doctordog
01-26-2010, 08:33 PM
With the president's State of the Union address coming up on Wednesday, the White House appears to be struggling to find its feet. Republican Scott Brown's surprise victory in liberal Massachusetts has dominated the national conversation in the last week and made Obama's goal of signing health care reform impossible before the big speech. Now, even Obama's apparent attempt to soothe voters' budget-deficit concerns by proposing a three-year freeze on some federal spending is being met with ridicule from both the right and the left.
The plan Obama will propose breaks down as follows:
- Freeze discretionary spending on non-security-related programs and government agencies whose budgets are set annually by Congress. Affected programs could include subsidies for farmers, child nutrition, and national parks.
- Exempt from the freeze would be budgets for federal entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, as well as the budgets for the Pentagon, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and foreign aid.
The administration claims this will save the country $250 billion over the next decade, or about 3% of the $9 trillion deficits the U.S. is expected to accumulate over that period.
Conservatives have mocked the freeze as not doing nearly enough to get to the root of the country's economic problems. The right-leaning blog RedState.com chided the effort, saying that it would have "virtually no impact on the financial standing of the United States of America." On her Twitter page, right-wing commentator Michelle Malkin compared the freeze to "promising to slow down from 250 mph to 249.9." House Minority Leader John Boehner likened the plan to "announcing you're going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest."
Liberals aren't happy either, arguing that less government spending will slow economic growth, and that cutting government services will harm those in need. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman labeled the freeze "a betrayal of everything Obama's supporters thought they were working for." Kevin Drum of Mother Jones echoed those sentiments, writing that "the liberal base has yet another reason to be disgusted with Obama." MSNBC host Rachel Maddow went even further, saying that the "counterintuitive" plan is a "completely insane" one that violates the basic principles taught in any "101 level college econ class."
The uproar is yet another new distraction for the administration in the hours prior to the president's delivering his first major address of 2010. Add it to a list that includes his decision to re-nominate Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, his use of teleprompters to deliver a recent speech in a sixth-grade classroom, and the Brown election in Massachusetts. The teleprompter incident earned the president a roasting by the Daily Show's Jon Stewart, even though it was later revealed that the teleprompters were used for a speech Obama delivered to the press, not to the sixth graders at the school.
The State of the Union will be President Obama's opportunity to reclaim the initiative and drive the national conversation. If initial reactions to his budget-freeze proposal are any indication, though, it may be difficult.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1077
The plan Obama will propose breaks down as follows:
- Freeze discretionary spending on non-security-related programs and government agencies whose budgets are set annually by Congress. Affected programs could include subsidies for farmers, child nutrition, and national parks.
- Exempt from the freeze would be budgets for federal entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, as well as the budgets for the Pentagon, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and foreign aid.
The administration claims this will save the country $250 billion over the next decade, or about 3% of the $9 trillion deficits the U.S. is expected to accumulate over that period.
Conservatives have mocked the freeze as not doing nearly enough to get to the root of the country's economic problems. The right-leaning blog RedState.com chided the effort, saying that it would have "virtually no impact on the financial standing of the United States of America." On her Twitter page, right-wing commentator Michelle Malkin compared the freeze to "promising to slow down from 250 mph to 249.9." House Minority Leader John Boehner likened the plan to "announcing you're going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest."
Liberals aren't happy either, arguing that less government spending will slow economic growth, and that cutting government services will harm those in need. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman labeled the freeze "a betrayal of everything Obama's supporters thought they were working for." Kevin Drum of Mother Jones echoed those sentiments, writing that "the liberal base has yet another reason to be disgusted with Obama." MSNBC host Rachel Maddow went even further, saying that the "counterintuitive" plan is a "completely insane" one that violates the basic principles taught in any "101 level college econ class."
The uproar is yet another new distraction for the administration in the hours prior to the president's delivering his first major address of 2010. Add it to a list that includes his decision to re-nominate Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, his use of teleprompters to deliver a recent speech in a sixth-grade classroom, and the Brown election in Massachusetts. The teleprompter incident earned the president a roasting by the Daily Show's Jon Stewart, even though it was later revealed that the teleprompters were used for a speech Obama delivered to the press, not to the sixth graders at the school.
The State of the Union will be President Obama's opportunity to reclaim the initiative and drive the national conversation. If initial reactions to his budget-freeze proposal are any indication, though, it may be difficult.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1077