Fifteen questions the press would ask Barack Obama if he were a Republican
Fifteen questions the press would ask Barack Obama if he were a Republican.
I especially like the last three:
13) Why should the American people reelect you when your 10 year budget saddles America with more debt than all previous Presidents combined?
14) Your stimulus bill cost more in real dollars than the moon landing and the interstate highway system combined. Many prominent economists have concluded the stimulus plan was a total failure. What do we have to show for all of that money spent?
15) Members of your administration promised that the trillion dollar stimulus would keep unemployment under 8 percent. Instead, we’ve had 35+ months of 8% and above unemployment. Doesn’t that mean we wasted a trillion dollars on nothing?
These, as well as the other 12 questions, are all perfectly reasonable and are exactly the kinds of questions any good journalist would be itching to ask any elected official with the disastrous track record that Barack Obama has. Unfortunately, we don’t have very many good journalists in the White House press corp or on the major television/cable networks. Instead, what we have are “former” Democratic Party operatives like George Stephanopoulos, disguised as journalists whose only goal is to make Republicans look bad so that Democrats can get elected.
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Fifteen questions the press would ask Barack Obama if he were a Republican.
I especially like the last three:
13) Why should the American people reelect you when your 10 year budget saddles America with more debt than all previous Presidents combined?
14) Your stimulus bill cost more in real dollars than the moon landing and the interstate highway system combined. Many prominent economists have concluded the stimulus plan was a total failure. What do we have to show for all of that money spent?
15) Members of your administration promised that the trillion dollar stimulus would keep unemployment under 8 percent. Instead, we’ve had 35+ months of 8% and above unemployment. Doesn’t that mean we wasted a trillion dollars on nothing?
These, as well as the other 12 questions, are all perfectly reasonable and are exactly the kinds of questions any good journalist would be itching to ask any elected official with the disastrous track record that Barack Obama has. Unfortunately, we don’t have very many good journalists in the White House press corp or on the major television/cable networks. Instead, what we have are “former” Democratic Party operatives like George Stephanopoulos, disguised as journalists whose only goal is to make Republicans look bad so that Democrats can get elected.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
I’ll take a shot at that!! If I was Obama, I would say to the three questions you listed:
13. Yes, an increase in debt. But it would be irresponsible to look at that in a vacuum, like the question is suggesting. My current 10 year budget increases debt to GDP ratio to 87%. And your alternative is the following under plans proposed by the “other” Republican contenders:
Gingrich-114%
Santorum- 104%
Romney- 85% to 96% (the only one with a range because like everything else from Mr. Romney, he has few specifics).
This data is from the independent Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-report-gop-policies-debt-20120223,0,4062185.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fpolitics+%28L.A.+Times+-+Politics%29
So if it is a reduction of debt your after, I’m the best alternative (that does not include Ron Paul, as he blows all of us away, but he is not electable in our Republican Party because he also wants to drastically reduce military spending, which even I don’t do).
14. The stimulus bill a failure? Far from it. The Congressional Budget Office (independent, and quoted often by my other Republicans when it suits them), says in its most recent report that the stimulus bill has been a success:
4th Quarter GDP raised by 1.5%
Lowered unemployment rate by 1.1%
2 million fewer jobless in just the last 3 months of 2011 because of the stimulus
And it predicts that over 1 million more Americans will be employed in 2012 due to the bill
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/212113-cbo-stimulus-package-continues-to-deliver
I think that’s a lot to show for it.
15. Here is the one that is always brought up. Yes, some of my administration officials said it would bring unemployment below 8%. They were in fact wrong. We did not see such lasting effects from the recession. But here is the simple fact: it is coming down. That is the trend whether you like it or not. Just today another good report on unemployment claims. Maybe we won’t get below 8% by election day. But guess what? If it continues to go down each month, and we are at 8.1%, I am willing to bet that the American people will see the trend, and like it.
Because again, no one will look at this in a vacuum. While the previous party inherited a budget surplus and a balanced budget, I inherited an economic disaster. While that party never vetoed a spending bill and passed a health care bill that will cost $7T (and did not pay for it), while only benefiting 10% of the existing population, I in fact have cut portions of the budget, and passed a health care bill that benefits everyone and was planned to be paid for ( and yes, now some revisions have to be made for it to continue to be paid for). If nothing else, I made an attempt to pay for my health care bill (even Mr. Romney says I cut $500M from medicare), while the other party never paid for anything- wars, or health care bills.
So its easy for me to ask for your vote, particularly when you look at the alternative party.
Now all of this is only if I was Obama, and I was a Republican.
Jim the Obama already cut the defense budget.
The stimulus was designed to have an impact on unemployment in 2009. Whatever drop in unemployment in 2011 happened despite the stimulus not because of it.
Bush inherited a projected surplus not an actual surplus and the projection turned out to be wrong because the tech bubble burst. There is a certain candidate running for president that mifht have something to say about balanced budgets in the Clinton years.
And ya the Obama cut 500b from medicate but no one ran commercials of him throwing grandma off a cliff.
Someone needs to ask Obama if he really believes that we wont need oil in 5 years and if we will all be driving algae cars by then.
Wodun-
To be fair about Obama’s cuts to the military, it was $489B over 10 years. That results in almost entirely cuts to planned spending, not actual cuts to existing spending. We still will be spending more on the military than just about the rest of the world combined.
AND, both parties agreed in the sequester to even more cuts, totaling $650B. So Republicans had already agreed to more than Obama put in his 10 year plan.
The stimulus did have an impact on 2009, the figures quoted above by the CBO only related to 2011, and 2012. So it continues to have a positive impact. I just wanted to be as current as possible in my CBO reporting.
You are right about the projected surplus. To be more accurate, I should have said that Bush inherited balanced budgets, and actual government spending that was paying down the debt, not increasing it. The fact still remains that it was he (and primarily a Republican Congress) that decided to spend money and not pay for it (health care, wars, and literally every spending bill that came across his desk).