in 2011, and by $787 billion over the 2009-2019 period (combining both spending and revenue effects).” (“Conference Agreement for H.R. 1 (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,” Congressional Budget Office’s “Director’s Blog“,2/13/2009)
OBAMACARE
“The House, voting 220-207, gave final congressional approval to the measure, clearing the bill for Mr. Obama’s signature on the ten-year $938 billion health initiative.” (Greg Hitt, “Congress Approves Final Health Overhaul,” The Wall Street Journal, 3/26/2010)
“Meanwhile, no serious person doubts that the CBO finding that the reconciliation package would ‘reduce the deficit’ was based on lies about what Congress intends to do in the future.The White House reportedly already is signaling to members that the bill’s promised Medicare cuts will never take place. That feature alone adds hundreds of billions to next decade’s trillion-dollar deficits.” (Allysia Finley, “Now, Back to Pretending to Care About the Deficit,” The Wall Street Journal, 3/22/2010)
“In reality, if you strip out all the gimmicks and budgetary games and rework the calculus, a wholly different picture emerges: The health care reform legislation would raise, not lower, federal deficits, by $562 billion. Gimmick No. 1 is the way the bill front-loads revenues and backloads spending. That is, the taxes and fees it calls for are set to begin immediately, but its new subsidies would be deferred so that the first 10 years of revenue would be used to pay for only 6 years of spending.”(Douglas Holtz-Eakin, “The Real Arithmetic of Health Care Reform,” The New York Times, 3/20/2010)
DEBT AND DEFICITS
“With a $1.7 trillion deficit in budget year 2010 alone, and the government on track to spend $1.3 trillion more this year than it takes in, annual budget deficits are adding roughly $4 billion a day to the national debt. Put another way, the government is borrowing 41 cents for every dollar it spends.” (AP Staff, “US debt passes $14 trillion, Congress weighs caps,” The Boston Herald, 1/24/2011)
“The National Debt stood at $10.626 trillion the day Mr. Obama was inaugurated.” (Mark Knoller, “National Debt Up $3 Trillion on Obama’s Watch,” CBS News’ “Political Hotsheet” blog, 10/18/2010)
Total Public Debt Outstanding: $14,060,136,959,466.51 (“The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It,” as of 1/21/2011, Bureau of the Public Debt Web site, accessed 1/24/2011)