Obama Falsely Claims to Cut the Deficit in 10 Years

Obama is confused between reduces deficit spending and reducing the national debt. There is a humongous difference. Also, Obama is planning to reduce the deficit by adding over $7 trillion to the national debt over 12 years instead of 10 years. Huh??

(HotAir) When Barack Obama gave a much-anticipated speech on the budget and deficit spending last week, it turned into a disappointing mix of ambiguities and demagoguery. Most people couldn’t discern any “plan” at all in the speech, only hazy promises with few specifics. As it turns out, Obama himself doesn’t appear to be aware of even those few specifics he did offer. In yesterday’s Facebook townhall event, Obama not only mischaracterized the scope of the Republican plan to cut deficits, he also mischaracterized his own:

Obama Say I Dare You to Repeal Obamacare

Obama is taunting the GOP to try and repeal Obamacare. The president is arrogant and out of touch with mainstream America. In fact, Obama tells the GOP that they went to voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill, but wasn't paid for. The problem of Obama plight is that Bush was able to sustain it with a strong economy; 57 weeks of economic growth after Sept 11. Also, the tax cuts to business kept the unemployment around 5.7%. Obamacare cost more than the 2 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Obama increased spending during an economic turmoil and started a war in Libya without asking Congress permission. Unemployment is still at 10% (Gallup survey) and inflation is through the roof. So, there is no comparison to the matter.

(CBS NEWS) In what he thought was a private chat with campaign donors Thursday evening, President Obama offered the most revealing behind-the-scenes account to date of his budget negotiations with GOP leaders last week.

CBS Radio News White House correspondent Mark Knoller listened in to an audio feed of Mr. Obama's conversation with donors after other reporters traveling with the president had left the room.

In the candid remarks, Mr. Obama complains of Republican attempts to attach measures to the budget bill which would have effectively killed parts of his hard-won health care reform program.

"I said, 'You want to repeal health care? Go at it. We'll have that debate. You're not going to be able to do that by nickel-and-diming me in the budget. You think we're stupid?'" recalled the president of his closed-door negotiations on the bill to fund the federal government until September.

Mr. Obama said he told House Speaker John Boehner and members of his staff that he'd spent a year and a half getting the sweeping health care legislation passed -- paying "significant political costs" along the way -- and wouldn't let them undo it in a six-month spending bill.

Mr. Obama bemoaned GOP leaders' attempts to attach a measure to the budget bill which would have cut funding for Planned Parenthood.

"Put it in a separate bill," the president said he told Boehner and his staff. "We'll call it up. And if you think you can overturn my veto, try it. But don't try to sneak this through."

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.

Congressional Tea Party Members WIll Vote No on 2011 Budget

The 2011 budget deal is heading to the House for the final vote and it seems that the final vote for approval is not a "shoe-in." The truest of true fiscal Conservatives and the congressional members of the Tea Party movement are adamant they will strike a "nay" vote to the legislation. Even with a 24-seat majority, Republicans will almost certainly need the help of fiscally moderate Democrats to get the 2011 plan passed. Honestly, I hope there is a shut down. It will motivate there public servant to do the right thing or they can say bye-bye to their plush job and pension. I find that fear is a get motivator.

(Washington Examiner) A vote on the 2011 budget is scheduled for Wednesday.

But many fiscal conservatives, including Reps. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, have both announced they will not back the 2011 plan because it cuts only $38.5 billion, a historic amount for a single-year reduction but about $23 billion less than what Republican lawmakers said was needed to fulfill their campaign pledge to reduce spending to 2008 levels.

Jordan, who heads a large faction of conservative House Republicans as chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said he expects significant GOP opposition when the 2011 budget comes up for a vote.

Even with a 24-seat majority, Republicans will almost certainly need the help of fiscally moderate Democrats to get the 2011 plan passed, Republican aides told The Washington Examiner, because many GOP conservatives and freshmen backed by the Tea Party will vote against it.

The federal government is operating under a temporary funding measure that expires Thursday at midnight.

Influential conservatives are pushing the GOP's far right flank to oppose the 2011 bill. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh panned the deal Monday and said the media and political pundits were too eager to praise Boehner, who he said should have pushed harder for deeper cuts.

"It doesn't appear that the rank and file is buying any of the spin," Limbaugh noted.

Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said Republicans may be angered that some of the cuts appear to be from areas of the budget President Obama had already intended to cut or target funds that haven't been allocated yet for specific projects.

"I suspect some of the cuts may not be real cuts," Edwards said, adding that "there may be a bit of a backlash" from conservatives.

Tea Party activists plan on making their disappointment known to the GOP leadership and individual Republican members.

Budget Cuts Axes Czars Already Gone

The budget cuts proposed by Republicans is a sham. The cuts are either spending proposed by Obama (never implemented) or money left over from stimulus, census, or money to pay for Obama's czars. They are not real concise budget cuts. Billion dollar in spending cuts is nothing to the trillions we have in deficit. I can't believe Washington assumes the American people are stupid. The American people are frustrated. Washington saw how capable the Tea Party Movement can destroy a politician's future. It is too late for retribution. The fury of the movement will be seen 2012.

(Politico) House Republicans won a symbolic victory by dethroning four White House "czars" under the contentious federal spending agreement rolled out early Tuesday morning, but symbolism may be all they got.

The language in the short-term budget agreement seeks to put four of President Barack Obama's policy czars out of jobs — those appointed to assist the president on health care, climate change, autos and manufacturing, and urban affairs.

The catch: At least three of those four czars have already moved out of the czar jobs.

House Republicans attached an amendment to a spending bill that passed the chamber in February to block funding for nine White House policy advisers. Louisiana Republican Rep. Steve Scalise, the author of that amendment, warned at the time against what he called "a very disturbing proliferation of czars" under President Obama.

With the narrower anti-czar rider, both sides have an opportunity to claim victory. Republicans walk away with the talking point that they dethroned unelected officials playing key roles on controversial policy initiatives; the White House and Senate Democrats can claim they protected most of the advisers that matter — those who are still there.

Washington Elitist Shafted America but Tea Party Will Get Last Laugh

I have mentioned it in the past that the budget cuts didn't go far enough. With trillion dollar/year deficit, couple billion in cuts is not good enough, especially when spending is out of control and the spending cuts decided were cuts that would happened anyway. I knew something was wrong when Liberal were praising GOP House Speaker Boehner. Liberals knew it all along. They were praising Boehner for giving the shaft to the Tea Part Movement. Well, 2012 is right around the corner. America is not done yet. There will be 28 Democrat senators and 10 Republican senators entering an election cycle. Both will be purged from Washington. Also, there will be a handful of Congressmen and Congresswomen entering the election cycle too. The American people will get the last laugh as we vote these idiots out of office. Washington has just angered the Tea Party Movement

(Washington Times) The final 2011 spending deal has more fingerprints of Democrats’ successful defense against cuts than it does House Republicans’ effort to slash federal deficits and rewrite the rules on spending.

Instead of expansive cuts the GOP originally pushed for, the agreement President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, reached with House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, makes use of the scalpel Mr. Obama favored, slicing from programs but overall avoiding the giant cuts to environment, education, job training and public broadcasting.

Also gone are the major billion-dollar cuts to public housing, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the National Institutes of Health and job-training grants — all of which passed the House but did not survive in the final deal.

Instead, the discretionary spending cuts come in large part from savings that would have happened anyway — $6.5 billion in recapturing unspent money from previous years and another $6.2 billion reduction in Census Bureau spending, which was artificially high already because of the 2010 census.

Budget tricks helped Obama save programs from cuts

This deceitful accounting manipulation is so common with Washington, especially with the Obama Administration. From the unemployment numbers to balancing the budget, it is all about hiding numbers. Everybody in Washington is in on the act. The GOP establishment knew what was going on with Democrats leading the way. Unfortunately, the America public is not privy to the inner works of Washington. Even though most Americans are blinded by the double standard in Washington, there is one thing Americans can agree. The Legislative and Executive branch are crooks. They are looking for ways to make themselves richer and holding onto power as long as they can. This is why both Democrats, Liberals, and the GOP establishment hates the Tea Party movement. The elitist in Washington have a common enemy that can change the total make-up of America. The Tea Party movement will take back America from Washington and return it to the American people.

(My Way News) WASHINGTON (AP) - The historic $38 billion in budget cuts resulting from at-times hostile bargaining between Congress and the Obama White House were accomplished in large part by pruning money left over from previous years, using accounting sleight of hand and going after programs President Barack Obama had targeted anyway.

Such moves permitted Obama to save favorite programs - Pell grants for poor college students, health research and "Race to the Top" aid for public schools, among others - from Republican knives, according to new details of the legislation released Tuesday morning.

And big holes in foreign aid and Environmental Protection Agency accounts were patched in large part. Republicans also gave up politically treacherous cuts to the Agriculture Department's food inspection program.

The details of the agreement reached late Friday night just ahead of a deadline for a partial government shutdown reveal a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially "score" as cuts to pay for spending elsewhere, but often have little to no actual impact on the deficit.

As a result of the legerdemain, Obama was able to reverse many of the cuts passed by House Republicans in February when the chamber approved a bill slashing this year's budget by more than $60 billion. In doing so, the White House protected favorites like the Head Start early learning program, while maintaining the maximum Pell grant of $5,550 and funding for Obama's "Race to the Top" initiative that provides grants to better-performing schools.

Instead, the cuts that actually will make it into law are far tamer, including cuts to earmarks, unspent census money, leftover federal construction funding, and $2.5 billion from the most recent renewal of highway programs that can't be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation. Another $3.5 billion comes from unused spending authority from a program providing health care to children of lower-income families.

Obama State of the Union, I WILL RAISE YOUR TAX

Obama was so late to agree with the GOP budget for 2011 that he is compelled to go on air to tell the nation of his fiscal budget plan to fix the rising deficit. Something doesn't sound right. Overall, Obama is going to raise taxes. Read my lips, "Obama will raise taxes!" I am assuming many voted Obama because he wasn't going to raise taxes because only an idiot would vote someone into power whose platform is raising taxes like income, gas, and consumables. Liberal Democrats are taken off guard. Besides being angry, many Liberals have a low expectation with Obama; hence, a very low approval rating of the president. As usual, the president didn't give specifics of his plan. However, the president does have several days to make up one.

(WSJ) President Barack Obama will lay out his plan for reducing the nation's deficit Wednesday, belatedly entering a fight over the nation's long-term financial future. But in addition to suggesting cuts—the current focus of debate—the White House looks set to aim its firepower on a more divisive topic: taxes.

In a speech Wednesday, Mr. Obama will propose cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and changes to Social Security, a discussion he has largely left to Democrats and Republicans in Congress. He also will call for tax increases for people making over $250,000 a year, a proposal contained in his 2012 budget, and changing parts of the tax code he thinks benefit the wealthy.

Republicans Budget Bill Will Kill Old People

"Fearmongering" is the main arsenal of the Democrats. Scaring any group of people, Democrats feel emboldened and the easiest target is the elderly. As a very big voting group, Democrats need to keep seniors dependent on the government with entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. Since the GOP is trying to balance a budget, Democrats are screaming Republicans are killing senior citizen. We hear this all the time. The last time Congress balanced the budget was under Clinton in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001, and that was with a Republican majority. During that time, the "fearmongering" was intense by the Democrat party, but no senior died from a balance budget.


Transcipt from the Rush Limbaugh Show

RUSH: You remember all the grief that Sarah Palin got talking about death panels in Obamacare. She was called a "fearmonger" and all that. Never mind that these so-called nonexistent death panels then were removed from Obamacare. Now, here comes Debbie Wasserman Schultz accusing the Republicans of killing senior citizens, and there is no outcry from anyone, anywhere, that is in any way similar to the outcry Sarah Palin got. That's another example of the blatant double standard which exists.

Here's the Patsy Schroeder sound bite. This is 1995 on the House floor, Pat Schroeder, Democrat congressperson from Colorado.

SCHROEDER: And they had the Big Kahuna of GOPAC come speak, none other than Rush Limbaugh himself, who stood there and said to all these people who paid all this money to keep GOPAC rich, he was hailing the GOP budget! He said, according to the paper and according to the C-SPAN tape, he thought it was wonderful because it would starve the poor and it would drive Medicare recipients, including his mother, to eat dog food, but not to worry, Mom, he says, I'm sending you a new can opener. Wow. That tells you what today's about.

RUSH: It's amazing how history repeats itself: 1995, 16 years ago, the Republicans had a budget, the Democrats react to it the same way. "It's going to kill old people." Now, there's a part of me asking, why does history keep repeating itself? How is it, you have to ask yourself, that the Democrats continue to get away with this? They got away with it in -- well, it's arguable -- they got away with it in '95 in the PR sense. They did not get away with it in '95 at the ballot box; Republicans won reelection in 1996. But they clearly won the PR battle. By winning the PR battle, they scared the hell out of the Republicans and made them timid, started to back off, their forcefulness declined a little bit. May not be that history repeats itself, but the hysteria surely does. It's the same thing. You might also say, "Well, Rush, the history's repeating itself. Back then, the Republicans were talking about the need to get the budget in balance." Well, that is always true. That's something that always has to be done.

You know, we had a bite earlier this week -- maybe latter part of last week -- talking about quick fixes. If we would've tried the quick fix 30 years ago, where would we be today? We wouldn't be in the mess that we're in today if we had stuck to what we started in 1995 when it came to balancing the budget. We wouldn't be where we are today. The problem is that between 1995 and now, we've had a bunch of Democrats in Congress, and we've had some spendthrift Republicans as well. The bottom line is that we're always gonna have people in Washington who are going to want to spend money because that's the ticket. That's the route to success. And it's all personal, in terms of their own career and their advancement. Spending money is one of the quickest ways to ingratiate yourself with people.

And you go talk to some elderly members of Congress about this health care bill and what it's gonna do to this country 10, 15 years down the road, and some of these members of the House and Senate who are in their seventies: "I don't care. I'm gonna be dead." That's really their attitude about it. Under Reagan and Bush, the Republicans had control of the White House and both houses of Congress -- how many old people died then? We can go back and count the numbers. How many old people died during the Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2 administrations? How many old people died because of the Republican budget every year? Answer: zero. And yet the same complaint, the same charge is made. And above all, most of all, you wonder about the idiots that hear it out there, average Americans who believe it, who buy into it.

Deal falls short of GOP cut pledge; As good as we could get, Boehner says

Not enough!!!! Need more purging in the GOP establishment starting with House Speaker Boehner. Need more Tea Party supporters to change Washington! The GOP caved in! Pitiful! If it took this long to pass the 2011 budget, just wait till they do the 2012 this year. It's not over yet, folks!

(The Hill) The bipartisan deal struck late Friday falls short of the House Republican campaign pledge to cut $100 billion in fiscal 2011 spending.

The pact cuts $78.5 billion when compared to President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget request, which was never enacted.

Comparatively, the accord cuts $39 billion in actual spending, which is $22 billion less than bill the House passed in February.

In a brief interview, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Hill the agreement was "as good a deal as we could get."

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said he expects "significant" opposition from conservatives, both to the short-term fix and the long-term spending bill. He said he will vote against both.

Dammit, No Government Shutdown

Congress finally got a budget for this fiscal year that will end September 30, 2011. It is over for now. The budget bill is not exactly great, but it did trim some of the spending. The problem with every budget is making the Department of Defense the pariah or the "bogeyman." Instead of cutting entitlement programs, Congress has no problem trimming the lean fat from the Pentagon. However, Congress did trim some of the foreign aid to other countries. The move is commonsense. In order to help others, one needs to take care of their own house first. At least, America doesn't need to worry about another balance budget till September.

(Politico) After a long day of trading offers, the White House and House Republicans reached agreement Friday night on a budget framework that would cap 2011 appropriations near or below $1.050 trillion while cutting domestic and foreign aid by more than $40 billion from the rate of spending at the beginning of this Congress.

Behind the closed doors of special meeting of the Republican Conference, Speaker John Boehner presented the package to his party as at least an agreement in principle and said at one point “We have a deal.” He has yet to speak publicly but all signs indicate that the Senate will now feel confident enough to move ahead with a stop gap spending bill to avert—or at least shorten—any shutdown beginning at midnight

Boehner made a final bid at getting a still lower top line directly to President Barack Obama, when Obama called him in the early evening. A second key variable is Pentagon spending, where Democrats had moved up to $514 billion –a $5.3 billion increase— but were also asking for an across-the-board government-wide percentage cut that would not exempt defense.

GOP budget would kill 70,000 children

Idiot liberals! So, Democrats funding for abortions isn't the same thing? I say screw it! If China wants to be the next world leader, let them help fund it. We can't be saving the world, and at the same time, lose our world exceptional status. Enough is enough. If we don't cut spending, there will be more than 70,000 children dead.

(Foreign Policy) As Congress struggles to negotiate a budget deal to keep the government running, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) told lawmakers Wednesday that the GOP version of the budget bill would result in the deaths of at least 70,000 children who depend on American food and health assistance around the world.

"We estimate, and I believe these are very conservative estimates, that H.R. 1 would lead to 70,000 kids dying," USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah testified before the House Appropriations State and Foreign Ops subcommittee.

"Of that 70,000, 30,000 would come from malaria control programs that would have to be scaled back specifically. The other 40,000 is broken out as 24,000 would die because of a lack of support for immunizations and other investments and 16,000 would be because of a lack of skilled attendants at birth," he said.

The Republican bill, known as H.R.1, was passed by the House, and would fund the government for the rest of fiscal 2011. It would effectively cut 16 percent from the Obama administration's original fiscal 2011 request for the international affairs account.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) pointed out that H.R. 1 would provide $430 million for the International Disaster Assistance (IDA) account, which is 50 percent below the president's fiscal 2011 request and 67 percent below fiscal 2010 levels.

$32 Billion in Budget Cuts Proposed by GOP

Not enough, but at least it is a start......

(New York Times) WASHINGTON — After clamoring loudly about their plans to curtail federal spending, House Republicans announced Thursday that they would cut $32 billion for the remainder of the fiscal year — a minuscule amount compared with a projected annual deficit of nearly $1.5 trillion.

The Republican proposal is effectively $58 billion less than the domestic and foreign aid programs in President Obama’s budget request for 2011 — far short of the $100 billion in cuts that Representative John A. Boehner promised before the November elections that catapulted Republicans into the House majority and made him the speaker.

Republicans said that their cuts, prorated for the balance of the fiscal year, still fulfilled their campaign pledge to reduce to 2008 levels the government’s discretionary spending on everything other than national security. They said that the Democrats’ failure to approve a budget or pass any of the normal spending bills precluded further cuts.

But their unwillingness to impose steeper reductions also reflected the severe difficulty they face in slashing spending on the wide scale demanded by some Republicans, especially Tea Party-backed freshmen elected partly on a promise of fiscal restraint.

The Republican Study Committee, a conservative bloc that counts a majority of House Republicans among its members, has called for more than $100 billion in cuts this fiscal year, and $2.5 trillion in reductions over the next decade. The group sent a letter to Mr. Boehner urging him to meet or exceed that because voters expected no less.

GOP Senate Minority Leader touts his one-page spending budget bill

RealClearPolitics - Video - McConnell: Dems Using "Christmas Break As An Inducement" To Pass Omnibus

If only our laws were written this way. So much easier to read and understand.....

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) touts his one-page continuing resolution that would "simply continue the government through February 18th."

"I would hope that it would make sense on a bipartisan basis, this one-page continuing resolution on Feb 18th as an alternative to this 2,000-page monstrosity that spends a half a billion dollars a page," McConnell said on the Senate floor.