The Debt Ceiling Debate: The Obama vs. Boehner speeches (Videos)

I just got through watching both Obama's and John Boehner's speeches. Again, I feel like vomiting over the whole foolish mess. With Obama's ridiculous lies about Social Security and Boehner's foolish entertainment of Democrat's disingenuous compromises, I am rapidly losing hope that America will dodge this bullet.

Of the two speeches, Obama's was clearly the worse. Obama's speech could have easily been spliced together from his past speeches over the last two years. It was the same old dog and pony show we have seen over and over again.

• Class warfare, complete with evil corporate jets - check.
• One sided shared sacrifice - check.
• Blame Bush - check.

and the list goes on and on.

No where in Obama's 15 minute speech did Obama offer a clear cut path plan of action. Instead, it was the usual dump it all in Congress' lap and then take to the podium to play the role of college professor. Of course in doing so, Obama made his usual massive contradictions. Like this gem:

[...]In the past, raising the debt ceiling was routine. Since the 1950s, Congress has always passed it, and every President has signed it. President Reagan did it 18 times. George W. Bush did it seven times. And we have to do it by next Tuesday, August 2nd, or else we won’t be able to pay all of our bills.

[...] But the new approach that Speaker Boehner unveiled today, which would temporarily extend the debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts, would force us to once again face the threat of default just six months from now. In other words, it doesn’t solve the problem.

So, Reagan had to deal with 18 extensions of the debt ceiling over 8 year, which breaks down to less than 6 months intervals and the economy thrived under those conditions. However, a six month extension today would be catastrophe? This is why Obama is so disingenuous and phony.

Boehner is once again talking the talk but failing to walk the walk. Boehner would not be in the pressure cooker had he declared way back in November that the debt ceiling was not going to be raised. Had he taken that stance eight months ago, he would have had eight months to defuse all the liberal arguments, scare tactics and power plays. He would have been in the position of demanding Democrats start coming up with their cuts to go along with the Republican cuts. The markets would have known months ago that America was not raising its debt ceiling and that it was going to use the next eight months to seriously tackle the problem, rather than try to mash something together in less than a month.

The CBO's scoring of Boehner's plan clearly shows that Boehner is more concern about the political aspects of the debate than actually forcing real change. Pity for all of us.

Via: Memeorandum
Via: The Washington Post
Via: WhiteHouse.gov
Via: The Right Scoop
Via: Politico