Isn't this the same fellow who is sending 30,000 or so troops to Afghanistan at a million dollars each! All those entitlements such as Medicare and home care will be cut as will education funding and who knows what else. The hard choices really don't seem to be hurting the military-industrial complex.
Blog: http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html Blog: http://kencan7.blogspot.com/index.html
--- On Tue, 12/8/09, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Obama, deficit hawk
> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Date: Tuesday, December 8, 2009, 1:44 PM
> <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-job-creation-and-economic-growth>
>
> So one of the central goals of this administration is
> restoring fiscal responsibility. Even as we have had
> to spend our way out of this recession in the near term,
> we've begun to make the hard choices necessary to get our
> country on a more stable fiscal footing in the long
> run. So let me just be clear here. Despite what
> some have claimed, the cost of the Recovery Act is only a
> very small part of our current budget imbalance. In
> reality, the deficit had been building dramatically over the
> previous eight years. We have a structural gap between
> the money going out and the money coming in.
>
> Folks passed tax cuts and expansive entitlement programs
> without paying for any of it -- even as health care costs
> kept rising, year after year. As a result, the deficit
> had reached $1.3 trillion when we walked into the White
> House. And I'd note: These budget-busting tax
> cuts and spending programs were approved by many of the same
> people who are now waxing political about fiscal
> responsibility, while opposing our efforts to reduce
> deficits by getting health care costs under control.
> It's a sight to see.
>
> The fact is we have refused to go along with business as
> usual; we are taking responsibility for every dollar we
> spend. We've done what some said was impossible:
> preventing wasteful spending on outdated weapons systems
> that even the Pentagon said it didn't want. We've
> combed the budget, cutting waste and excess wherever we
> could. I'm still committed to halving the deficit we
> inherited by the end of my first term -- cutting it in
> half. And I made clear from day one that I would not
> sign a health insurance reform bill if it raised the deficit
> by one dime -- and neither the House, nor the Senate bill
> does. We've begun not only changing policies in
> Washington, we've also begun to change the culture in
> Washington.
>
> In the end, the economic crisis of the past year was not
> just the result of weaknesses in our economy. It was
> also the result of weaknesses in our political system,
> because for decades, too many in Washington put off the hard
> decisions. For decades, we've watched as efforts to
> solve tough problems have fallen prey to the bitterness of
> partisanship, to prosaic concerns of politics, to
> ever-quickening news cycles, to endless campaigns focused on
> scoring points instead of meeting our common challenges.
>
> We've seen the consequences of this failure of
> responsibility. The American people have paid a heavy
> price. And the question we'll have to answer now is if
> we're going to learn from our past, or if -- even in the
> aftermath of disaster -- we're going to repeat those same
> mistakes. As the alarm bells fade, the din of
> Washington rises, as the forces of the status quo marshal
> their resources, we can be sure that answering this question
> will be a fight to the finish. But I have every hope
> and expectation that we can rise to this moment, that we can
> transcend the failures of the past, that we can once again
> take responsibility for our future.
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