loved this. id think people of all political persuasions would like to read the Q&A transcript. President Obama Q&A session with House GOP - Full Video & Transcript - Daily Kos TV (beta) "Now, last year about the time you met with us, unemployment was 7.5 percent in this country. Your administration,...told us that we’d have to borrow more than $700 billion to pay for a so-called stimulus bill. It ... had to be passed or unemployment would go to 8 percent, as your administration said. Well, unemployment is 10 percent now Now, Republicans offered a stimulus bill at the same time. It cost half as much as the Democratic proposal in Congress, and using your economic analyst models, it would have created twice the jobs at half the cost. It essentially was across-the-board tax relief, Mr. President. ... would you be willing to consider embracing — ...— the kind of across-the-board tax relief that Republicans have advocated...? You’re absolutely right that when I was sworn in the hope was that unemployment would remain around 8 [percent],... at that point not all the data had trickled in. We had lost 650,000 jobs in December. I’m assuming you’re not faulting my policies for that. We had lost, it turns out, 700,000 jobs in January, the month I was sworn in. I’m assuming it wasn’t my administration’s policies that accounted for that. We lost another 650,000 jobs the subsequent month, before any of my policies had gone into effect. So I’m assuming that wasn’t as a consequence of our policies; that doesn’t reflect the failure of the Recovery Act. The point being that what ended up happening was that the job losses from this recession proved to be much more severe — in the first quarter of last year going into the second quarter of last year — than anybody anticipated. those job losses took place before any stimulus, whether it was the ones that you guys have proposed or the ones that we proposed, could have ever taken into effect. ...You could not find an economist who would dispute that. ...most economists — Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative — would say that had it not been for the stimulus package that we passed, things would be much worse. Now, they didn’t fill a 7 million hole in the number of people who were unemployed. They probably account for about 2 million, which means we still have 5 million folks in there that we’ve still got to deal with. ... This notion that this was a radical package is just not true. A third of them were tax cuts, ... A third of it was stabilizing state budgets. ... A big chunk of it was unemployment insurance and COBRA,... ... A portion of it was dealing with the AMT, the alternative minimum tax — ... That cost about $70 billion. ...And then the last portion of it was infrastructure ... And the notion that I would somehow resist doing something that cost half as much but would produce twice as many jobs — why would I resist that? I wouldn’t. ... The problem is, I couldn’t find credible economists who would back up the claims that you just made. Q Mr. President, will you consider supporting across-the-board tax relief, as President Kennedy did? A I may not agree to a tax cut for Warren Buffet. You may be calling for an across-the-board tax cut for the banking industry right now. I may not agree to that. ...So I think that we’ve got to look at what specific proposals you’re putting forward, and — this is the last point I’ll make — if you’re calling for just across-the-board tax cuts, and then on the other hand saying that we’re somehow going to balance our budget, I’m going to want to take a look at your math and see how that works,... Q The spending bills that you’ve signed into law, the domestic discretionary spending has been increased by 84 percent. You now want to freeze spending at this elevated beginning next year. This means that total spending in your budget would grow at 3/100ths of 1 percent less than otherwise. I would simply submit that we could do more and start now. A Now, the reason that I’m not proposing the discretionary freeze take into effect this year — ... I am just listening to the consensus among people who know the economy best. And what they will say is that if you either increase taxes or significantly lowered spending when the economy remains somewhat fragile, that that would have a destimulative effect ... Q ... you said in the House of Representatives that you were going to tackle earmarks — in fact, you didn’t want to have any earmarks in any of your bills — I jumped up out of my seat and applauded you. But it didn’t happen. A With respect to earmarks, we didn’t have earmarks in the Recovery Act. We didn’t get a lot of credit for it, but there were no earmarks in that. I was confronted at the beginning of my term with an omnibus package that did have a lot of earmarks from Republicans and Democrats, and a lot of people in this chamber. And the question was whether I was going to have a big budget fight, at a time when I was still trying to figure out whether or not the financial system was melting down and we had to make a whole bunch of emergency decisions about the economy. So what I said was let’s keep them to a minimum, but I couldn’t excise them all. Q you stood up before the American people multiple times and said you would broadcast the health care debates on C-SPAN, you didn’t. A Look, the truth of the matter is that if you look at the health care process — just over the course of the year — overwhelmingly the majority of it actually was on C-SPAN, because it was taking place in congressional hearings in which you guys were participating. I mean, how many committees were there that helped to shape this bill? Countless hearings took place. Now, I kicked it off, by the way, with a meeting with many of you, including your key leadership. What is true, there’s no doubt about it, is that once it got through the committee process and there were now a series of meetings taking place all over the Capitol trying to figure out how to get the thing together — that was a messy process. And I take responsibility for not having structured it in a way where it was all taking place in one place that could be filmed. How to do that logistically would not have been as easy as it sounds, because you’re shuttling back and forth between the House, the Senate, different offices, et cetera, different legislators. But I think it’s a legitimate criticism. So on that one, I take responsibility. Q You said you weren’t going to allow lobbyists in the senior-most positions within your administration, and yet you did. I applauded you when you said it — and disappointed when you didn’t. A Now, what we did was, if there were lobbyists who were on boards and commissions that were carryovers and their term hadn’t been completed, we didn’t kick them off. We simply said that moving forward any time a new slot opens, they’re being replaced...There have been a handful of waivers where somebody is highly skilled — for example, a doctor who ran Tobacco-Free Kids technically is a registered lobbyist; on the other end, has more experience than anybody in figuring out how kids don’t get hooked on cigarettes. So there have been a couple of instances like that, but generally we’ve been very consistent on that front. Q Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for acknowledging that we have ideas on health care ...So my question to you is, when will we look forward to starting anew and sitting down with you to put all of these ideas on the table, to look at these lessons learned, to benefit from that experience, and to produce a product that is going to reduce government interference, reduce cost... A Some of them are embraced with caveats. So let me give you an example....allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines. We actually include that as part of our approach. But the caveat is, we’ve got to do so with some minimum standards, because otherwise what happens is that you could have insurance companies circumvent a whole bunch of state regulations about basic benefits or what have you, making sure that a woman is able to get mammograms as part of preventive care, for example. Part of what could happen is insurance companies could go into states and cherry-pick and just get those who are healthiest and leave behind those who are least healthy, which would raise everybody’s premiums who weren’t healthy, right? if you look at the basic proposal that we’ve put forward: it has an exchange so that businesses and the self-employed can buy into a pool and can get bargaining power the same way big companies do; the insurance reforms that I’ve already discussed, making sure that there’s choice and competition for those who don’t have health insurance. The component parts of this thing are pretty similar to what Howard Baker, Bob Dole, and Tom Daschle proposed at the beginning of this debate last year. Now, you may not agree with Bob Dole and Howard Baker, and, certainly you don’t agree with Tom Daschle on much, but that’s not a radical bunch. But if you were to listen to the debate and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you’d think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot. No, I mean, that’s how you guys — (applause) — that’s how you guys presented it. And so I’m thinking to myself, well, how is it that a plan that is pretty centrist — ... this is similar to what many Republicans proposed to Bill Clinton when he was doing his debate on health care. ...we’ve got to close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality. I’m not suggesting that we’re going to agree on everything, whether it’s on health care or energy or what have you, but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don’t have a lot of room to negotiate with me... if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you’ve been telling your constituents is, this guy is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that’s going to destroy America. ... This is part of what’s happened in our politics, where we demonize the other side so much that when it comes to actually getting things done, it becomes tough to do"
I don't have time to respond to all areas right now but I like this part. Maybe if he would start taking his own advice and convince his party's leaders to do the same we would make progress. When you have total control and attempt to force your ideology down our throats, don't blame everyone else for your failures. This is why I stopped voting Democrat many years ago. Everything for that party is a double standard. I also like how he answered the C-SPAN question. :hihi: I wonder if he has any swamp land to sell.
he just finished answering questions about how he wasnt forcing his ideology, but accepting GOP ideas with adaptations. hell, he isnt pushing single payer or even public option any more. sounds like you think the GOP should say "you first". he did say the dems were at fault on this too. he was speaking to the house GOP not house Dems.
Thus far he has blamed: 1) The Republicans 2) The Democrats 3) The media 4) The people 5) Washington, DC 6) George Bush 7) etc. He has blamed everyone EXCEPT for himself for the problems in this country. The arrogance and ego are unreal. Maybe he should have a similar televised session with the Democrats so he can tell them to play nice also. According to him, everyone should forget their opinion and just follow his orders because he is the chosen one. :nope:
Um, he inherited the "problems in this country." I like the Q&A. It's good to see a president face his opposition on their home turf rather than at these pre-screened, scripted softball lobbing sessions.
The GOP retreated? Guess I missed that meeting. I thought the super majority democrats failed to get their bills passed amongst their own party, and upon losing the kennedy throne in the senate, Obama decides to caucus with the GOP. Yeah, that's certainly a retreat.
Pot meet kettle. The only political threads you start are bashing conservatives. Your posts also lack a balance of blame for democrats even though it is obvious they have a hand in the state of the union. My posts DO include criticism for republicans, when they are to blame. Currently they have zero power and therefor have little or no culpability in what happens to us. And if Obama reached out to the republicans last year, why were they cut out of all negotiations on cap and trade, and healthcare? Simple answer is because what I said was true. The voters rejected his plans, and he is now being forced to be conciliatory. Whether he actually implements any republican ideas is yet to be seen. Take your literal answer, which meant nothing, back to the schoolyard.
still uptight, huh? GOP has no power? riiight. i posted parts of the Obama Q & A at the House GOP retreat that i thought were interesting. instead of discussing the Q&A, you bash O for going because he's "forced to be conciliatory" even though he went to the same event last year. if you want to bash O, or Dems or anyone just because you are uptight, then start another thread.
