Sunday, January 24, 2010

Obama Endorses Deficit Task Force While Racking Up Record Deficit

This guy is getting incoherent by the day.

Obama endorses deficit task force (1/23/2010 AP via Yahoo Finance)

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama Saturday endorsed a bipartisan plan to name a special task force charged with coming up with a plan to curb the spiraling budget deficit, though the idea has lots of opposition from both his allies and rivals on Capitol Hill.

"The bipartisan 18-member panel backed by Obama would study the issue for much of the year and, if 14 members agree, report a deficit reduction blueprint after the November elections that would be voted on before the new Congress convenes next year. The 14 would have to include at least half of the panel's Republicans -- a big obstacle.

""These deficits did not happen overnight, and they won't be solved overnight," Obama said in a statement. "The only way to solve our long-term fiscal challenge is to solve it together -- Democrats and Republicans."

"The deficit spiked to an extraordinary $1.4 trillion last year and could top that figure this year as the struggling economy puts a big dent in tax revenues. Even worse from the perspective of economists and deficit hawks, the medium-term deficit picture is for deficits hitting around $1 trillion a year for the foreseeable future." [Emphasis is mine. The article continues.]

Not only that, the debt limit is set to be raised by $1.9 trillion dollars (which, by the way, will require all of 60 votes in the Senate to pass). Who is he kidding?

Himself?

This is not the first time and definitely will not be the last time for me to remind the readers that when politicians don't want to solve anything and don't want to find out about anything, they form a committee, or a task force or whatever they want to call it. I'm looking for that particular episode of BBC's "Yes Prime Minister" where Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey tells his novice boss exactly that. It could have been "Yes Minister".

The president must have watched the episode. (Or his handlers did.)

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