Obama Speech is Weak and Has TOO Many Hole

Today, President Obama gave a speech on deficit reduction. Besides pandering to the Liberal base, the speech is nothing more than a class warfare tactic to increase the tax on the rich. America heard that cliché before many times and I think we are sick of the rhetoric. When Liberals and Democrats say tax the rich, they meant to tax everybody. Look at the price of food and other consumable goods. Look at the gas price we are currently paying. These are form of taxes that everybody pays.

Democrats had their chance when they took over in 2006. Since then, they didn't create a balance budget. In reality, they weren't serious about it. Initially, Obama created a Fiscal Commission and that was a façade. It was ceremonial pageantry. In fact, Obama ignored the commission’s recommendations and disregarded many of their suggestions from the budget. Now, Obama decides to play leadership. In the speech today, Obama wants to put another commission to solve the problem he refuses to confront. This is called "kicking the can" down the road. Obama is hoping a miracle that the deficit will fix itself.

(Weekly Standard) House Budget chairman Paul Ryan's office highlights "key facts" from Obama's speech:

· Counts unspecified savings over 12 years, not the 10-year window by which serious budget proposals are evaluated.

· Postpones all savings until 2013 – after his reelection campaign.

· Runs away from the Fiscal Commission’s recommendations on Social Security – puts forward no specific ideas or even a process to force action.

Calls for the appointment of another commission, after mostly omitting from his Fiscal Year 2012 Budget any of proposals submitted by the commission he appointed last year.

· Non-specific framework fails to meet his Fiscal Commission's own deficit-reduction goals.

Taxes:
· Proposes to raise taxes on the American people by more than $1 trillion, devastating our fragile economy and stifling job creation.

· Endorsed the Fiscal Commission’s ideas on taxes, which specifically called for lower tax rates and a broader base, but then called for higher tax rates. Which is it?

· Government health and retirement programs are growing at more than twice the speed of the economy. At the current rate of spending, revenue would have to rise “by more than 50 percent” just to keep debt at its current level, according to the Government Accountability Office. That means tax increases across-the-board, now and in the future.

Medicare:
Instead of proposing structural reforms that would actually reduce health care costs, the President proposed across-the-board cuts to current seniors’ care.
· Strictly limits the amount of health care seniors can receive within the existing structure of unsustainable government health care programs.

· Gives more power to unelected bureaucrats in Washington to determine what treatments seniors should or shouldn’t get, against a backdrop of costs that continue to rise.

· Conceded that the relentlessly rising cost of health care is the primary reason why the nation is threatened by debt, and implicitly conceded that his health care law failed to solve the problem.

· Eviscerates the only competitive element anywhere in health-care entitlement programs – the competition amongst Part D prescription-drug plans – which allowed the drug benefit to come in 41 percent under budget.

Medicaid:
Acknowledges that the open-ended financing of Medicaid is a crippling financial burden to both states and the federal government, but explicitly rejected the only solution to this problem, which is to give states the freedom they need to design systems that work for the unique needs of their own populations.

Defense:
Proposes more cuts on top of $78 billion in cuts included in his own defense budget, which he proposed just two months ago – all at a time when he continues to task the military with new missions.