Carney: Obama's budget speech shows his unyielding ideology

If you are pressed for time and only want to read one article following a speech by Obama, make sure you read the one from Timothy Carney at the Washington Examiner. He does a better summation of an Obama speech then anyone I have read to date. He is clear, concise, and tells it like it is.

He didn't disappoint with today's column which he ends with:

Obama believes in sacrifices, but not by him.

One sentence sums up Obama who wants the American people to drive smaller hybrid cars to save fuel. At the same time he jets around in the 747 Air Force One instead of taking one of the smaller planes for short trips like to Pennsylvania where he is on the ground for a short time.  All the planes available to him have top notch communications so there is no reason to take a 747, but that would mean Obama sacrificing and that is not likely to happen.

Wonder if Obama could spare some money in his budget for some no-doze for the Vice President when Obama speaks. First it was Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano sleeping through the Obama State of the Union and now Biden sleeping through his speech last night:




If Obama speeches make the Vice President go to sleep, is it any wonder most of the rest of us won't even watch him read a speech from the teleprompter. Why watch the speech when Obama never changes even when billed as a redo speech on the budget. He failed the second time to because he is totally unyielding on his agenda and what he wants. That is not a good trait for a President to have but is the trait of a dictator which Obama wants to be from his actions and comments. 

In the first few paragraphs from Carney we learn once again it is all about Obama and his agenda which is pretty much all anyone needs to know about this President. It is never about the American people and what is best for the Country as a whole.

Billed as a speech about cutting the deficit, Obama instead delivered a speech about why not to cut spending and why to preserve all of his programs. "We do not have to sacrifice the America I believe in," he said, in one of his many uses of the first-person singular.

Attempting to position himself as the grown-up in the room, Obama instead made it clear that nearly everything that he "believe[s] in" should remain untouched. Anything else would reflect a lack of "patriotism," the president implied.

We expected nothing more from Obama then what he said and why you could not have paid anyone I know to watch his speech. From the beginning to end it was about him and what he wants for America which goes against over 70% of the American people.  It would be higher but some people don't want to admit they made a mistake in voting for Obama.

This foreign raised President doesn't have a clue about what America is all about as he has always been on the take from others and never really worked. His mentors like Franklin Marshall Davis and Rev Wright were anti-American which seems to fit in with his upbringing.   His job as a community organizer and then adjunct professor were a joke.  His students complained he wasn't teaching constitutional law but talking about sports. He was able to buy an apartment in Chicago and then his home with the help of his backers like Rezko.  Even his own wife thinks he is lazy.  Would bet if anything needed fixed around the house that she did the fixing while he droned on and on.  So now we have a lazy President with a far left ideology who wants to reshape America his way.  It is going to be a long 21 months until his reign is over.

Obama's budget speech shows his unyielding ideology

By: Timothy P. Carney 04/13/11 8:05 PM
Senior Political Columnist Follow http://twitter.com/TPCarney

President Obama on Wednesday declared himself "honest about what's causing our deficit" and ready to face "tough choices." Yet he insisted on "protecting" his administration's "investments in the future."

(snip)

For instance, the president's definition of "tax reform" is an odd one. Usually, the term implies eliminating tax deductions and credits ("broadening the base") and lowering rates. For Obama, there are no rate cuts -- in fact, there are rate increases. But more revealing, the only "loopholes" he wants to kill are those with which he disagrees.

Obama has created dozens of tax credits and tax deductions aimed at shaping the economy in his image. Obama's supposedly "serious" talk about the deficit never proposed to eliminate his own tax credits. He also never touches other tax credits that reward the behaviors he likes, even at the expense of the economy and tax revenue -- like the ethanol-blending credit.

Obama clearly sees the tax code not simply as a way to collect revenue, but as a way to modify behavior. The only "loophole closing" he has proposed in recent months is even more discriminatory than the loophole itself: Obama doesn't want to end the "production tax credit" that applies to coal mining, manufacturing, forestry, and oil and gas drilling -- he just wants to kick oil companies out of the club that benefits from this tax credit.

He certainly isn't proposing an end to tax credits for wind and solar energy or electric cars. These are the "investments" that will help us "win the future."

Maintaining and expanding such favoritism in the tax code -- and he's certain to insist on new and extended tax credits next year -- is the opposite of "reform." But using words to mean something they've never meant before is standard fare for this administration.

On that score, Obama deliberately conflated spending and tax breaks Wednesday. He called for us to "reduce spending in the tax code."

While "spending in the tax code" might sound odd, it actually exists. For instance, the "Investment Tax Credit" for renewable energy is available to corporations even if they owe no taxes, and is often paid in the form of a check from the U.S. Treasury to those companies that are doing what Obama wants them to do. The Earned Income Tax Credit is the poor-man's version of this -- a welfare payment from the Internal Revenue Service.

But Obama wasn't talking about eliminating these "tax expenditures." When he spoke of lowering "spending in the tax code," it was in the context of his desire to raise rates for upper-income Americans. Under Bill Clinton, the top tax rate was 39.6 percent, but today it's 35 percent. That extra 4.6 percent of income that a successful American gets to keep -- to Obama that counts as "spending" by the government.

The only way to make sense of this way of speaking is to read Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan," in which it is explained that all wealth belongs to the state, except at the pleasure of the sovereign.

The only place Obama showed a willingness to give ground on his own policies involved one particularly generous favor that Obamacare granted to Big Pharma: 12-year exclusivity on biotech drugs. Shortening that government-granted monopoly to seven years would produce a modest cut in Medicare spending.

Otherwise, the speech was a defense of his own policies and an attack on Republicans. He rightly dinged the GOP for refusal to cut military spending, even though Defense Secretary Robert Gates (first appointed by President Bush) sees hundreds of billions in potential savings from military waste.

Obama also attacked Republicans for opposing tax increases as "an article of faith." The phrase was meant to put down an unbending dogma at a time when "tough choices" are needed.

But Obama has repeatedly shown steadfastness on Democratic "articles of faith" -- consider his willingness to shut down government over Planned Parenthood funding last week, and his adherence to his own tax credits.

Obama believes in sacrifices, but not by him.

Timothy P.Carney, The Examiner's senior political columnist, can be contacted at tcarney@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Monday and Thursday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.

Read more at the Washington Examiner

One thing we have learned from reading articles around the internet about the Obama speech is that we didn't miss a thing by not watching his speech.  Here in Oklahoma City a lot of people were watching the OKC Thunder instead of Obama.  Much more enjoyable!