Obama got a little testy with Rep. Jeb Hensarling at the House Republican retreat in Baltimore, last Friday, calling his question a “talking point for running a campaign”:
The Washington Post has the whole exchange here. It captures some of the nature of the president’s supercilious attitude towards Hensarling, but you had to see it live to see how peeved, how thin-skinned, how arrogant, and how insulting his demeanor towards Hensarling was — an attitude that, if you watched, was SO different from Hensarling’s question, which while pointed and a bit long-winded, was in both words and demeanor respectful toward the president as a person — a respect Obama did NOT return. Not only that, but Obama had no business acting as if Hensarling was obnoxiously filibustering (actually, Hensarling specifically had just said he was about to actually ask the question when Obama cut him off), when Obama himself spoke at much much much greater length than most of his Republican questioners. He himself spoke longer than Hensarling in “answering” Hensarling.
“I am happy to have any independent fact-checker out there take a look at your presentation versus mine in terms of the accuracy of what I just said.” That is what Obama said while lecturing Hensarling. Again, I’ll put the Hensarling link here and invite the president to refute Hensarling’s facts. He can’t. Hensarling’s facts are accurate.
Hillyer concludes:
I think that this is why — this demeanor of his — is one big reason why he has been so polarizing. His attitude almost always is: If you are not with me, you are either stupid or ill-motivated.
I think Quin may have inadvertently discovered the Obama Doctrine.
In Obama’s War on Prosperity, his Doctrine is, “If you are not with me, you are either stupid or ill-motivated”.
Nice, that should help close the partisan divide.
Here are the facts from Hensarling’s press release:
Assertion: “The Republicans proposed a (Fiscal Year 2010) budget that ensured that government did not grow beyond the historical standard of 20% of GDP.”
Even Republicans worst annual deficit – $412.7 billion in FY2004 according to OMB’s Historical Tables (Table 1.1) http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/ – pales in comparison to Democratic deficits. According to CBO’s January Monthly Budget Review http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10869/December2009MBR.pdf, in the first 3 months of FY2010 (October-December 2009) alone, Democrats have run up a deficit of about $390 billion – $22.7 billion shy of the GOP’s worst annual deficit.
Assertion: “The national debt has increased 30%.”
FACT: According to CBO’s January 2010 Budget and Economic Update (Table F-1) http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/AppendixF.shtml#1096834, the debt held by the public at the end of FY2008 was $5.803 trillion, and at the end of FY2009 was $7.544 trillion. This is an increase of 30%.
Assertion: “Your administration proposed a budget that would triple the national debt over the next 10 years.”
Assertion: “Will that new budget, like your old budget, triple the national debt and continue to take us down a path of increasing the cost of government to almost 25% of our economy?”
President Obama Finally Answers Hensarling’s Budget Question:
Upon the release today of his record breaking $3.8 trillion fiscal year 2011 budget, President Barack Obama finally answered the question posed to him by Congressman Jeb Hensarling, a question the President declined to answer during the Friday, January 29 House Republican retreat: “Mr. President, will that new budget, like your old budget, triple the national debt and continue to take us down the path of increasing the cost of government to almost 25 percent of our economy?”To view budget documents go to http://www.house.gov/budget_republicans/
Hensarling said, “Although it came 72 hours after I posed this very important question to the President, the American taxpayers and I finally have an answer to the simple question I asked him on Friday. The answer is YES. The president released a 10-year budget today that will triple the national debt, and keep government spending on a path that equals as much as 25% of the entire U.S. economy. This budget sends a clear signal to American taxpayers who are tired of the spending, deficits and bailouts – and who recognize that they are not working – that the President is taking the policies they have rejected to a new high. This is clear evidence that the President is ignoring the will of the American taxpayers who want Washington to go on a diet.”
Marc Thiessen appeared recently with Raymond Arroyo on EWTN and explained why it was important to him as a practicing Catholic, (and initially a skeptic) that we make sure that the interrogations were “effective, necessary, (there was no other way to get the information), and that they were carried out in a moral way”.
I don’t even know what say about this, except that the Obamabow will surely be a returning feature on many blogs for the next several years.
Here, he bows to Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio at MacDill Air Force Base on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010 in Tampa, Fla.
I’m not sure if Obama is bowing out of cultural sensitivity, (she looks Asian, although her father was Italian)….
…..Orrr maybe he has something else in mind…
Pam Iorio, who has approval ratings comparable to pre 2008 election Gov Sarah Palin’s, was considering a run for the US Senate on the Democrat ticket, but bowed out for reasons unknown, (at least to this blogger). She was considered a dark horse for the Democrats.