It doesn’t really matter what Obama says
He’s a leftie. Therefore, he hates America.
Here’s John Boehner oh so earnestly confused as to why Obama just doesn’t understand how great America is.
BOEHNER: Well, they — they’ve refused to talk about America exceptionalism. We are different than the rest of the world. Why? Because Americans have — the country was built on an idea that ordinary people could decide what their government looked like and ordinary people could elect their own leaders.
And 235 years ago that was a pretty novel idea. And so we are different. Why is our economy still 20 times the size of China’s? Because Americans have had their freedom to succeed, the freedom to fail. We’ve got more innovators, more entrepreneurs, and that is exceptional but you can’t get the left to talk about it. They don’t — they reject that notion.
PARKER: Why do you think that is?
BOEHNER: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know if they’re afraid of it, whether they don’t believe it. I don’t know.
When will we lefties get it? WHEN?
These are truths. We need to use language that expresses those truths.
What’s $100 billion between political enemies?
Steve Bell, Visiting Scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center:
Republicans risk over-promising and drastically under-achieving. Simple arithmetic condemns most of the $100 billion and “back to FY08″ ideas.
Without wanting to be a curmudgeon on the subject, I still fall back on simple numbers.
The United States will spend approximately $450 billion on “non-security” discretionary spending programs in the fiscal we now occupy–FY11. We are about 4 months into the fiscal year. In the 8 months remaining, then, a linear approach gives us about $300 billion remaining to be spent from already appropriated funds for these discretionary domestic programs.
Thus, the pledge to find $100 billion in cuts, or to return to FY08 levels, means a reduction of one-third of all remaining spending in the targeted programs.
To find $100 billion in outlays (after all, it is outlays compared to revenues that gives us deficits), I estimate that one would have to really cut about 50 per cent of all remaining monies. This begins to be technical, so you have to trust me here–most members of the House and Senate have no idea that outlays (spending) by agencies in any given fiscal year varies dramatically from new appropriations annually. That is a problem of immense proportions.
When I tried to explain this to my friend–a graduate of Brown University with his Ph.D. from Cambridge–he asked me to stop after about 10 minutes. It made his head hurt and it made no sense.
Bottom line–if you want to cut $100 billion from spending in FY11, you will have to start with immediate furloughs of hundreds of thousands of government workers, stop paying the government’s share of the TSP savings programs, close down most government funded operations, and stop most of the research grants the U.S. funds.
It can be done. But if it is done, President Obama and the Democratic Party will have been given one of the great electoral gifts of all time.
I can’t be the only person who wants an animated gif of this performance with which I can “settle” all future economics debates on tumblr.
Congressman Gohmert On Healthcare: This Was Written By Smart People | Capitol Annex
Probably the best hope for a repeal strategy. Blame shit on smart people.
Repealing Health Care Reform: Bring It On
Ahead of a vote on repeal in the GOP-led House this week, strong opposition to the law stands at 30 percent, close to the lowest level registered in AP-GfK surveys dating to September 2009.
The nation is divided over the law, but the strength and intensity of the opposition appear diminished. The law expands coverage to more than 30 million uninsured, and would require, for the first time, that most people in the United States carry health insurance.
The poll finds that 40 percent of those surveyed said they support the law, while 41 percent oppose it. Just after the November congressional elections, opposition stood at 47 percent and support was 38 percent.
As for repeal, only about one in four say they want to do away with the law completely. Among Republicans support for repeal has dropped sharply, from 61 percent after the elections to 49 percent now.
The Truth and Consequences of Repeal
Same as it ever was: the deficit is a campaign issue, not a governing priority.
Since Barack Obama took office, prominent voices on the right have called him an ally of Islamist radicals in their Grand Jihad against America, a radical Kenyan anti-colonialist, a man who pals around with terrorists and used a financial crisis to deliberately weaken America, an usurper who was born abroad and isn’t even eligible to be president, a guy who has somehow made it so that it’s okay for black kids to beat up white kids on buses, etc. I haven’t even touched on the conspiracy theories of Glenn Beck. The birthers excepted, the people making these chargers are celebrated by movement conservatives – they’re given book deals, awards, and speaking engagements.
