Obama's State of the Union Message Tells Us Far More About the State of Obama
By Barry Rubin*
January 28, 2010
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/01/obama-state-of-union-message
Significantly, President Barack Obama's discussion of foreign policy came only at the end of his State of the Union message. Obviously, domestic matters and especially the economy come first. Yet international affairs are not only vital but often have been the issues on which administrations are judged, no matter how unlikely that seemed at the time.
It is apparently considered impolite to point out that Obama has no previous experience and little knowledge of international affairs. And yet that fact affects the fate of the globe every day. The really interesting question is whether the State of the Union message showed any growth in his ability after one year in office.
Sadly, the answer is "no."
Here are the themes he expressed.
First, he implies that it is all George W. Bush's fault, having left him with two wars. Yet there is a strange point here that no one has noticed. These wars, except for Obama's long hesitation about making a decision on Afghanistan, have caused him little trouble or criticism in relative terms. On a list of administration failures during its first year, a long list of other items prevail, which cannot be blamed on Bush: embarrassing gaffes, messing up on Iran and the "peace process," subverting allies in Central Europe, apologizing and undermining U.S. credibility with dictators, mishandling the Islamist terrorist prisoners, and so on.
Second, he insists that he's been doing a great job on security. Indeed, Obama suggests--in terms that would have brought a withering criticism of previous presidents--that no one should criticize him.
There is one sentence in this discussion that embodies much of what is wrong with Obama's concept of international affairs. On the surface it is banal, but it is really of the greatest importance: "So let's put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough."
This is part of Obama's confusion between personal or social life and international politics that is so common to the amateur in foreign policy. During recess, boys act macho, ranking each other in a pecking order, challenging each other to fight or back down.
Obama genuinely views the way that international politics works as equally silly, meaningless, and unnecessary. He wants to cut through all that and show that everyone is in the same boat, he has no macho feelings about power, and he's ready to apologize and be part of the gang without leading the gang. It is a way to say: Why can't everyone just get along and be friends. I'll dispense with all these petty quarrels and start by renouncing all of my own power.
This is sort of like the wimpy nerd coming up to a motorcycle gang and explaining his philosophy to them. Okay, that's a very exaggerated image, but it gets the point across. At first, Obama's listeners are puzzled. Why would the leader of the world's greatest superpower talk like this? Perhaps it is a trick.
There are three reactions by foreign leaders and countries to Obama's policy.
Foes are not won over. On the contrary, the world's dictators and radical ideologies, which are America's enemies, conclude that some strange compulsion has paralyzed America, so why not take advantage of it?
Dependents are frightened. If this man refuses to be strong or act tough, who will protect me? I must give my lunch money to the bullies or somehow ingratiate myself with them or just defend myself as best I can.
Lazy friends are pleased. We love this man because either he won't demand that we do anything or if he does, we can ignore him without any consequences. But even some of them are starting to become concerned, like Britain, France, and Germany, who want more action regarding Iran's nuclear program.
What Obama calls "schoolyard taunts" are what diplomatists for centuries have called power politics, leverage, containment, credibility, and so on.
Regarding security against terrorism, Obama speaks of "substantial investments," "disrupted plots," and filling "unacceptable gaps." Never being able to resist some schoolyard taunts at Bush, he adds that he has captured more al-Qa'ida fighters than his predecessor. No problems here. And yet, strangely, people still are worried--and with good reason.
He continues, "We have prohibited torture and strengthened partnerships from the Pacific to South Asia to the Arabian Peninsula." Has Obama strengthened partnerships? Well, if he means alliances, that is truly doubtful. Leaving aside the question of his personal popularity in polls, I cannot think of a single country whose material relations are stronger. Nominally, of course, Western Europe greatly prefers Obama to Bush. But has this led to any actual results in practical terms? Again, no.
He claims success in Afghanistan, preparing the army there so he can bring the troops home starting in July 2011. Curiously, there's no mention of his own smaller version of a surge. U.S. combat troops in Iraq will all be out in August of this year. These are good steps and probably will be very popular at home.
Yet there is also that flash of utopian naiveté, a refusal to face up to the cost of doing so, which bodes ill for the future: "We will reward good governance, reduce corruption, and support the rights of all Afghans--men and women alike. " Yeah, sure. And as with the misleading claim about his successes against al-Qa'ida, there is that fascinating Obama inability to resist the temptation to tell easily exposed lies, claiming that other countries have increased their commitments in Afghanistan when in fact they refused his request to do so.
One of the most remarkable elements is something not in the speech. The word "Israel" is not even mentioned. There is no commitment to its security expressed and nothing about the peace process. This is revealing in two ways.
First, Obama has admitted that he made a mistake on the issue, the only foreign policy mistake he has ever mentioned. His response now is to ignore the issue altogether, not in his government's daily activities but in terms of his main commitments. Remember that type of response, for it might come to characterize other issues. For example, suppose Obama fails--as he clearly will--to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Will he then turn away from that problem as well, banishing it from his agenda?
Second, everyone knows that Obama's commitment to Israel has been widely questioned. A good politician would go out of his way to say something to show--truly or falsely--how much he does care about it. That isn't how Obama works. He is not the kind of president to whom other countries can turn for a feeling of security and support. And that sense of worry is applying now to many other countries in Latin America, Central Europe, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and elsewhere who know that they cannot rely on the president of the United States to protect them against their enemies.
If Obama were to be honest--and effective--he would admit that Israel did almost completely what he asked while the Palestinian Authority (PA) defied him. Israel froze all the construction on the West Bank (it has never defined east Jerusalem in that way) and expressed willingness to go to talks with the PA. The PA has refused to negotiate for five months after Obama asked it to do so. Yet for Obama to pressure the PA to go to the table--the normal route in such situations--is unthinkable for him. So he has no way out of his failure. And Israel's "reward" for its major concession? Not even to be acknowledged in Obama's main annual speech for the first time, I presume, in decades.
In contrast, what Obama is fond of, and spends more time--practically twice as much---on than any other foreign policy issue at all, is his vision of world nuclear disarmament. Even his treatment of the Iran issue comes in this context. Obama--and this is another weakness of his--gets lost when he thinks of something he feels is terribly clever. In this case, believing he can best deter Iran and North Korea by saying the United States should also give up its nuclear weapons.
Does anyone in the world take this seriously?
To hear him say it, America's enemies are trembling:
"These diplomatic efforts have also strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating international agreements in pursuit of these weapons. That is why North Korea now faces increased isolation, and stronger sanctions--sanctions that are being vigorously enforced. That is why the international community is more united, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated. And as Iran's leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: they, too, will face growing consequences."
In a sense, all he had to offer was a schoolyard taunt: You'll be sorry! After so many previous such statements, this comes across as a very empty threat indeed. A different kind of president would have used the State of the Union speech--the timing of it would have been perfect--as a platform to announce that America was switching gears from failed engagement to tough sanctions. The members in both parties would have roared approval. He would have a mandate and the message would have been clearly heard in Tehran. But such an approach would never have occurred to Obama.
And that's why America's enemies aren't trembling but laughing and sneering.
This is the speech of a man who is arrogantly convinced of his own brilliance and who basically believes that no one has a right to criticize him. He thinks that he can ignore or rewrite the rules of international affairs. It reveals both a temperament and a set of ideas totally unsuited for dealing with the world as it is.
What I find most fascinating of all about Obama is that despite all the externals--his early personal history and skin color most obviously--used by himself and others to boast that he understands other peoples, Obama is altogether incapable of grasping that others in the world think and act differently from himself.
That's partly due to his ideology but also to his mistaken belief--ignoring the fact that he is a Hawaii-raised, Harvard-educated member of a very insulated elite whose life has been largely one of uninterrupted rewards mostly showered onto him as gifts--that they are just like he is.
May he, and we all, be very lucky in the next few years.
The bottom line is that even the most controversial issues should be approached in the most balanced, rational, and calm way possible.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
Thursday, January 28, 2010
more on State of the Union
.Bonfire of the Populists The president's anti-Wall Street rhetoric is not good for the economy, and may hurt his party politically.By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL..ArticleCommentsmore in Opinion ».EmailPrintSave This ↓ More.
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close StumbleUponYahoo! BuzzMySpacedel.icio.usRedditLinkedInFarkViadeo Text .The problem with fires is that they can blow in any direction. Consider the White House, which is seeing a backdraft from the anti-Wall-Street flame it has been dousing with gasoline.
His agenda on the ropes, President Obama made a calculated decision to pivot to populism. The Massachusetts Senate race highlighted a fed-up public. The White House strategy: Channel that anger away from itself and to easier targets. Its opening shots were a new tax on banks, new restrictions on banking activities, and Mr. Obama roaring, "We want our money back!"
The president fed the fire with his State of the Union address. Americans are angry at "bad behavior on Wall Street." It is time to "slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas." Lobbyists are trying to "kill" financial regulation. American "cynicism" is the result of "selfish" bankers, CEOs who "reward" themselves "for failure" and lobbyists who "game the system." (No mention of Cornhusker Kickbacks or backroom union deals, but never mind.)
For an administration that claims to know its political history, the White House appears to have misread at least one decade. FDR was re-elected in 1936 for many reasons, but among them was his fiery denunciations of "economic royalists," "economic tyranny," and "economic slavery." Business knew it was in the president's crosshairs and put its capital on strike. The economy didn't recover until the war.
Team Obama is already witnessing a repeat. The U.S. economy ought to be flying out of recession. Yet bank lending is sluggish. Companies refuse to hire. Business is going elsewhere to raise capital: China last year outstripped the U.S. as a center for initial public offerings. The market gyrates on Washington's latest political drama.
View Full Image
Associated Press
Holding forth at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio, Jan. 22
.A venture capitalist recently remarked to me that the uncertainty the administration has created is "nothing short of paralyzing." Nobody will invest in an industry that might be the next to be overtaxed, overregulated, or publicly disemboweled.
Add to that uncertainty the administration's new populist bent, and it's a recipe for a continued capital freeze. "People in the economy are thinking about whether to invest or take risks when what they are seeing are early signs of Hugo Chávez economics," says Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan. With the White House's political fortunes fundamentally tied to economic recovery, this populist fire is an act of self-immolation.
The blowback is already hobbling the White House's own economic team. Senate Democrats, following presidential example, have been newly eager to skewer their own "symbol" of Wall Street. The nearest to hand happened to be Mr. Obama's own Fed chief, Ben Bernanke. Majority Leader Harry Reid spent two weeks putting down a reconfirmation revolt, helping save Mr. Obama from his own antibank rhetoric.
In the House, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was meanwhile called to answer questions about AIG disclosure and counterparties. He left accused by Democrat Edolphus Towns of aiding Wall Street banks in "looting the corpse" of the insurer. Talk about a populist liability. The two men survive only as damaged goods, more susceptible to congressional pressure, less able to make tough decisions. And should Mr. Obama cut Mr. Geithner loose, the White House's tough talk narrows the pool of experienced hands it can nominate as replacements.
Policy-wise, too, the administration is boxing itself in. In keeping with the populist swerve, a feisty Mr. Obama this week upped the ante on financial regulation, warning Congress he'd veto anything less than "real reform." Yet it is precisely a stick-it-to-them bill that will have the most trouble passing a frayed Congress in an election year. And heaven help the administration if there is another financial meltdown, one that truly poses systemic risk. Could this White House dare write another bailout check to "Wall Street"?
And for what? The administration made the mistake of leaking that its new strategy was pure politics, designed to re-energize the public and put Republicans on defense. That somewhat robbed it of its authenticity. Americans have also watched this White House prop up moribund auto makers, float Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and cut deals with pharmaceutical companies. The bank war appears a bit disingenuous. The country's growing investor class is not impressed by the sort of business mau-mauing that pummels their 401(k)s.
As for those Republicans, they are hardly cowering in fear. They watched Scott Brown bat away the president's bank tax, explaining it would be passed on to consumers and hurt lending. His victory suggested the public is open to free-market explanations, and the GOP is feeling more emboldened to make them.
Not all populism is bad. There is indeed an anti-establishment anger in the nation. But the majority of it is directed at a Washington that is foisting an unpopular agenda on the country, and at the cavalier treatment of the free market that creates jobs. The president might try tapping into that.
Write to kim@wsj.com.
Digg
Orkut
+ More
close StumbleUponYahoo! BuzzMySpacedel.icio.usRedditLinkedInFarkViadeo Text .The problem with fires is that they can blow in any direction. Consider the White House, which is seeing a backdraft from the anti-Wall-Street flame it has been dousing with gasoline.
His agenda on the ropes, President Obama made a calculated decision to pivot to populism. The Massachusetts Senate race highlighted a fed-up public. The White House strategy: Channel that anger away from itself and to easier targets. Its opening shots were a new tax on banks, new restrictions on banking activities, and Mr. Obama roaring, "We want our money back!"
The president fed the fire with his State of the Union address. Americans are angry at "bad behavior on Wall Street." It is time to "slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas." Lobbyists are trying to "kill" financial regulation. American "cynicism" is the result of "selfish" bankers, CEOs who "reward" themselves "for failure" and lobbyists who "game the system." (No mention of Cornhusker Kickbacks or backroom union deals, but never mind.)
For an administration that claims to know its political history, the White House appears to have misread at least one decade. FDR was re-elected in 1936 for many reasons, but among them was his fiery denunciations of "economic royalists," "economic tyranny," and "economic slavery." Business knew it was in the president's crosshairs and put its capital on strike. The economy didn't recover until the war.
Team Obama is already witnessing a repeat. The U.S. economy ought to be flying out of recession. Yet bank lending is sluggish. Companies refuse to hire. Business is going elsewhere to raise capital: China last year outstripped the U.S. as a center for initial public offerings. The market gyrates on Washington's latest political drama.
View Full Image
Associated Press
Holding forth at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio, Jan. 22
.A venture capitalist recently remarked to me that the uncertainty the administration has created is "nothing short of paralyzing." Nobody will invest in an industry that might be the next to be overtaxed, overregulated, or publicly disemboweled.
Add to that uncertainty the administration's new populist bent, and it's a recipe for a continued capital freeze. "People in the economy are thinking about whether to invest or take risks when what they are seeing are early signs of Hugo Chávez economics," says Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan. With the White House's political fortunes fundamentally tied to economic recovery, this populist fire is an act of self-immolation.
The blowback is already hobbling the White House's own economic team. Senate Democrats, following presidential example, have been newly eager to skewer their own "symbol" of Wall Street. The nearest to hand happened to be Mr. Obama's own Fed chief, Ben Bernanke. Majority Leader Harry Reid spent two weeks putting down a reconfirmation revolt, helping save Mr. Obama from his own antibank rhetoric.
In the House, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was meanwhile called to answer questions about AIG disclosure and counterparties. He left accused by Democrat Edolphus Towns of aiding Wall Street banks in "looting the corpse" of the insurer. Talk about a populist liability. The two men survive only as damaged goods, more susceptible to congressional pressure, less able to make tough decisions. And should Mr. Obama cut Mr. Geithner loose, the White House's tough talk narrows the pool of experienced hands it can nominate as replacements.
Policy-wise, too, the administration is boxing itself in. In keeping with the populist swerve, a feisty Mr. Obama this week upped the ante on financial regulation, warning Congress he'd veto anything less than "real reform." Yet it is precisely a stick-it-to-them bill that will have the most trouble passing a frayed Congress in an election year. And heaven help the administration if there is another financial meltdown, one that truly poses systemic risk. Could this White House dare write another bailout check to "Wall Street"?
And for what? The administration made the mistake of leaking that its new strategy was pure politics, designed to re-energize the public and put Republicans on defense. That somewhat robbed it of its authenticity. Americans have also watched this White House prop up moribund auto makers, float Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and cut deals with pharmaceutical companies. The bank war appears a bit disingenuous. The country's growing investor class is not impressed by the sort of business mau-mauing that pummels their 401(k)s.
As for those Republicans, they are hardly cowering in fear. They watched Scott Brown bat away the president's bank tax, explaining it would be passed on to consumers and hurt lending. His victory suggested the public is open to free-market explanations, and the GOP is feeling more emboldened to make them.
Not all populism is bad. There is indeed an anti-establishment anger in the nation. But the majority of it is directed at a Washington that is foisting an unpopular agenda on the country, and at the cavalier treatment of the free market that creates jobs. The president might try tapping into that.
Write to kim@wsj.com.
obama contradictions
OPINION: DECLARATIONSJANUARY 28, 2010, 7:10 P.M. ET.The Obama Contradiction Washington is sick and broken—and it can solve all our problems.By PEGGY NOONAN..ArticleCommentsmore in Opinion ».EmailPrintSave This ↓ More.
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close StumbleUponYahoo! BuzzMySpacedel.icio.usRedditLinkedInFarkViadeo Text .When you watch a president give a State of the Union Address on television, you're always watching three people: the president at the podium, and the vice president and House speaker on the rise behind him. As a TV shot it's awkward. The vice president and the speaker have been instructed by media professionals not to let their eyes do what they want to do, which is survey the doings in the chamber. Instead they must stare unwaveringly at the back of the president's head. This is so that they appear to be fascinated by what he's saying, as if he's so interesting that they can't take their eyes off him. It's also so that you, the viewer, don't become distracted by wondering whom they're looking at in the audience.
It's uncomfortable for them, and boring. You, as a member of the TV audience, get to watch the president. The speaker and the vice president get to think, "Huh, he's getting a little gray in the back." The reason Nancy Pelosi often seems a little dart-eyed in these circumstances is that she's always trying to get a look at the chamber when she thinks the camera isn't on her. Joe Biden seems happy to be the fascinated person with crinkly eyes and shining teeth. But for Mrs. Pelosi it's a challenge. This is her chamber, all her people are here, and she wants to be looking at John Boehner's face and Harry Reid's and see who's cheering and who's wearing what.
But the three-shot the other night was also the president's problem. It underscored that he gave the first year of his presidency to the Democrats of Congress, that they wrote the costly and unpopular health-care and spending bills.
View Full Image
Getty Images
.James Baker, that shrewd and knowing man, never, as Ronald Reagan's chief of staff, allowed his president to muck about with congressmen, including those of his own party. A president has stature and must be held apart from Congress critters. He can meet with them privately, in the Oval Office. There, once, a Republican senator who'd announced opposition to a bill important to the president tried to claim his overall loyalty: "Mr. President, you know I'd jump out of a plane for you if you asked, but—"
"Jump," said Reagan. The senator, caught, gave in.
That's how you treat them. You don't let them blur your picture and make you more common. You don't let them call the big shots.
***
President Obama's speech was not a pivot, a lunge or a plunge. It was a little of this and a little of that, a groping toward a place where the president might successfully stand. It was well written and performed with élan. The president will get some bounce from it, and the bounce will go away. Speeches are not magic, and this one did not rescue him from his political predicament, but it did allow him to live to fight another day. In that narrow way it was a success. But divisions may already have hardened. In our current media and political environment, it is a terrible thing to make a bad impression in your first year.
There were strong moments. Of what he frankly called the "bank bailout," he observed: "I hated it. You hated it." His unfancy language was always the most interesting: "We don't quit. I don't quit." The president conceded, with striking brevity, having made mistakes, but defensively misstated the criticism that had been leveled his way. He said he was accused of being "too ambitious." In fact he'd been accused of being off point, unresponsive and ideological.
They've chosen a phrase for the president's program. They call it the "New Foundation." They sneaked it in rather tentatively, probably not sure it would take off. It won't. Such labels work when they clearly capture something that is already clear. "The New Deal" captured FDR's historic shift to an increased governmental presence in individual American lives. It was a new deal. "The New Frontier"—we are a young and vibrant nation still, and adventures await us in space and elsewhere. It was a mood, not a program, but a mood well captured.
"The New Foundation" is solid and workmanlike, but it attempts to put form and order to a governing philosophy that is still too herky-jerky to be summed up.
The central fact of the speech was the contradiction at its heart. It repeatedly asserted that Washington is the answer to everything. At the same time it painted a picture of Washington as a sick and broken place. It was a speech that argued against itself: You need us to heal you. Don't trust us, we think of no one but ourselves.
The people are good but need guidance—from Washington. The middle class is anxious, and its fears can be soothed—by Washington. Washington can "make sure consumers . . . have the information they need to make financial decisions." Washington must "make investments," "create" jobs, increase "production" and "efficiency."
At the same time Washington is a place "where every day is Election Day," where all is a "perpetual campaign" and the great sport is to "embarrass your opponents" and lob "schoolyard taunts."
Why would anyone have faith in that thing to help anyone do anything?
The president did not speak of health care until a half hour in. "As temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we've proposed." Then, "If anyone has a better idea, let me know." Those bland little sentences hidden in plain sight heralded an epic fact: The battle over the president's health-care plan is over, and the plan will not be imposed on the country. Waxing boring on the virtues of the bill was a rhetorical way to obscure the fact that it is dead. To say, "I'm licked and it's done" would have been damagingly memorable. Instead he blithely vowed to move forward, and moved on. The bill will now get lost in the mists and disappear. It is a collapsed soufflé in an unused kitchen in the back of an empty house. Now and then the president will speak of it to rouse his base and remind them of his efforts.
More Peggy Noonan
Read Peggy Noonan's previous columns
Click here to order her new book, Patriotic Grace
.All this got hidden in the speech. In unconscious emulation it even got hidden in this column.
***
As the TV cameras panned the chamber, I saw a friendly acquaintance of the president, a Republican who bears him no animus. Why, I asked him later, did the president not move decisively to the political center?
Because he is more "intellectually honest" than that, he said. "I don't think he can do a Bill Clinton pivot, because he's not a pragmatist, he's an ideologue. He's a community organizer. He mixes the discrimination he felt as a young man with the hardship so many feel in this country, and he wants to change it and the way to change that is government programs and not opportunity."
The great issue, this friendly critic added, is debt. The public knows this; Congress and the White House do not. "To me the Republicans are as rotten as the Democrats" in terms of spending. "Almost."
"I hope we have big changes in 2010," the friend said. Only significant loss will force the president to focus on spending. "To heal our country we need to get the arrogance out of the White House and the elitists out of the Congress. We need tough love. We need a real adult in the White House because we don't have adults in the Congress."
Digg
Orkut
+ More
close StumbleUponYahoo! BuzzMySpacedel.icio.usRedditLinkedInFarkViadeo Text .When you watch a president give a State of the Union Address on television, you're always watching three people: the president at the podium, and the vice president and House speaker on the rise behind him. As a TV shot it's awkward. The vice president and the speaker have been instructed by media professionals not to let their eyes do what they want to do, which is survey the doings in the chamber. Instead they must stare unwaveringly at the back of the president's head. This is so that they appear to be fascinated by what he's saying, as if he's so interesting that they can't take their eyes off him. It's also so that you, the viewer, don't become distracted by wondering whom they're looking at in the audience.
It's uncomfortable for them, and boring. You, as a member of the TV audience, get to watch the president. The speaker and the vice president get to think, "Huh, he's getting a little gray in the back." The reason Nancy Pelosi often seems a little dart-eyed in these circumstances is that she's always trying to get a look at the chamber when she thinks the camera isn't on her. Joe Biden seems happy to be the fascinated person with crinkly eyes and shining teeth. But for Mrs. Pelosi it's a challenge. This is her chamber, all her people are here, and she wants to be looking at John Boehner's face and Harry Reid's and see who's cheering and who's wearing what.
But the three-shot the other night was also the president's problem. It underscored that he gave the first year of his presidency to the Democrats of Congress, that they wrote the costly and unpopular health-care and spending bills.
View Full Image
Getty Images
.James Baker, that shrewd and knowing man, never, as Ronald Reagan's chief of staff, allowed his president to muck about with congressmen, including those of his own party. A president has stature and must be held apart from Congress critters. He can meet with them privately, in the Oval Office. There, once, a Republican senator who'd announced opposition to a bill important to the president tried to claim his overall loyalty: "Mr. President, you know I'd jump out of a plane for you if you asked, but—"
"Jump," said Reagan. The senator, caught, gave in.
That's how you treat them. You don't let them blur your picture and make you more common. You don't let them call the big shots.
***
President Obama's speech was not a pivot, a lunge or a plunge. It was a little of this and a little of that, a groping toward a place where the president might successfully stand. It was well written and performed with élan. The president will get some bounce from it, and the bounce will go away. Speeches are not magic, and this one did not rescue him from his political predicament, but it did allow him to live to fight another day. In that narrow way it was a success. But divisions may already have hardened. In our current media and political environment, it is a terrible thing to make a bad impression in your first year.
There were strong moments. Of what he frankly called the "bank bailout," he observed: "I hated it. You hated it." His unfancy language was always the most interesting: "We don't quit. I don't quit." The president conceded, with striking brevity, having made mistakes, but defensively misstated the criticism that had been leveled his way. He said he was accused of being "too ambitious." In fact he'd been accused of being off point, unresponsive and ideological.
They've chosen a phrase for the president's program. They call it the "New Foundation." They sneaked it in rather tentatively, probably not sure it would take off. It won't. Such labels work when they clearly capture something that is already clear. "The New Deal" captured FDR's historic shift to an increased governmental presence in individual American lives. It was a new deal. "The New Frontier"—we are a young and vibrant nation still, and adventures await us in space and elsewhere. It was a mood, not a program, but a mood well captured.
"The New Foundation" is solid and workmanlike, but it attempts to put form and order to a governing philosophy that is still too herky-jerky to be summed up.
The central fact of the speech was the contradiction at its heart. It repeatedly asserted that Washington is the answer to everything. At the same time it painted a picture of Washington as a sick and broken place. It was a speech that argued against itself: You need us to heal you. Don't trust us, we think of no one but ourselves.
The people are good but need guidance—from Washington. The middle class is anxious, and its fears can be soothed—by Washington. Washington can "make sure consumers . . . have the information they need to make financial decisions." Washington must "make investments," "create" jobs, increase "production" and "efficiency."
At the same time Washington is a place "where every day is Election Day," where all is a "perpetual campaign" and the great sport is to "embarrass your opponents" and lob "schoolyard taunts."
Why would anyone have faith in that thing to help anyone do anything?
The president did not speak of health care until a half hour in. "As temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we've proposed." Then, "If anyone has a better idea, let me know." Those bland little sentences hidden in plain sight heralded an epic fact: The battle over the president's health-care plan is over, and the plan will not be imposed on the country. Waxing boring on the virtues of the bill was a rhetorical way to obscure the fact that it is dead. To say, "I'm licked and it's done" would have been damagingly memorable. Instead he blithely vowed to move forward, and moved on. The bill will now get lost in the mists and disappear. It is a collapsed soufflé in an unused kitchen in the back of an empty house. Now and then the president will speak of it to rouse his base and remind them of his efforts.
More Peggy Noonan
Read Peggy Noonan's previous columns
Click here to order her new book, Patriotic Grace
.All this got hidden in the speech. In unconscious emulation it even got hidden in this column.
***
As the TV cameras panned the chamber, I saw a friendly acquaintance of the president, a Republican who bears him no animus. Why, I asked him later, did the president not move decisively to the political center?
Because he is more "intellectually honest" than that, he said. "I don't think he can do a Bill Clinton pivot, because he's not a pragmatist, he's an ideologue. He's a community organizer. He mixes the discrimination he felt as a young man with the hardship so many feel in this country, and he wants to change it and the way to change that is government programs and not opportunity."
The great issue, this friendly critic added, is debt. The public knows this; Congress and the White House do not. "To me the Republicans are as rotten as the Democrats" in terms of spending. "Almost."
"I hope we have big changes in 2010," the friend said. Only significant loss will force the president to focus on spending. "To heal our country we need to get the arrogance out of the White House and the elitists out of the Congress. We need tough love. We need a real adult in the White House because we don't have adults in the Congress."
Joel Pollak Repub candidate Il 9th blasts Obamas address
Dear Friends,
President Obama's first State of the Union address last night was highly partisan and deeply disappointing.
The President offered few new ideas to deal with the problems our nation is facing. His economic proposals were based on old, big-government policies that have made our jobs crisis worse over the past year and created a huge deficit.
He spent much of his time attacking his opponents--not just the Republicans, but also the media, the Senate, and even the Supreme Court.
I was shocked when President Obama mocked the Supreme Court in front of a stunned nation and a cheering Democrat majority. At best, it was rude. At worst, it was an attempt to intimidate the judiciary. Either way, it was inappropriate.
Disagreeing with a Court decision is one thing. Ridiculing the Justices in their presence--when they have done the President the courtesy of attending his speech--is another.
President Obama also crossed the line when he vowed to go around the Senate by issuing an executive order to create a budget commission that the Senate had rejected.
Our Constitution provides for the separation of powers so that no branch of government can dominate the others. President Obama undermined that principle last night.
Finally, I was disappointed that President Obama did not say enough about the sacrifices our troops are making, and the victory they have won in Iraq.
I am confident in the state of our Union--not because our President is strong, but because the American people are strong. We must make our voices heard, and use this year to campaign for new ideas and new leadership.
President Obama's first State of the Union address last night was highly partisan and deeply disappointing.
The President offered few new ideas to deal with the problems our nation is facing. His economic proposals were based on old, big-government policies that have made our jobs crisis worse over the past year and created a huge deficit.
He spent much of his time attacking his opponents--not just the Republicans, but also the media, the Senate, and even the Supreme Court.
I was shocked when President Obama mocked the Supreme Court in front of a stunned nation and a cheering Democrat majority. At best, it was rude. At worst, it was an attempt to intimidate the judiciary. Either way, it was inappropriate.
Disagreeing with a Court decision is one thing. Ridiculing the Justices in their presence--when they have done the President the courtesy of attending his speech--is another.
President Obama also crossed the line when he vowed to go around the Senate by issuing an executive order to create a budget commission that the Senate had rejected.
Our Constitution provides for the separation of powers so that no branch of government can dominate the others. President Obama undermined that principle last night.
Finally, I was disappointed that President Obama did not say enough about the sacrifices our troops are making, and the victory they have won in Iraq.
I am confident in the state of our Union--not because our President is strong, but because the American people are strong. We must make our voices heard, and use this year to campaign for new ideas and new leadership.
How dare the President try to intimidate the Supreme Court
Alito disparages Obama's Supreme Court criticism
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Facebook Twitter Delicious Digg Fark Newsvine Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print AP – President Barack Obama arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington to deliver his State of the Union address. …
Play Video U.S. Courts Video:Buy Investment Banks TheStreet.com Play Video U.S. Courts Video:A Victory For Free Speech? FOX News Play Video U.S. Courts Video:Hutchison clear on Roe v. Wade in 1993; why not now? KVUE-TV Austin By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer Laurie Kellman, Associated Press Writer – 15 mins ago
WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito didn't like what he was hearing from President Barack Obama.
The president had taken the unusual step of scolding the high court in his State of the Union address Wednesday. "With all due deference to the separation of powers," he said, the court last week "reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections."
Alito made a dismissive face, shook his head repeatedly and appeared to mouth the words "not true" or possibly "simply not true."
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Facebook Twitter Delicious Digg Fark Newsvine Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print AP – President Barack Obama arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington to deliver his State of the Union address. …
Play Video U.S. Courts Video:Buy Investment Banks TheStreet.com Play Video U.S. Courts Video:A Victory For Free Speech? FOX News Play Video U.S. Courts Video:Hutchison clear on Roe v. Wade in 1993; why not now? KVUE-TV Austin By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer Laurie Kellman, Associated Press Writer – 15 mins ago
WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito didn't like what he was hearing from President Barack Obama.
The president had taken the unusual step of scolding the high court in his State of the Union address Wednesday. "With all due deference to the separation of powers," he said, the court last week "reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections."
Alito made a dismissive face, shook his head repeatedly and appeared to mouth the words "not true" or possibly "simply not true."
Obama's State of the Union Speech full of errors
FACT CHECK: Obama and a toothless commission
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Facebook Twitter Delicious Digg Fark Newsvine Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print Play Video ABC News – Obama: Bank Bailout a 'Root Canal'
Slideshow:President Barack Obama Play Video Video:Obama: Prepared to freeze government spending AP Play Video Video:Obama: Take another look at health care plan AP AP – President Barack Obama waves on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010, after delivering … By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer Calvin Woodward, Associated Press Writer – 14 mins ago
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama told Americans the bipartisan deficit commission he will appoint won't just be "one of those Washington gimmicks." Left unspoken in that assurance was the fact that the commission won't have any teeth.
Obama confronted some tough realities in his State of the Union speech Wednesday night, chief among them that Americans are continuing to lose their health insurance as Congress struggles to pass an overhaul.
Yet some of his ideas for moving ahead skirted the complex political circumstances standing in his way.
A look at some of Obama's claims and how they compare with the facts:
___
OBAMA: "Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don't."
THE FACTS: The anticipated savings from this proposal would amount to less than 1 percent of the deficit — and that's if the president can persuade Congress to go along.
Obama is a convert to the cause of broad spending freezes. In the presidential campaign, he criticized Republican opponent John McCain for suggesting one. "The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel," he said a month before the election. Now, Obama wants domestic spending held steady in most areas where the government can control year-to-year costs. The proposal is similar to McCain's.
___
OBAMA: "I've called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. This can't be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem. The commission will have to provide a specific set of solutions by a certain deadline. Yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans."
THE FACTS: Any commission that Obama creates would be a weak substitute for what he really wanted — a commission created by Congress that could force lawmakers to consider unpopular remedies to reduce the debt, including curbing politically sensitive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. That idea crashed in the Senate this week, defeated by equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. Any commission set up by Obama alone would lack authority to force its recommendations before Congress, and would stand almost no chance of success.
___
OBAMA: Discussing his health care initiative, he said, "Our approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan."
THE FACTS: The Democratic legislation now hanging in limbo on Capitol Hill aims to keep people with employer-sponsored coverage — the majority of Americans under age 65 — in the plans they already have. But Obama can't guarantee people won't see higher rates or fewer benefits in their existing plans. Because of elements such as new taxes on insurance companies, insurers could change what they offer or how much it costs. Moreover, Democrats have proposed a series of changes to the Medicare program for people 65 and older that would certainly pinch benefits enjoyed by some seniors. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted cuts for those enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans.
___
OBAMA: The president issued a populist broadside against lobbyists, saying they have "outsized influence" over the government. He said his administration has "excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs." He also said it's time to "require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress" and "to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office."
THE FACTS: Obama has limited the hiring of lobbyists for administration jobs, but the ban isn't absolute; seven waivers from the ban have been granted to White House officials alone. Getting lobbyists to report every contact they make with the federal government would be difficult at best; Congress would have to change the law, and that's unlikely to happen. And lobbyists already are subject to strict limits on political giving. Just like every other American, they're limited to giving $2,400 per election to federal candidates, with an overall ceiling of $115,500 every two years.
___
OBAMA: "Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. ... And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year."
THE FACTS: The success of the Obama-pushed economic stimulus that Congress approved early last year has been an ongoing point of contention. In December, the administration reported that recipients of direct assistance from the government created or saved about 650,000 jobs. The number was based on self-reporting by recipients and some of the calculations were shown to be in error.
The Congressional Budget Office has been much more guarded than Obama in characterizing the success of the stimulus plan. In November, it reported that the stimulus increased the number of people employed by between 600,000 and 1.6 million "compared with what those values would have been otherwise." It said the ranges "reflect the uncertainty of such estimates." And it added, "It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package."
___
OBAMA: He called for action by the White House and Congress "to do our work openly, and to give our people the government they deserve."
THE FACTS: Obama skipped past a broken promise from his campaign — to have the negotiations for health care legislation broadcast on C-SPAN "so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies." Instead, Democrats in the White House and Congress have conducted the usual private negotiations, making multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders behind closed doors. Nor has Obama lived up consistently to his pledge to ensure that legislation is posted online for five days before it's acted upon.
___
OBAMA: "The United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades."
THE FACTS: Despite insisting early last year that they would complete the negotiations in time to avoid expiration of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in early December, the U.S. and Russia failed to do so. And while officials say they think a deal on a new treaty is within reach, there has been no breakthrough. A new round of talks is set to start Monday. One important sticking point: disagreement over including missile defense issues in a new accord. If completed, the new deal may arguably be the farthest-reaching arms control treaty since the original 1991 agreement. An interim deal reached in 2002 did not include its own rules on verifying nuclear reductions.
___
OBAMA: Drawing on classified information, he claimed more success than his predecessor at killing terrorists: "And in the last year, hundreds of al-Qaida's fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed — far more than in 2008."
THE FACTS: It is an impossible claim to verify. Neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has published enemy body counts, particularly those targeted by armed drones in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The pace of drone attacks has increased dramatically in the last 18 months, according to congressional officials briefed on the secret program.
___
Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn, Jim Drinkard, Erica Werner, Robert Burns and Pamela Hess contributed to this report.
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Facebook Twitter Delicious Digg Fark Newsvine Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print Play Video ABC News – Obama: Bank Bailout a 'Root Canal'
Slideshow:President Barack Obama Play Video Video:Obama: Prepared to freeze government spending AP Play Video Video:Obama: Take another look at health care plan AP AP – President Barack Obama waves on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010, after delivering … By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer Calvin Woodward, Associated Press Writer – 14 mins ago
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama told Americans the bipartisan deficit commission he will appoint won't just be "one of those Washington gimmicks." Left unspoken in that assurance was the fact that the commission won't have any teeth.
Obama confronted some tough realities in his State of the Union speech Wednesday night, chief among them that Americans are continuing to lose their health insurance as Congress struggles to pass an overhaul.
Yet some of his ideas for moving ahead skirted the complex political circumstances standing in his way.
A look at some of Obama's claims and how they compare with the facts:
___
OBAMA: "Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don't."
THE FACTS: The anticipated savings from this proposal would amount to less than 1 percent of the deficit — and that's if the president can persuade Congress to go along.
Obama is a convert to the cause of broad spending freezes. In the presidential campaign, he criticized Republican opponent John McCain for suggesting one. "The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel," he said a month before the election. Now, Obama wants domestic spending held steady in most areas where the government can control year-to-year costs. The proposal is similar to McCain's.
___
OBAMA: "I've called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. This can't be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem. The commission will have to provide a specific set of solutions by a certain deadline. Yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans."
THE FACTS: Any commission that Obama creates would be a weak substitute for what he really wanted — a commission created by Congress that could force lawmakers to consider unpopular remedies to reduce the debt, including curbing politically sensitive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. That idea crashed in the Senate this week, defeated by equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. Any commission set up by Obama alone would lack authority to force its recommendations before Congress, and would stand almost no chance of success.
___
OBAMA: Discussing his health care initiative, he said, "Our approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan."
THE FACTS: The Democratic legislation now hanging in limbo on Capitol Hill aims to keep people with employer-sponsored coverage — the majority of Americans under age 65 — in the plans they already have. But Obama can't guarantee people won't see higher rates or fewer benefits in their existing plans. Because of elements such as new taxes on insurance companies, insurers could change what they offer or how much it costs. Moreover, Democrats have proposed a series of changes to the Medicare program for people 65 and older that would certainly pinch benefits enjoyed by some seniors. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted cuts for those enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans.
___
OBAMA: The president issued a populist broadside against lobbyists, saying they have "outsized influence" over the government. He said his administration has "excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs." He also said it's time to "require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress" and "to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office."
THE FACTS: Obama has limited the hiring of lobbyists for administration jobs, but the ban isn't absolute; seven waivers from the ban have been granted to White House officials alone. Getting lobbyists to report every contact they make with the federal government would be difficult at best; Congress would have to change the law, and that's unlikely to happen. And lobbyists already are subject to strict limits on political giving. Just like every other American, they're limited to giving $2,400 per election to federal candidates, with an overall ceiling of $115,500 every two years.
___
OBAMA: "Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. ... And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year."
THE FACTS: The success of the Obama-pushed economic stimulus that Congress approved early last year has been an ongoing point of contention. In December, the administration reported that recipients of direct assistance from the government created or saved about 650,000 jobs. The number was based on self-reporting by recipients and some of the calculations were shown to be in error.
The Congressional Budget Office has been much more guarded than Obama in characterizing the success of the stimulus plan. In November, it reported that the stimulus increased the number of people employed by between 600,000 and 1.6 million "compared with what those values would have been otherwise." It said the ranges "reflect the uncertainty of such estimates." And it added, "It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package."
___
OBAMA: He called for action by the White House and Congress "to do our work openly, and to give our people the government they deserve."
THE FACTS: Obama skipped past a broken promise from his campaign — to have the negotiations for health care legislation broadcast on C-SPAN "so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies." Instead, Democrats in the White House and Congress have conducted the usual private negotiations, making multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders behind closed doors. Nor has Obama lived up consistently to his pledge to ensure that legislation is posted online for five days before it's acted upon.
___
OBAMA: "The United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades."
THE FACTS: Despite insisting early last year that they would complete the negotiations in time to avoid expiration of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in early December, the U.S. and Russia failed to do so. And while officials say they think a deal on a new treaty is within reach, there has been no breakthrough. A new round of talks is set to start Monday. One important sticking point: disagreement over including missile defense issues in a new accord. If completed, the new deal may arguably be the farthest-reaching arms control treaty since the original 1991 agreement. An interim deal reached in 2002 did not include its own rules on verifying nuclear reductions.
___
OBAMA: Drawing on classified information, he claimed more success than his predecessor at killing terrorists: "And in the last year, hundreds of al-Qaida's fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed — far more than in 2008."
THE FACTS: It is an impossible claim to verify. Neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has published enemy body counts, particularly those targeted by armed drones in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The pace of drone attacks has increased dramatically in the last 18 months, according to congressional officials briefed on the secret program.
___
Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn, Jim Drinkard, Erica Werner, Robert Burns and Pamela Hess contributed to this report.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Obama ignores Israel's contributions of course
Marty Peretz catches Obama editing Israel out of the list of countries assisting in Haiti. “The fact is that, next to our country, Israel sent the largest contingent of trained rescue workers, doctors, and other medical personnel. … So didn’t Obama notice? For God’s sake, everybody noticed the deep Israeli involvement. I understand that Obama doesn’t like Middle East narratives that do not contain ‘one side and the other side’ equal valence. But he couldn’t have that here. The Arabs don’t care a fig, not for their impoverished and backward own, and certainly not for strangers. That’s why their presence in Haiti amounted to a couple of bucks from Saudi Arabia and maybe from some other sheikhs. … Yes, I think that the labors of the Israelis were edited out of Obama’s speech, either by his speechwriters (who have made dissing Israel their forté) or by his own oh-so-delicate but dishonest censoring mechanism.”
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Obama always pressures only ISrael
George Mitchell seems to have a way to get the PA and Israel talking again. But first, it requires a few confidence building measures. Here are a list of the measures:
1. The transfer of authority from the Israeli army to the Palestinians in more of the West Bank's territory,
2. The removal of some Israeli checkpoints
3. The release of a number of Palestinian prisoners.
4. Israel would cease military operations in Area A of the West Bank, which is under full Palestinian control
5. Israel's army is to pull back from some parts of Area B, which is under Palestinian civil control
6. Palestinian security forces would be allowed to enter Area C, which is under complete Israeli military control.
7. Israel would also ease sanctions on Hamas-ruled Gaza.
Do any of you see a pattern, in terms of who is asked to make the confidence building gestures? Lest we forget, Israel has already agreed, as a result of heavy US pressure, to halt all settlement building for ten months in all of the West Bank.
http://tinyurl.com/ydbdrr5
http://tinyurl.com/ycq2lnc
d. The Obama administration is pressuring Israel not to respond to any provocations (rocket firing) from Hezbollah or Hamas. http://tinyurl.com/ybdlwqp
What pro-Israel initiatives will be coming from the Administration tomorrow
1. The transfer of authority from the Israeli army to the Palestinians in more of the West Bank's territory,
2. The removal of some Israeli checkpoints
3. The release of a number of Palestinian prisoners.
4. Israel would cease military operations in Area A of the West Bank, which is under full Palestinian control
5. Israel's army is to pull back from some parts of Area B, which is under Palestinian civil control
6. Palestinian security forces would be allowed to enter Area C, which is under complete Israeli military control.
7. Israel would also ease sanctions on Hamas-ruled Gaza.
Do any of you see a pattern, in terms of who is asked to make the confidence building gestures? Lest we forget, Israel has already agreed, as a result of heavy US pressure, to halt all settlement building for ten months in all of the West Bank.
http://tinyurl.com/ydbdrr5
http://tinyurl.com/ycq2lnc
d. The Obama administration is pressuring Israel not to respond to any provocations (rocket firing) from Hezbollah or Hamas. http://tinyurl.com/ybdlwqp
What pro-Israel initiatives will be coming from the Administration tomorrow
miserable failure on Iran from Richard baehr
Time Magazine seems to have had Barack Obama on its cover every 2nd week for two years. Now the magazine concludes that Obama's Iranian strategy has been a miserable failure. Unsuccessful engagement, no sanctions,and weakness in support of the dissidents. What is there to like? http://tinyurl.com/ybbehcv
The EU is giving up on new sanctions against Iran: http://tinyurl.com/ybea55j
Iran could have its bomb this year: http://tinyurl.com/ybhl9x6
Richard Haass says only regime change will stop the Iranian bomb. But Barack Obama, after five face slaps, still wants to engage the regime. http://tinyurl.com/ydcdmhg
The EU is giving up on new sanctions against Iran: http://tinyurl.com/ybea55j
Iran could have its bomb this year: http://tinyurl.com/ybhl9x6
Richard Haass says only regime change will stop the Iranian bomb. But Barack Obama, after five face slaps, still wants to engage the regime. http://tinyurl.com/ydcdmhg
Sunday, January 10, 2010
we've lost 4 million jobs since obama took over
and spent trillions, our grandchildren will have to pay back. Disaster and now he wants new stimulus.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
let's them out to do more terror
*
Pentagon: More return to fight after leaving Gitmo (AP)
This image taken from an undated video posted on a militant-leaning Web site Friday, Jan. 23, 2009, and provided by the SITE Intelligence Group shows Said Ali al-Shihri. A U.S. counterterror official confirmed Friday that Said Ali al-Shihri, who was jailed in Guantanamo for six years after his capture in Pakistan, and released by the U.S. in 2007 to the Saudi government for rehabilitation, has resurfaced as a leader of a Yemeni branch of al-Qaida. (AP Photo/SITE Intelligence Group)AP - One in five terror suspects released from the Guantanamo Bay prison has returned to the fight, according to a classified Pentagon report expected to stoke an already fierce debate over President Barack Obama's plan to close the military prison.
Pentagon: More return to fight after leaving Gitmo (AP)
This image taken from an undated video posted on a militant-leaning Web site Friday, Jan. 23, 2009, and provided by the SITE Intelligence Group shows Said Ali al-Shihri. A U.S. counterterror official confirmed Friday that Said Ali al-Shihri, who was jailed in Guantanamo for six years after his capture in Pakistan, and released by the U.S. in 2007 to the Saudi government for rehabilitation, has resurfaced as a leader of a Yemeni branch of al-Qaida. (AP Photo/SITE Intelligence Group)AP - One in five terror suspects released from the Guantanamo Bay prison has returned to the fight, according to a classified Pentagon report expected to stoke an already fierce debate over President Barack Obama's plan to close the military prison.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Dems ruin economy, Obama blames bankers
WSJ Mr. Obama summed up his White House meeting with the bank CEOs by once again blaming them for the financial crisis and suggesting that they have an obligation to support new regulation being written by Barney Frank (D., Mass.) and Senator Chris Dodd (D., Conn.).
You have to smile at that irony. No two Members of Congress did more to encourage the financial crisis, by preventing reform of the government-sponsored housing behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By ignoring Washington's role in creating the credit mania, Mr. Obama is hardly offering confidence that his financial reform efforts will prevent a repeat.
Yet none of this seems to count for much at a White House that is reading the polls and sees a political opening because bankers aren't popular. Someone in that power palace ought to consider that you don't encourage capitalism by beating up capitalists, and you aren't likely to encourage more lending by whipsawing lenders.
You have to smile at that irony. No two Members of Congress did more to encourage the financial crisis, by preventing reform of the government-sponsored housing behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By ignoring Washington's role in creating the credit mania, Mr. Obama is hardly offering confidence that his financial reform efforts will prevent a repeat.
Yet none of this seems to count for much at a White House that is reading the polls and sees a political opening because bankers aren't popular. Someone in that power palace ought to consider that you don't encourage capitalism by beating up capitalists, and you aren't likely to encourage more lending by whipsawing lenders.
Friday, January 1, 2010
wong to treat jihad as simple criminality
Obama's Security 'Breach'
Returning Gitmo's detainees to Yemen defies common sense.
*
President Obama has belatedly declared that the near miss above Detroit constituted "a catastrophic breach of security" and ordered a review of America's intelligence efforts. We're glad to hear it, but let's hope the Commander in Chief also rethinks his own approach to counterterrorism.
Recent events have exposed the shortcomings of treating terror as a law enforcement problem and rushing to close Guantanamo Bay. A new wave of jihadists is coming of age, inspiring last month's deadly attack at Ft. Hood and nearly bringing down Northwest Flight 253, and next time we may not be so lucky.
Senior leaders of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula: Abu Hurayrah Qasim al-Reemi , Said al-Shihri, Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi, alias Abu Basir, and Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi. Al-Oufi, who was once held in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, surrendered in Yemen recently and was handed over to Saudis. Al-Shiri was also once held in Guantanamo.
yemen
yemen
Their latest sanctuary lies in unruly Yemen, headquarters for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, which last year pulled off a series of local bombings, including at the U.S. embassy in the capital Sana, killing 13. The al Qaeda chapter in Yemen has re-emerged under the leadership of a former secretary to Osama bin Laden.
Along with a dozen other al Qaeda members, he was allowed to escape from a Yemeni jail in 2006. His deputy, Said Ali al-Shihri, was a Saudi inmate at Gitmo who after his release "graduated" from that country's terrorist "rehabilitation" program before moving to Yemen last year. About a fifth of the so-called graduates have ended back on the Saudi terror most-wanted list, according to a GAO study this year.
U.S. investigators are looking into whether Umar Farouk Abdu
Returning Gitmo's detainees to Yemen defies common sense.
*
President Obama has belatedly declared that the near miss above Detroit constituted "a catastrophic breach of security" and ordered a review of America's intelligence efforts. We're glad to hear it, but let's hope the Commander in Chief also rethinks his own approach to counterterrorism.
Recent events have exposed the shortcomings of treating terror as a law enforcement problem and rushing to close Guantanamo Bay. A new wave of jihadists is coming of age, inspiring last month's deadly attack at Ft. Hood and nearly bringing down Northwest Flight 253, and next time we may not be so lucky.
Senior leaders of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula: Abu Hurayrah Qasim al-Reemi , Said al-Shihri, Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi, alias Abu Basir, and Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi. Al-Oufi, who was once held in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, surrendered in Yemen recently and was handed over to Saudis. Al-Shiri was also once held in Guantanamo.
yemen
yemen
Their latest sanctuary lies in unruly Yemen, headquarters for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, which last year pulled off a series of local bombings, including at the U.S. embassy in the capital Sana, killing 13. The al Qaeda chapter in Yemen has re-emerged under the leadership of a former secretary to Osama bin Laden.
Along with a dozen other al Qaeda members, he was allowed to escape from a Yemeni jail in 2006. His deputy, Said Ali al-Shihri, was a Saudi inmate at Gitmo who after his release "graduated" from that country's terrorist "rehabilitation" program before moving to Yemen last year. About a fifth of the so-called graduates have ended back on the Saudi terror most-wanted list, according to a GAO study this year.
U.S. investigators are looking into whether Umar Farouk Abdu
retrenchment abroad, and redistribution and the intrusive regulatory state at home.
A Cold-Blooded Foreign Policy
No despot fears the president, and no demonstrator in Tehran expects him to ride to the rescue.
By FOUAD AJAMI
With year one drawing to a close, the truth of the Obama presidency is laid bare: retrenchment abroad, and redistribution and the intrusive regulatory state at home. This is the genuine calling of Barack Obama, and of the "progressives" holding him to account. The false dichotomy has taken hold—either we care for our own, or we go abroad in search of monsters to destroy or of broken nations to build. The decision to withdraw missile defense for Poland and the Czech Republic was of a piece with that retreat in American power.
In the absence of an overriding commitment to the defense of American primacy in the world, the Obama administration "cheats." It will not quit the war in Afghanistan but doesn't fully embrace it as its cause. It prosecutes the war but with Republican support—the diehards in liberal ranks and the isolationists are in no mood for bonding with Afghans. (Harry Reid's last major foreign policy pronouncement was his assertion, three years ago, that the war in Iraq was lost.)
No despot fears the president, and no demonstrator in Tehran expects him to ride to the rescue.
By FOUAD AJAMI
With year one drawing to a close, the truth of the Obama presidency is laid bare: retrenchment abroad, and redistribution and the intrusive regulatory state at home. This is the genuine calling of Barack Obama, and of the "progressives" holding him to account. The false dichotomy has taken hold—either we care for our own, or we go abroad in search of monsters to destroy or of broken nations to build. The decision to withdraw missile defense for Poland and the Czech Republic was of a piece with that retreat in American power.
In the absence of an overriding commitment to the defense of American primacy in the world, the Obama administration "cheats." It will not quit the war in Afghanistan but doesn't fully embrace it as its cause. It prosecutes the war but with Republican support—the diehards in liberal ranks and the isolationists are in no mood for bonding with Afghans. (Harry Reid's last major foreign policy pronouncement was his assertion, three years ago, that the war in Iraq was lost.)
Obma care reckless WSJ
Change Nobody Believes In
A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve.
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And tidings of comfort and joy from Harry Reid too. The Senate Majority Leader has decided that the last few days before Christmas are the opportune moment for a narrow majority of Democrats to stuff ObamaCare through the Senate to meet an arbitrary White House deadline. Barring some extraordinary reversal, it now seems as if they have the 60 votes they need to jump off this cliff, with one-seventh of the economy in tow.
Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world's greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new "manager's amendment" that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what's in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24.
Even in World War I there was a Christmas truce.
The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that "reform" has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.
***
• Health costs. From the outset, the White House's core claim was that reform would reduce health costs for individuals and businesses, and they're sticking to that story. "Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn't read the bills," Mr. Obama said over the weekend. This is so utterly disingenuous that we doubt the President really believes it.
The best and most rigorous cost analysis was recently released by the insurer WellPoint, which mined its actuarial data in various regional markets to model the Senate bill. WellPoint found that a healthy 25-year-old in Milwaukee buying coverage on the individual market will see his costs rise by 178%. A small business based in Richmond with eight employees in average health will see a 23% increase. Insurance costs for a 40-year-old family with two kids living in Indianapolis will pay 106% more. And on and on.
These increases are solely the result of ObamaCare—above and far beyond the status quo—because its strict restrictions on underwriting and risk-pooling would distort insurance markets. All but a handful of states have rejected regulations like "community rating" because they encourage younger and healthier buyers to wait until they need expensive care, increasing costs for everyone. Benefits and pricing will now be determined by politics.
As for the White House's line about cutting costs by eliminating supposed "waste," even Victor Fuchs, an eminent economist generally supportive of ObamaCare, warned last week that these political theories are overly simplistic. "The oft-heard promise 'we will find out what works and what does not' scarcely does justice to the complexity of medical practice," the Stanford professor wrote.
• Steep declines in choice and quality. This is all of a piece with the hubris of an Administration that thinks it can substitute government planning for market forces in determining where the $33 trillion the U.S. will spend on medicine over the next decade should go.
OpinionJournal Related Stories:
John Fund: Rahm's Fuzzy Math
This centralized system means above all fewer choices; what works for the political class must work for everyone. With formerly private insurers converted into public utilities, for instance, they'll inevitably be banned from selling products like health savings accounts that encourage more cost-conscious decisions.
Unnoticed by the press corps, the Congressional Budget Office argued recently that the Senate bill would so "substantially reduce flexibility in terms of the types, prices, and number of private sellers of health insurance" that companies like WellPoint might need to "be considered part of the federal budget."
With so large a chunk of the economy and medical practice itself in Washington's hands, quality will decline. Ultimately, "our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all," as Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier recently wrote in our pages. Take the $2 billion annual tax—rising to $3 billion in 2018—that will be leveled against medical device makers, among the most innovative U.S. industries. Democrats believe that more advanced health technologies like MRI machines and drug-coated stents are driving costs too high, though patients and their physicians might disagree.
"The Senate isn't hearing those of us who are closest to the patient and work in the system every day," Brent Eastman, the chairman of the American College of Surgeons, said in a statement for his organization and 18 other speciality societies opposing ObamaCare. For no other reason than ideological animus, doctor-owned hospitals will face harsh new limits on their growth and who they're allowed to treat. Physician Hospitals of America says that ObamaCare will "destroy over 200 of America's best and safest hospitals."
• Blowing up the federal fisc. Even though Medicare's unfunded liabilities are already about 2.6 times larger than the entire U.S. economy in 2008, Democrats are crowing that ObamaCare will cost "only" $871 billion over the next decade while fantastically reducing the deficit by $132 billion, according to CBO.
Yet some 98% of the total cost comes after 2014—remind us why there must absolutely be a vote this week—and most of the taxes start in 2010. That includes the payroll tax increase for individuals earning more than $200,000 that rose to 0.9 from 0.5 percentage points in Mr. Reid's final machinations. Job creation, here we come.
Other deceptions include a new entitlement for long-term care that starts collecting premiums tomorrow but doesn't start paying benefits until late in the decade. But the worst is not accounting for a formula that automatically slashes Medicare payments to doctors by 21.5% next year and deeper after that. Everyone knows the payment cuts won't happen but they remain in the bill to make the cost look lower. The American Medical Association's priority was eliminating this "sustainable growth rate" but all they got in return for their year of ObamaCare cheerleading was a two-month patch snuck into the defense bill that passed over the weekend.
The truth is that no one really knows how much ObamaCare will cost because its assumptions on paper are so unrealistic. To hide the cost increases created by other parts of the bill and transfer them onto the federal balance sheet, the Senate sets up government-run "exchanges" that will subsidize insurance for those earning up to 400% of the poverty level, or $96,000 for a family of four in 2016. Supposedly they would only be offered to those whose employers don't provide insurance or work for small businesses.
As Eugene Steuerle of the left-leaning Urban Institute points out, this system would treat two workers with the same total compensation—whatever the mix of cash wages and benefits—very differently. Under the Senate bill, someone who earned $42,000 would get $5,749 from the current tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage but $12,750 in the exchange. A worker making $60,000 would get $8,310 in the exchanges but only $3,758 in the current system.
For this reason Mr. Steuerle concludes that the Senate bill is not just a new health system but also "a new welfare and tax system" that will warp the labor market. Given the incentives of these two-tier subsidies, employers with large numbers of lower-wage workers like Wal-Mart may well convert them into "contractors" or do more outsourcing. As more and more people flood into "free" health care, taxpayer costs will explode.
• Political intimidation. The experts who have pointed out such complications have been ignored or dismissed as "ideologues" by the White House. Those parts of the health-care industry that couldn't be bribed outright, like Big Pharma, were coerced into acceding to this agenda. The White House was able to, er, persuade the likes of the AMA and the hospital lobbies because the federal government will control 55% of total U.S. health spending under ObamaCare, according to the Administration's own Medicare actuaries.
View Full Image
nelson
Associated Press
Sen. Ben Nelson
nelson
nelson
Others got hush money, namely Nebraska's Ben Nelson. Even liberal Governors have been howling for months about ObamaCare's unfunded spending mandates: Other budget priorities like education will be crowded out when about 21% of the U.S. population is on Medicaid, the joint state-federal program intended for the poor. Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman calculates that ObamaCare will result in $2.5 billion in new costs for his state that "will be passed on to citizens through direct or indirect taxes and fees," as he put it in a letter to his state's junior Senator.
So in addition to abortion restrictions, Mr. Nelson won the concession that Congress will pay for 100% of Nebraska Medicaid expansions into perpetuity. His capitulation ought to cost him his political career, but more to the point, what about the other states that don't have a Senator who's the 60th vote for ObamaCare?
***
"After a nearly century-long struggle we are on the cusp of making health-care reform a reality in the United States of America," Mr. Obama said on Saturday. He's forced to claim the mandate of "history" because he can't claim the mandate of voters. Some 51% of the public is now opposed, according to National Journal's composite of all health polling. The more people know about ObamaCare, the more unpopular it becomes.
The tragedy is that Mr. Obama inherited a consensus that the health-care status quo needs serious reform, and a popular President might have crafted a durable compromise that blended the best ideas from both parties. A more honest and more thoughtful approach might have even done some good. But as Mr. Obama suggested, the Democratic old guard sees this plan as the culmination of 20th-century liberalism.
So instead we have this vast expansion of federal control. Never in our memory has so unpopular a bill been on the verge of passing Congress, never has social and economic legislation of this magnitude been forced through on a purely partisan vote, and never has a party exhibited more sheer political willfulness that is reckless even for Washington or had more warning about the consequences of its actions.
These 60 Democrats are creating a future of epic increases in spending, taxes and command-and-control regulation, in which bureaucracy trumps innovation and transfer payments are more important than private investment and individual decisions. In short, the Obama Democrats have chosen change nobody believes in—outside of themselves—and when it passes America will be paying for it for decades to come.
A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve.
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And tidings of comfort and joy from Harry Reid too. The Senate Majority Leader has decided that the last few days before Christmas are the opportune moment for a narrow majority of Democrats to stuff ObamaCare through the Senate to meet an arbitrary White House deadline. Barring some extraordinary reversal, it now seems as if they have the 60 votes they need to jump off this cliff, with one-seventh of the economy in tow.
Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world's greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new "manager's amendment" that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what's in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24.
Even in World War I there was a Christmas truce.
The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that "reform" has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.
***
• Health costs. From the outset, the White House's core claim was that reform would reduce health costs for individuals and businesses, and they're sticking to that story. "Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn't read the bills," Mr. Obama said over the weekend. This is so utterly disingenuous that we doubt the President really believes it.
The best and most rigorous cost analysis was recently released by the insurer WellPoint, which mined its actuarial data in various regional markets to model the Senate bill. WellPoint found that a healthy 25-year-old in Milwaukee buying coverage on the individual market will see his costs rise by 178%. A small business based in Richmond with eight employees in average health will see a 23% increase. Insurance costs for a 40-year-old family with two kids living in Indianapolis will pay 106% more. And on and on.
These increases are solely the result of ObamaCare—above and far beyond the status quo—because its strict restrictions on underwriting and risk-pooling would distort insurance markets. All but a handful of states have rejected regulations like "community rating" because they encourage younger and healthier buyers to wait until they need expensive care, increasing costs for everyone. Benefits and pricing will now be determined by politics.
As for the White House's line about cutting costs by eliminating supposed "waste," even Victor Fuchs, an eminent economist generally supportive of ObamaCare, warned last week that these political theories are overly simplistic. "The oft-heard promise 'we will find out what works and what does not' scarcely does justice to the complexity of medical practice," the Stanford professor wrote.
• Steep declines in choice and quality. This is all of a piece with the hubris of an Administration that thinks it can substitute government planning for market forces in determining where the $33 trillion the U.S. will spend on medicine over the next decade should go.
OpinionJournal Related Stories:
John Fund: Rahm's Fuzzy Math
This centralized system means above all fewer choices; what works for the political class must work for everyone. With formerly private insurers converted into public utilities, for instance, they'll inevitably be banned from selling products like health savings accounts that encourage more cost-conscious decisions.
Unnoticed by the press corps, the Congressional Budget Office argued recently that the Senate bill would so "substantially reduce flexibility in terms of the types, prices, and number of private sellers of health insurance" that companies like WellPoint might need to "be considered part of the federal budget."
With so large a chunk of the economy and medical practice itself in Washington's hands, quality will decline. Ultimately, "our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all," as Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier recently wrote in our pages. Take the $2 billion annual tax—rising to $3 billion in 2018—that will be leveled against medical device makers, among the most innovative U.S. industries. Democrats believe that more advanced health technologies like MRI machines and drug-coated stents are driving costs too high, though patients and their physicians might disagree.
"The Senate isn't hearing those of us who are closest to the patient and work in the system every day," Brent Eastman, the chairman of the American College of Surgeons, said in a statement for his organization and 18 other speciality societies opposing ObamaCare. For no other reason than ideological animus, doctor-owned hospitals will face harsh new limits on their growth and who they're allowed to treat. Physician Hospitals of America says that ObamaCare will "destroy over 200 of America's best and safest hospitals."
• Blowing up the federal fisc. Even though Medicare's unfunded liabilities are already about 2.6 times larger than the entire U.S. economy in 2008, Democrats are crowing that ObamaCare will cost "only" $871 billion over the next decade while fantastically reducing the deficit by $132 billion, according to CBO.
Yet some 98% of the total cost comes after 2014—remind us why there must absolutely be a vote this week—and most of the taxes start in 2010. That includes the payroll tax increase for individuals earning more than $200,000 that rose to 0.9 from 0.5 percentage points in Mr. Reid's final machinations. Job creation, here we come.
Other deceptions include a new entitlement for long-term care that starts collecting premiums tomorrow but doesn't start paying benefits until late in the decade. But the worst is not accounting for a formula that automatically slashes Medicare payments to doctors by 21.5% next year and deeper after that. Everyone knows the payment cuts won't happen but they remain in the bill to make the cost look lower. The American Medical Association's priority was eliminating this "sustainable growth rate" but all they got in return for their year of ObamaCare cheerleading was a two-month patch snuck into the defense bill that passed over the weekend.
The truth is that no one really knows how much ObamaCare will cost because its assumptions on paper are so unrealistic. To hide the cost increases created by other parts of the bill and transfer them onto the federal balance sheet, the Senate sets up government-run "exchanges" that will subsidize insurance for those earning up to 400% of the poverty level, or $96,000 for a family of four in 2016. Supposedly they would only be offered to those whose employers don't provide insurance or work for small businesses.
As Eugene Steuerle of the left-leaning Urban Institute points out, this system would treat two workers with the same total compensation—whatever the mix of cash wages and benefits—very differently. Under the Senate bill, someone who earned $42,000 would get $5,749 from the current tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage but $12,750 in the exchange. A worker making $60,000 would get $8,310 in the exchanges but only $3,758 in the current system.
For this reason Mr. Steuerle concludes that the Senate bill is not just a new health system but also "a new welfare and tax system" that will warp the labor market. Given the incentives of these two-tier subsidies, employers with large numbers of lower-wage workers like Wal-Mart may well convert them into "contractors" or do more outsourcing. As more and more people flood into "free" health care, taxpayer costs will explode.
• Political intimidation. The experts who have pointed out such complications have been ignored or dismissed as "ideologues" by the White House. Those parts of the health-care industry that couldn't be bribed outright, like Big Pharma, were coerced into acceding to this agenda. The White House was able to, er, persuade the likes of the AMA and the hospital lobbies because the federal government will control 55% of total U.S. health spending under ObamaCare, according to the Administration's own Medicare actuaries.
View Full Image
nelson
Associated Press
Sen. Ben Nelson
nelson
nelson
Others got hush money, namely Nebraska's Ben Nelson. Even liberal Governors have been howling for months about ObamaCare's unfunded spending mandates: Other budget priorities like education will be crowded out when about 21% of the U.S. population is on Medicaid, the joint state-federal program intended for the poor. Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman calculates that ObamaCare will result in $2.5 billion in new costs for his state that "will be passed on to citizens through direct or indirect taxes and fees," as he put it in a letter to his state's junior Senator.
So in addition to abortion restrictions, Mr. Nelson won the concession that Congress will pay for 100% of Nebraska Medicaid expansions into perpetuity. His capitulation ought to cost him his political career, but more to the point, what about the other states that don't have a Senator who's the 60th vote for ObamaCare?
***
"After a nearly century-long struggle we are on the cusp of making health-care reform a reality in the United States of America," Mr. Obama said on Saturday. He's forced to claim the mandate of "history" because he can't claim the mandate of voters. Some 51% of the public is now opposed, according to National Journal's composite of all health polling. The more people know about ObamaCare, the more unpopular it becomes.
The tragedy is that Mr. Obama inherited a consensus that the health-care status quo needs serious reform, and a popular President might have crafted a durable compromise that blended the best ideas from both parties. A more honest and more thoughtful approach might have even done some good. But as Mr. Obama suggested, the Democratic old guard sees this plan as the culmination of 20th-century liberalism.
So instead we have this vast expansion of federal control. Never in our memory has so unpopular a bill been on the verge of passing Congress, never has social and economic legislation of this magnitude been forced through on a purely partisan vote, and never has a party exhibited more sheer political willfulness that is reckless even for Washington or had more warning about the consequences of its actions.
These 60 Democrats are creating a future of epic increases in spending, taxes and command-and-control regulation, in which bureaucracy trumps innovation and transfer payments are more important than private investment and individual decisions. In short, the Obama Democrats have chosen change nobody believes in—outside of themselves—and when it passes America will be paying for it for decades to come.
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