September 9, 2009 – Capitol Hill Blue

Obama’s numbers just don’t add up

September 9, 2009

President Barack Obama used only-in-Washington accounting Wednesday when he promised to overhaul the nation’s health care system without adding "one dime" to the deficit. By conventional arithmetic, Democratic plans would drive up the deficit by billions of dollars.

The president’s speech to Congress contained a variety of oversimplifications and omissions in laying out what he wants to do about health insurance.

A look at some of Obama’s claims and how they square with the facts or the fuller story:

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OBAMA: "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits either now or in the future. Period."

Obama: ‘Time for bickering is over’

September 9, 2009

President Barack Obama told Congress on Wednesday "the time for bickering is over" and called for quick action on a broad healthcare overhaul that would dramatically transform the U.S. health system and insurance market.

In a sometimes emotional speech, Obama said lawmakers were "closer to the goal of reform than we have ever been" and spelled out proposals he said would improve stability for those with insurance and expand the options for those without, including a controversial government-run "public option."

He issued a sharp rebuke to critics of his healthcare drive, accusing them of substituting scare tactics for honest debate.

Rude Republican breaches protocol

September 9, 2009

Democrats and Republicans alike are denouncing Rep. Joe Wilson for shouting "You lie" at President Barack Obama during his speech to Congress, an extraordinary breach of decorum for which the South Carolina Republican swiftly apologized.

"There’ll be time enough to consider whether or not we ought to make it clear that that action is unacceptable in the House of Representatives," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said late Wednesday on WTOP radio when asked about possible punishment for Wilson. "I’ve talked to Republican members who share that view."

Say what? Fed says recession is over

September 9, 2009

Economic activity is stabilizing or improving in the vast majority of the country, according to a government survey released Wednesday. The findings indicate that the worst recession since the 1930s may be over.

The Federal Reserve’s snapshot of economic conditions backs predictions by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and most other analysts that the economy has started to grow once again in the current quarter.

Pelosi: Government health care ‘essential’

September 9, 2009

The top Democrat in the House of Representatives insisted Tuesday that a government-run insurance option was "essential" to passing President Barack Obama’s health reform plan.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comments followed growing suggestions that the so-called "public option" could be jettisoned or delayed in a final compromise intended to secure Obama’s top legislative priority.

"I believe that a public option will be essential to our passing a bill in the House of Representatives," Pelosi said after meeting Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at the White House.

School speech: So much fuss over so little

September 9, 2009

There may be a lesson plan for grown-ups in the contrived controversy about Barack Obama’s back-to-school pep talk to students. It would be to do your homework, just as the president told the pupils.

That way, the people who protested the Obama speech before they knew what was in it would have realized there is nothing unusual about a president appearing at a public school as the classroom year begins. The previous three Republicans have and there wasn’t any stir, aside from some Democratic nitpicking about White House expenses, proving that neither party has a monopoly on pettiness. It was routine. As, in the end, Obama’s Tuesday talk was.

GOP attacks: Deja vu all over again

September 9, 2009

On television screens in many but not all of America’s schools, America’s president spent less than a half hour Tuesday trying to inspire students who are used to being talked at by adults.

So Barack Obama talked to them not only as a president but also as one who had been in their shoes, sat in their desks — and at times had messed up. He challenged them to take "responsibility" for their own education. As controversial speeches go, this one was the educational equivalent of an oration extolling motherhood. Yet for a week it became the media’s summer-end sideshow.

Memo to conservatives: Chill out

September 9, 2009

So Barack Obama has given his speech to school children, and it was a fine if slightly flawed one, a needed, important call for students to be self-responsible, and I am very close to saying shame on you to some of my fellow conservatives. Why work yourselves into a mountain of frenzy over this pebble of an event?

There are a couple of answers to that question, of course, including the U.S. Education Department’s supplying the nation’s schools with follow-up materials that would have had students contemplating how exactly they should respond to the president’s wisdom. It was an act of oafish, bureaucratic overkill feeding the fear of political indoctrination and the instilling of Mao-style hero worship.

Obama lays it all on the line tonight

September 9, 2009

President Barack Obama faces a major leadership test Wednesday in a crucial address to Congress designed to convince Americans to back his battered health care reform plan.

Obama is seeking to restore his diminished authority after weeks of shrill Republican attacks and with his approval ratings tumbling is under intense pressure to lay out clear plans on his top domestic priority.

The speech to a joint session of Congress will offer "a lot of clarity about what I think is the best way to move forward," Obama told ABC television in an interview to be broadcast Wednesday.