Reactions To Obama’s “Tax The Rich” Speech

Hey, it’s not often that I do two blog round-ups in one day, but I love reading what other people have to say, and I know you do, too.If you missed Obama’s speech, earlier today, you missed a doozy.

As I mentioned in the last post:

On Twitter, stephenfhayes called Obama’s tax the rich budget speech “One of the phoniest, most demagogic speeches from a sitting US president in recent memory. This after punting on his own budget. A disgrace”.

ThadMcCotter said, “Note to POTUS: When you punish productivity, you produce poverty”.

I listened to his speech on our kitchen radio while sitting in my sunroom.  That’s about the only way I can handle it. No TV, and if I must listen, the radio needs to be in another room.

I always like the way Ace puts things: Obama’s Remarks: I Am Boldly Authorizing The Next President To Deal With This Problem, And In Futherance of This Daring Strategy, I Am Also Punting To a New Commission To Be Named Later

I seem to notice him saying that if his proposed order to reduce Medicare costs does not reduce costs (which it won’t, same as it didn’t with ObamaCare — premiums are going up, not down) by the year 2023, then, get this, he will authorize “the Commission” (I think the Medicare trustees or something) to propose further means of reducing costs.

Get that? If, in 12 years, his plan hasn’t worked yet, he’ll actually call for a third-party blue-ribbon commission to propose some more changes.

Oh, and guess what? His big idea for closing the deficit is 1 cutting defense spending and 2 increasing taxes.

Bonus: He also says that if, in 2014, two years after the next election, the CBO’s projection doesn’t show “the share of the deficit as a fraction of GDP” falling (note that is a lenient way to view it), he is willing to go so far as authorizing the President and Congress to consider further “spending cuts” and “spending reductions.”

What?

Get that? If what he’s doing (which is nothing) doesn’t work, he will reconvene two years post-election to kick it around some more.

I should note that the New Democratic Style Guide is to refer to any typical tax deductions as “tax expenditures” and hence, eliminating those (and thereby increasing taxes) is no longer a “tax increase,” but a “spending reduction.”

That’s the new speak, man. Better get used to it.

I love it when I see people spend time fisking something they know to be a dishonest scam to begin with. Bless their hearts. They have much more patience than I have.

Ed Morrissey writes at Hot Air: Obama’s solution to deficit: spending, ObamaCare, and tax hikes:

If it was possible to fail to meet the already-low expectations set for this speech beforehand, Obama managed to do it.  Not only did Obama fail to resurrect his own deficit commission’s plan, he offered nothing specific in response to the specifics Paul Ryan and the GOP have already laid on the table.  It’s almost impossible to present a substantive criticism of the proposal because it contains nothing substantive, an impression that more and more people have of this White House.

Gateway Pundit: 65% of American Voters Don’t Believe For a Second That Obama Will Cut Spending

Only that many?

The Right Sphere has Our Official Response To Obama’s Budget Speech (in video format).

Dan Mitchell: Obama’s Tax Increase Trigger: Punishing Taxpayers with Automatic Tax Hikes When Politicians Overspend.

Finally, this one’s gotta hurt:

JWF: Biden Dozes Off During Obama Speech

Moe Lane says: I am *done* with President Obama: (You weren’t already???)

My recommendation, going forward?  Democrats: cut the President out of the loop.  His presence in this discussion insults both parties at this point.  Send him off to a permanent round of golf games and trips to various parts of the country: Obama hates his job anyway, so letting him know that from now on all he has to do is sign papers on cue will probably relieve him somewhat.  In the meantime… well, God help us, there’s always Joe Biden* for domestic policy.  I am disgusted that we are now in a situation where going with Joe Biden looks good as a strategy in comparison, but this is where we are now…

J.E. Dyer in a similar vein in The Greenroom: Obama Doubling Down:

Perhaps this is what America needed: to see an ideologue take the insistent positions of the collectivist left to their natural conclusions.  For Obama, the virtually unmanageable size of the federal debt is not an issue that should make us change policies.  The main issue for him is preventing a reduction in the reach of government.  He is impervious to the demands of reality, and will apparently stay his ideological course.

Even many Democrats must recognize now that they will have to work without Obama until the end of this Congress.  He has reduced himself to a veto threat – and that may well be the best alternative for the country between now and 20 January, 2013.

I’m afraid that the Democrat party is now too populated with people who share the same goals as Obama.

It’s up to the Republicans.

Hot Air video -Paul Ryan weighs in: Paul Ryan rips Obama’s speech: “Rather than building bridges, he’s poisoning wells”:

Some vintage Allahpundit:

Via Mediaite, three minutes of righteous rage. It’s all here: Obama’s gutless insistence on farming this issue out to commissions to spare himself the political risks of leadership; his betrayal of his sunny 2008 campaign message, swapping the post-partisan Hopenchange problem-solver crap for a double-barreled attack on the GOP; and of course, the horribly cynical electoral calculus in all this, which earns a sneering reference from Ryan to the “Campaigner-in-Chief.” It’s that last bit that bothers him the most, I think. Taking the lead on Social Security and Medicare might make him a rock star to movement conservatives, but there’s a real chance that the backlash will destroy his political career (and the GOP’s House majority). Already, at least one poll has *51 percent saying that Ryan’s 2012 budget cuts too much. He knows the danger perfectly well, in other words, but he’s stepping up because it’s that important. And meanwhile the country’s nominal leader, ostensibly heaven-sent by the Democratic gods to rescue America from its troubles perhis own campaign mythology, is taking a pass. It’s a good thing Ryan hates your grandma so damned much or else he’d have to be wondering at this point why he bothered.

*Allah updated with a correction:

51 percent say Ryan’s budget’s doesn’t cut too much; 47 percent say that it does.

Ace: Obama: Hey, I’ve Got a Great Idea. How About Automatic Tax Hikes That Pass Into Law Without A Vote If We Spend Too Much?

Ah, I didn’t catch this. His idea about the automatic “spending cuts” was coupled with the automatic “spending reductions,” which is his new code for tax hikes.

He says that if his plan, which doesn’t exist, fails to cut spending, which it isn’t actually designed to do, some sort of mechanism of automatic “spending reductions” will go into effect.

How is the MSM reporting the speech, you ask: (It is to laugh) –

Newsbusters: SF Chronicle Hails ‘Obama’s Centrist Approach’ to Budget

Also approving of “their leader’s” speech is CPUSA’s People’s World: Obama calls for tax hike for the rich

Paul Ryan Responds to President’s Disappointing, Partisan Speech:

WASHINGTON – House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan made the following statement after listening to the President’s speech on deficit reduction:

“When the President reached out to ask us to attend his speech, we were expecting an olive branch. Instead, his speech was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our fiscal crisis. What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief; we heard a political broadside from our campaigner-in-chief.

“Last year, in the absence of a serious budget, the President created a Fiscal Commission. He then ignored its recommendations and omitted any of its major proposals from his budget, and now he wants to delegate leadership to yet another commission to solve a problem he refuses to confront.

“We need leadership, not a doubling down on the politics of the past.  By failing to seriously confront the most predictable economic crisis in our history, this President’s policies are committing our children to a diminished future. We are looking for bipartisan solutions, not partisan rhetoric. When the President is ready to get serious about confronting this challenge, we’ll be here.”

*****

Key Facts About the President’s Speech

Keep reading as Ryan wades through the b.s.

Peter Wehner at Contentions:

…precisely because the president’s speech was so intellectually weak and transparently brutish, I rather doubt it will be effective. If anyone had any doubts what we’re dealing with when it comes to Obama, those have been allayed. He is a deeply irresponsible and arrogant man whose thirst for political power is overriding virtually every good and decent instinct he might have.

Linked by The Other McCain, thanks!