Hope, Change, and Fuzzy Math

Posted: Sunday, July 24th, 2011 at 8:52 am
By: SATP

The following article was emailed from the National Tea Party Alert on July 16, 2011.

President Obama appeared for another speech…, er press conference today where he again harangued Republican leaders for not signing on to his plan to dramatically raise tax rates (in direct opposition to his many pledges not to raise taxes). There was one curious line that caught our attention, in response to a direct question from Chuck Todd:

Chuck, you have 80 percent of the American people who support a balanced approach.  Eighty percent of the American people support an approach that includes revenues and includes cuts.  So the notion that somehow the American people aren’t sold is not the problem.

Wow. 80% of Americans support tax increases? That’s a staggering number of people, especially given the general conservative nature of Americans and our fondness for free markets and capitalism. So we were curious about that figure and decided to look around. Shockingly enough, we couldn’t find a single poll out there that even hinted at what the president was Audaciously suggesting. For example, Rasmussen has a poll out that suggests 55% of Americans oppose increasing taxes:

Just 34% think a tax hike should be included in any legislation to raise the debt ceiling. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 55% disagree and say it should not.

We’re not math experts at NTPA, but even we can figure out that the 45% of Americans surveyed by Rasmussen who support raising taxes is a few percentage points lower than the 80% suggested by the president. In fact, in all of our surveying, we couldn’t find a single poll that suggested what President Obama was claiming, and that’s alarming to say the least.

What is even worse that the president’s fuzzy math is the way he simply refuses to lead on what will be the overall defining moment of his entire presidency, his leadership on the economy. His method of leadership appears to be little more than personal insults, storming out of meetings, and attacking Republicans for not coming up with a specific plan (ignoring the many that they have proposed, beginning with Paul Ryan’s budget plan). Yet has anyone heard him castigate his fellow Democrats for refusing to submit a budget in over 800 days (and counting)?

The brilliant Charles Krauthammer spells out Obama’s stunning leadership failure in a marvelous column entitled “Call His Bluff”:

How about last December, when he ignored his own debt commission’s recommendations? How about February, when he presented a budget that increases debt by $10 trillion over the next decade? How about April, when he sought a debt-ceiling increase with zero debt reduction attached?

To reiterate, the president created a debt reduction commission that came up with a grand proposal that he literally ignored, making the commission just as phony as his promise to change Washington through the power of sheer brilliance and charisma.

As you’d expect, Krauthammer offers up a brilliant strategic maneuver that Republicans could use to call Obama’s bluff:

Republicans should call for urgent negotiations on tax reform along the lines of the Simpson-Bowles commission that, in one option, strips out annually $1.1 trillion of deductions, credits and loopholes while lowering tax rates across the board to a top rate of 23 percent. The president says he wants tax reform, doesn’t he? Well, Mr. President, here are five months to do so.

Doing so would force the president to either take action or completely own the financial calamities that would likely follow. This would give a clear opening for conservatives to take the White House and demonstrate competency on the economy once and for all.

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2 Responses to “Hope, Change, and Fuzzy Math”

  1. Dr. Charles Kemble says:
    July 28, 2011 at 9:26 am

    Osama Hosein Obama, alien serving as our President (I mean dictator), and his self appointed Zars who have no supervision from anyone except Osama Hosein Obama, who have no concept of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights who are making those big salaries, have made decisions not radified by proper authoities within the Constitution. As dictator, he by-passes proper authorities, as in giving citizenship to aliens so they can vote for him in 2012. He also gave the Moslem Imam over $1 million to go over to Moselem nations and build aliances. Now, he even has had the gaul to try to tell Israel what their boundaries should be. I say FIRE THIS Moslim dictator. And if he takes my Social Security and Medicare which I earned over the past 55 years, I really will be MAD!!!

  2. Jim Parnella says:
    July 28, 2011 at 9:12 am

    Three things:
    1. I don’t trust Obama in the negotiating process. Leave him out of it.
    2. Why is anyone talking less than $4 trillion in cuts when that appears to be the minimum to avoid a downgrade.
    3. Why are they talking only about cuts. I want to know what the debt will be in 5 years and 10 years. If it is greater than $14.5 trillion, get back to the drawing board.