by Mark Silva
The traveling White House today likened continuing Republican complaints about runaway spending to so many "nickels in a jukebox,'' and suggested that if anyone would like to get on a "bandwagon,'' how about fixing the economy?
What about all those Republicans complaining that the White House is spending too much, as a California congressman asserted today in the GOP's weekly address?
"Republicans are back home screaming the president is spending entirely too much money, as you said, in one of the worst financial times of our time,'' a reporter asked the traveling White House today in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, at the Summit of the Americas.
"That's a different quarter in the same jukebox, though, I think,'' Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, replied. "I don't think that's a whole lot new.''
Maybe not, the reporter suggested, but here the United States is, this weekend, offering yet more assistance for development in Latin America, as it did during the G-20 summit of global economic powers earlier this month in London.
Where's all that money coming from?
"The president came into office -- folks like Larry (Summers) and others on the economic team, hundreds of economists that aren't part of the group of people that brief the president each and every day, all recognize that our economy was in a severe economic recession, that our global economy was in a severe global economic recession,'' Gibbs said. "The preident took swift action to meet the dramatic decrease in demand with an economic recovery and reinvestment plan that will be people back to work.
"I would also point out, April, that for all the people that tell you or talk about the money that we're spending, I would point to the fact that we have a budget document that cuts the budget deficit in half in four years,'' Gibbs said. "That's not our figures, that's the Congressional Budget Office figures -- putting us back on a path toward fiscal sustainability, unlike one we've seen in quite some time in Washington....
"So there are plenty of opportunities for all members of Congress to get on a bandwagon to put ourselves on a path toward fiscal sustainability,'' Gibbs said, "while at the same time meeting the urgent
Comments
Dear Republican Teabaggers
Nobody is trying to stop you from holding your "teabagger parties." Please stop saying you're oppressed when you're clearly not oppressed. You want to have a teabagger party? Go ahead! Get to it! Take to the streets, pleasantly aromatic baggies in hand!
We've had a president (Bush) who decided that he could revoke the citizenship of Americans based on his own say-so -- and no conservatives were worried about their loss of rights. We've had a government (Bush) assert that it could spy on any communications, without warrant or cause -- and no Republicans took to the streets, alarmed at the threat to their Constitutional protections. We found out we went to war over a weapons program that didn't exist -- oops. Under Bush Republican "leadership" we found out that our country subjected innocent, though brown, people to imprisonment without recourse, and others to torture so cruel that it rendered them mentally incompetent. Under Bush Republican "leadership" we buried the nation in a mountain of debt -- well, them's the breaks. We forked over billions of dollars in giveaways to oil companies that were already making larger profits than any other companies in the history of the world -- hell, gotta keep John Galt in caviar. None of it raised a peep from any of you, you were all fine with it. The government could do no wrong -- except not going far enough.
But if returning to the tax policies that existed before Bush is the thing that's got a bee in your bonnet, claiming the end of the republic is at hand -- go for it. If you've suddenly decided that preventing government efforts to stave off a second Great Depression is the thing you're going to hang your collective hats on, or that saving one of the prime manufacturing sectors still left in the country is a bridge too far, by all means protest. Who's stopping you? Who's intimidating you?
On the contrary, the rest of us find your "tea bagging" to be superbly instructive and hilarious to boot. It's increasing taxes that gets your goat, and absolutely nothing else. The only Constitutional crisis possible is one that might possibly affect your wallet; offenses to other people's freedoms don't rouse a tenth of the same emotion.
And it stands as a dramatic act of solidarity with Republican leaders in government. Bloviate at every opportunity; remain steadfastly in opposition to everything; suggest nothing; claim that it is not even your responsibility to suggest anything. Like House and Senate Republicans, who have declared sitting on their hands to be an act of supreme virtue and who, when pressed, can only come up with a few terse pages of declarations that the only path forward is to give big businesses more tax breaks, and rich Americans more tax breaks, and eliminate even more regulations on financial behavior -- and that will work this time for sure, in spite of those same exact things bringing the country debt and corruption every other time they have been tried, finally leading to this current brink of economic ruin. No, it seems hard to compete with any acts of leadership as impressive as that.
So teabag your little hearts out, my noble friends! Take to the streets, and demand the Republican dream -- absolute inaction on every front! Turn the economic crisis into an opportunity to finally, at long last, give a damn about the actions of your leaders, who we have just now noticed might be of an opposing political party! Yes, take to the streets on behalf of the John Galts of the world: that's what Faux News Corporation has told you to do, and what the wealthy stock traders of CNBC demand of you! Take to the streets and wave those little white bags so that an executive responsible for financial crisis will not find their yearly bonus jeopardized by scandalous government intervention, or people making one hundred times your annual income will not be taxed a Stalinesque three percent more (marginal rate) than they presently are! Throw your little pouches of aromatic leaves high into the air, shout your grievances, demand the factories close and the government remain unresponsive, because that's what Republican everywhere want to see!
Posted by: Alex | April 18, 2009 10:10 PM
The chutzpah of the right-wing whackjobs never ceases to amaze me. Run the country into a ditch and then go crazy over the attempts to repair the consequences.
But these folks would go crazy no matter what Obama would do. One of my worse fears is that the right-wing lunatic fringe crowd could come back into power. They just can't wait to find a demagogue to restore us all to insanity.
Scary stuff.
Posted by: leapin | April 18, 2009 11:36 PM
Republicans have turned manipulation into an art form. These idiots are all authoritarians. They have an innate need to be told how to think and what to do by some right-wing daddy figure every single day. They get it from O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, Rush, Michael Weiner Savage, Red State, and Freeperland etc. The right knows how to manipulate the weak and small minded, and that is their target audience. Everything they hear from right wing TV (Faux etc) and AM radio (Rush etc) is meant to produce an angry emotional response. When people have a low IQ, like most of the Republican base does, and they are angry or scared, they don't think rationally. They just do what they're told to do. What they're told to do is vote Republican, which is exactly how we ended up with the dumber than a bag of rocks Bush as our president the last eight years.
Posted by: DrainYou | April 19, 2009 12:12 AM
The song they like best is
"STARVE THE BEAST".
According to them, everything is fine, just hang in there, max out that remaining credit card, tap the IRA, take the KFC (Keys for Cash, as well as Kentucky Fried Chicken).
Where they MIGHT get some traction is in about a year or so, when they can point to all the $$$$ going to Vikram Bandit, Blankfein, other Larry Summers friends, but no amelioration of real folks' situation.
Right now. they are just honky tonk girls.
Posted by: ornery | April 19, 2009 10:24 AM
Since the Obama press won't publish this news item from the UK Standard newspaper, I will:
"FRENCH president Nicolas Sarkozy has labelled his US counterpart Barack Obama "inexperienced and indecisive".
...
In the latest candid communiqués from the Elysée Palace, Mr Sarkozy was quoted as telling an all-party group of MPs that Mr Obama "was elected two months ago and had never run a ministry. There are a certain number of things on which he has no position. And he is not always up to standard on decision making and efficiency".
The French president is reportedly irritated by suggestions that Mr Obama convinced China to reach a compromise with Mr Sarkozy over tax havens, and allegedly also claimed that the US leader had "underperformed" on the issue of climate change. He is also said to be annoyed at the almost universal praise for Mr Obama in the world's media.
Claude Askolovitch, a commentator close to the Elysée Palace, wrote: "The president is annoyed at what he sees as the naivety and herd mentality.""
Posted by: Arthur Henning | April 19, 2009 11:18 AM