President Obama's "Deficit Cutting" Speech

Obama's speeches are often too long to just listen to and get anything out of them. It's like trying to catch an audio book in a bar while music is playing.

In the speech Obama goes on to list all of the different areas of life that he believes government should be in inserted, or at least providing. Take a look at some of these quotes.

Obama on Ryan's 2011 budget...

Those are both worthy goals for us to achieve. But the way this plan achieves those goals would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we've known throughout most of our history.

A 70% cut to clean energy. A 25% cut in education. A 30% cut in transportation. Cuts in college Pell Grants that will grow to more than $1,000 per year. That's what they're proposing. These aren't the kind of cuts you make when you're trying to get rid of some waste or find extra savings in the budget. These aren't the kind of cuts that Republicans and Democrats on the Fiscal Commission proposed. These are the kind of cuts that tell us we can't afford the America we believe in. And they paint a vision of our future that's deeply pessimistic.

It's a vision that says if our roads crumble and our bridges collapse, we can't afford to fix them. If there are bright young Americans who have the drive and the will but not the money to go to college, we can't afford to send them. Go to China and you'll see businesses opening research labs and solar facilities. South Korean children are outpacing our kids in math and science. Brazil is investing billions in new infrastructure and can run half their cars not on high-priced gasoline, but biofuels. And yet, we are presented with a vision that says the United States of America – the greatest nation on Earth – can't afford any of this.

It's a vision that says America can't afford to keep the promise we've made to care for our seniors. It says that ten years from now, if you're a 65 year old who's eligible for Medicare, you should have to pay nearly $6,400 more than you would today. It says instead of guaranteed health care, you will get a voucher. And if that voucher isn't worth enough to buy insurance, tough luck – you're on your own. Put simply, it ends Medicare as we know it.

No Mr. Obama; this is the America you envision --not the America envisioned by those who love freedom. Obama envisions an America resembling that which the founders escaped from. Obama does not believe in personal responsibility or individual liberty. This speech puts it all out in the open.

People who use the terms "pessimistic" and "optimistic" when referring to matters of fact are trying to avoid the truth, or disguise it.

After saying, "It's a vision that says America can't afford to keep the promise we've made to care for our seniors". Obama later in the speech talks of how, "Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill came together to save Social Security for future generations". If Social Security need to be saved once before, how is it so hard to believe that its in trouble now?

This is a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. And who are those 50 million Americans? Many are someone's grandparents who wouldn't be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down's syndrome. Some are kids with disabilities so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans we'd be telling to fend for themselves.

The Health Care Exchanges don't open until after 2014. How can 50 million people who don't have health insurance loose it? Where are these poor children who have health insurance right now, but are going to loose it if we stop Obama Care? Repealing Obama Care will result in people who don't have health insurance having the health insurance that they don't have taken away. This is nonsense.

Worst of all, this is a vision that says even though America can't afford to invest in education or clean energy; even though we can't afford to care for seniors and poor children, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy. Think about it. In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90% of all working Americans actually declined. The top 1% saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each. And that's who needs to pay less taxes? They want to give people like me a two hundred thousand dollar tax cut that's paid for by asking thirty three seniors to each pay six thousand dollars more in health costs? That's not right, and it's not going to happen as long as I'm President.

How does 1 trillion in "tax breaks" cost the government? Will that 1 trillion not be spent and circulated through the economy? Obama wants the American people to believe that every penny a wealthy person earns is hidden away somewhere so as to be immune to any form of tax.

The America I know is generous and compassionate; a land of opportunity and optimism. We take responsibility for ourselves and each other; for the country we want and the future we share. We are the nation that built a railroad across a continent and brought light to communities shrouded in darkness. We sent a generation to college on the GI bill and saved millions of seniors from poverty with Social Security and Medicare. We have led the world in scientific research and technological breakthroughs that have transformed millions of lives.

Opportunity is being destroyed by this administration's policies and everyone with any ties to industry knows this.

Private inventors are the ones who come up with the ideas that improve our lives. Sure a lot has come out of the space program, but mostly from contractors not government administrative types.

This is who we are. This is the America I know. We don't have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investments in our people and our country. To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I'm President, we won't.

Today, I'm proposing a more balanced approach to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over twelve years. It's an approach that borrows from the recommendations of the bipartisan Fiscal Commission I appointed last year, and builds on the roughly $1 trillion in deficit reduction I already proposed in my 2012 budget. It's an approach that puts every kind of spending on the table, but one that protects the middle-class, our promise to seniors, and our investments in the future.

We'll he's right about one thing. As long as he is president we are not going to do anything about our fiscal crisis.

How are we going to reduce the deficit and still "Invest" in the future? "It's an approach that puts every kind of spending on the table". Remember, Obama says exactly what he means. Sure they'll put every kind of spending on the table, they just won't reduce any of it. Obama is the master of lying by omission. He says he'll address something, he'll change something, he never says how. You can address anything, it doesn't mean you'll take any action on it. You can change some things by leaving them alone --like the Bush tax cuts which will again expire. This is how Obama works.

I don't think that this was a very "presidential" speech.

What did you think?

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