The Other McCain

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Obama Explains That When He Says ‘Creating Jobs’ He Means ‘Raising Taxes’

Posted on | September 19, 2011 | 9 Comments

That’s the upshot of the presidential speech this morning, during which Obama promised to veto any deficit-reduction legislation that does not include tax increase on the rich:

“I will not support any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans,” he said. “And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share.

I’ll update later with the transcript, etc. Meanwhile, Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times notices the remarkable elasticity of “right now” in terms of Obama’s urgent insistence Sept. 8 that Congress should “pass this bill right now.” Obama’s $447 billion plan has not actually been written as legislation, and the Democratic Senate won’t even be ready to “move forward” on the yet-to-be-written bill until next month.

UPDATE: Perhaps I did not make sufficiently clear the logical contradiction:

  1. On the one hand, Obama says the need for job-creation is such an urgent crisis that the federal government must engage in $447 billion in new deficit spending.
  2. On the other hand, Obama insists that balancing the budget must require new taxes on “millionaires and billionaires,” siphoning off investment capital that might otherwise be used to . . . create jobs.

We suppose Paul Krugman will explain this to us. Because according to Paul Krugman, any damned Keynesian foolishness makes perfect sense.

UPDATE II: Video of today’s speech:

UPDATE III: Perhaps we should hear from someone with actual experience in job creation. His name is Herman Cain:

Today, the Obama Administration’s assault on the private sector continued. In yet another speech, he called for America’s job creators to shoulder an even heavier burden than they must already. President Obama promised that his efforts were not “class warfare,” but instead “math.”
Perhaps he could learn a lesson or two on math from me. I have a degree in mathematics and spent the earlier days of my career as a supervisory mathematician for the Department of the Navy. Then, I worked for 40 years as an executive in the private sector where I balanced budgets, saved failing companies and created jobs. Both obviously demanded a command of advanced mathematics.
Here’s what I can tell him about math: raising taxes on anyone, no matter their income level, will do nothing to stimulate our economy, create jobs or balance our federal budget. Increasing taxes on the private sector will destroy jobs, further damaging our economy and sending even less revenue to the federal government.
His eagerness to punish the private sector indicates he doesn’t understand the most important truth of basic economics: the private sector creates jobs. These are the jobs that pay for the food for our families, the roofs over our heads, the heat for our homes, the clothes on our backs, the schools for our kids and the plans for our retirement.
Perhaps his ignorance of basic economics is due to the fact that both he and more than 90 percent of his Administration have no private sector experience at all. Thus, they are all too willing to continually punish America’s job creators, all in the name of “fairness.”
President Obama’s once said, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” I agree. It doesn’t matter that he calls it “paying your fair share.” It’s still class warfare.

Obama’s problem: They don’t teach economics at Harvard Law School.

UPDATE IV: So what was this speech really about? Obama’s attempt to quell dissent from left-wing critics, says Ed Morrissey:

He issued this warning in a sad attempt to impress a few people on the Left with his “leadership,” but issuing empty threats isn’t real leadership. It’s an expression of political impotence.

Category: Barack Obama, Budget, Taxes

Comments

9 Responses to “Obama Explains That When He Says ‘Creating Jobs’ He Means ‘Raising Taxes’”

  1. Christy Waters
    September 19th, 2011 @ 5:15 pm

    Paul Krugman is a drooling idiot, and Herman Cain is exactly right. To raise revenue, add taxpayers; to add taxpayers, create jobs; to kill jobs, raise taxes. Raising taxes ? raising revenue. It’s not rocket science. By the way, I’m still waiting for President SCOAMF to define the term “fair share”… I’ll be waiting until long after I’m in the grave.

    Christy’s crystal ball: A mass exodus of the rich to Costa Rica… When that happens the top bracket won’t be so rich, but the rates will remain the same.

    Can we PLEASE do something that makes sense, for a change, and put a businessman in the White House? Politicians can’t solve this mess. They’re the ones who created it.

    Herman Cain 2012

  2. Anonymous
    September 19th, 2011 @ 5:39 pm

    In his speech he left out “Merciless war against the Kulaks! and “loot the looters”, honestly this SCOAMF can’t even get class warfare right.

  3. Adjoran
    September 19th, 2011 @ 5:49 pm

    Wow, thanks for linking the speech, because it is just too darned hard to find an Obama speech on television or online.

    It’s ever more obvious that Obama and his team just aren’t up to the job, by a long shot.  Tax and spend is the one trick they know, it should come as no surprise when they come up with that “cure” for every illness.  It’s like the old medicine show hucksters (in those glorious Libertarian days of freedom before the FDA) who would hawk their nostrums laced with alcohol and trace amounts of various poisons:  no matter what ails ye, this is the stuff you need!

    Obama apparently doesn’t even understand the simple English definitions of words like “urgent” and “now.”  He announced his urgent plan in August, then went on vacation.  He comes back, commands a Joint Session to announce the details, which he doesn’t announce.  Now he finally gets around to more detail, same old, same old, and even the Democratic Senate isn’t in much of a hurry.

    It’s as if he were already irrelevant.

  4. JeffS
    September 19th, 2011 @ 6:10 pm

    Obama’s problem: They don’t teach economics at Harvard Law School.

    That, and he’s a SCOAMF.

  5. Anonymous
    September 19th, 2011 @ 7:08 pm

    No love for the SCOAMF!

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  7. Anonymous
    September 19th, 2011 @ 8:17 pm

    Cain could call Obama’s grasp of math and economics “ignorance.” One could go further and call it willful ignorance. I’m going further with intentional malevolence. The guy’s an economic socialist/Marxist in a capitalist country. One doesn’t do a single thing Obama prefers unless one’s goal is to take out the country and “fundamentally change” it.

    This is so much more than mere ignorance despite a stable of pointy-headed pseudointellectuals positioning for the best optics. True believers cannot be persuaded into novel positions. It’s anathema to who they are.

    Obama’s only recourse is to move harder Left and hope his base goes Gonzo enough to save his presidency because the facade he constructed to hide who he and fellow travelers are from the “independents” has fallen apart. Facts, and now a record that cannot be hidden, speak for themselves. Now there’s no point in his team moderating their fundamental changes. It’s now or never and the indies are essentially lost, so the progressive Left is all that’s to be assuaged.

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