President Obama's Congressional Republican Townhall Meeting

[jeninflorida]

President Obama met with Congressional Republicans today and had a frank question-and-answer period with them for over an hour. It was a good give and take, rarely seen in American politics.

Here is a link to the transcript and video

I am of the opinion that President Obama did very well defending his policies and agenda. I particularly enjoyed watching him spar with Rep Tom Price on health care and Rep Jeb Hensarling on the deficit (I got the impression that Hensarling was auditioning for a Bill O'Reilly substitute host position).

Did any of our usual political suspects, particularly those whose enjoy talking about 'transparency', happen to watch this today?

I still don’t want a government run insurance option. Look at how well the government runs Medicare, welfare, and social security. No thanks!

goverment is not the solution, it's the problem.

Obama speaks well, and I’m sure can spar very well.

One thing that I like about him is that he actually created something, well he wrote and sold a book. Unlike is other attorney friends.

One thing that I heard was that up in MA they have a “universal” health care system and its sucking wind (or in this case, sucking down serious cash). I don’t know the details yet.

 

[Liar]

I still don’t want a government run insurance option. Look at how well the government runs Medicare, welfare, and social security. No thanks!

When there's an option I don't want, I usually choose something else.

So in essence, you don't want other people to have an option on the basis that you would not choose it for yourself.

goverment is not the solution, it's the problem.

Two bit categorical bumper sticker slogans instead of substance, is the problem.

 

[cebalrai]

I'm not holding my hopes out there, it would be great if it happened, but chances are that it will be the same shit, different day.

His arguments sounded a lot like....you guys are the problem, if you'd just go along with what I say then we'd have happy bipartisanship.

Obama looked extremely good. The House repubs came out looking rather bad. And no, the Repubs will not do this again - guaranteed. They know they lose when dialogue happens.

Why is that? Because their talk has been too extreme, too absolute, and far too negative. It's like Obama said at one point: "You guys are going back to your districts and to the media, talking like I'm presenting you with some kind of a "Bolshevik plot". And when you go all out to demonize me it leaves you no room for any kind of bipartisan compromise on pretty much anything."

Deafening silence among the Republicans at that point. Deafening.

 

[RightField]

Obama looked extremely good. The House repubs came out looking rather bad. And no, the Repubs will not do this again - guaranteed. They know they lose when dialogue happens.

Why is that? Because their talk has been too extreme, too absolute, and far too negative. It's like Obama said at one point: "You guys are going back to your districts and to the media, talking like I'm presenting you with some kind of a "Bolshevik plot". And when you go all out to demonize me it leaves you no room for any kind of bipartisan compromise on pretty much anything."

Deafening silence among the Republicans at that point. Deafening.

No, the Republicans were practical and pragmatic and Obama danced around the truth spinning clouds of purple and green nuance to try to sound like he had a coherent concept for governing. I think it was brave of him to go down there and his sonorous voice sounded good, but if you listened to the words, it was nothing but the same old liberal crap that got us into this horrible position. Like the pajamasmedia article above pointed out...his words are meaningless anyway. He can't lead and his party has gotten us into this mess and he didn't do anything to indicate that he was going to try a new direction...he's rushing headlong towards the cliff and he had the opportunity to stop and reconsider, but instead he used this opportunity to urge his herd forward at full speed and they'll soon go crashing over the edge (probably some time around November).

 

[cebalrai]

I still don’t want a government run insurance option. Look at how well the government runs Medicare, welfare, and social security. No thanks!

goverment is not the solution, it's the problem.

Obama speaks well, and I’m sure can spar very well.

One thing that I like about him is that he actually created something, well he wrote and sold a book. Unlike is other attorney friends.

One thing that I heard was that up in MA they have a “universal” health care system and its sucking wind (or in this case, sucking down serious cash). I don’t know the details yet.

Sure Medicaid/Medicare have problems and there are horror stories in any system. But compare that to how private insurance is run (just a few examples):

1) Every year you pay more out of your paycheck for less coverage. This trend is forseen to continue for a long time, if not indefinitely. The growing chunk out of our paychecks is like a tax that some politician raises every year.

2) Your insurance company can choose to not insure you anymore if you become too high risk, leaving you with nothing. They do this more and more frequently every year.

3) Your insurance company can choose not to enroll you in the first place. Again, this is increasing in frequency.

4) Lots of insurance plans have limits. If you spend more than the limit in February then it leaves you with little or no coverage for the rest of the year.

5) See that hugeass billboard you see on the way to work and that TV commercial you just watched? That's where a lot of your healthcare dollars are going and part of the reason why they're giving you less coverage: advertising dollars so they can compete with other insurance companies. Talk about waste...

6) Your private insurance company can tell your doctor "we don't cover that". One of my supervisors had an ACL/MCL tear and needed surgery. The surgery was a type that only 10% of ACL/MCL patients need to get. The company denied him because "we don't cover that". He had to pay out of pocket for 80% of the cost. This is Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

7) If you have private insurance, you're likely just a few serious injuries or diseases away from financial ruin - especially if your insurance company decides to drop you when shit hits the fan. Maybe not you, but the average American household is vulnerable to this. Maybe they have a spina bifida baby that needs 1-2 million dollars of healthcare for the next 18 years?

8) Depending on how long you live after retirement and what medical conditions you're living with, your healthcare costs can easily burn through your retirement savings, then your other assets, then your childrens' inheritance. I used to work in the social services department of a Catholic hospital in Ohio - this kind of thing is COMMON. Even folks that stash away a million dollars at retirement are quite vulnerable.

So sure, medicaid/medicare have problems, but at least they give you access to health care.

 

[cebalrai]

No, the Republicans were practical and pragmatic and Obama danced around the truth spinning clouds of purple and green nuance to try to sound like he had a coherent concept for governing. I think it was brave of him to go down there and his sonorous voice sounded good, but if you listened to the words, it was nothing but the same old liberal crap that got us into this horrible position. Like the pajamasmedia article above pointed out...his words are meaningless anyway. He can't lead and his party has gotten us into this mess and he didn't do anything to indicate that he was going to try a new direction...he's rushing headlong towards the cliff and he had the opportunity to stop and reconsider, but instead he used this opportunity to urge his herd forward at full speed and they'll soon go crashing over the edge (probably some time around November).

Huh?

No the Repubs weren't practical and pragmatic. Like when Obama called the Repubs out on claiming that they could cut taxes and reduce the national debt in the current environment "That's very dishonest of you to claim that. Show me the math on your claims".

*crickets chirping*

Obama was spanking them up and down the court.


Tennessee Republican lady: "Don't say we don't have any good ideas for healthcare. We do, and it's a big priority for our party".

Obama: "You just had a Republican president, republican House, and a Republican Senate for six years and you didn't lift a finger on healthcare. So how's it a priority at all for your party?"

*Deafening silence from Tennessee lady*

No response. Sit down. Next question please.


The best though was when Obama was up there shining on live TV and Fox News abruptly stopped their coverage of it to put on someone to criticize Obama.

"Oh no, this Republican even't isn't supporting the narrative we want to pass off on the American people as "news"! Hurry up and turn it off, turn it off, TURN IT OFF!!!"

 

[RightField]

Huh?

No the Repubs weren't practical and pragmatic. Like when Obama called the Repubs out on claiming that they could cut taxes and reduce the national debt in the current environment "That's very dishonest of you to claim that. Show me the math on your claims".

*crickets chirping*

Obama was spanking them up and down the court.


Tennessee Republican lady: "Don't say we don't have any good ideas for healthcare. We do, and it's a big priority for our party".

Obama: "You just had a Republican president, republican House, and a Republican Senate for six years and you didn't lift a finger on healthcare. So how's it a priority at all for your party?"

*Deafening silence from Tennessee lady*

No response. Sit down. Next question please.


The best though was when Obama was up there shining on live TV and Fox News abruptly stopped their coverage of it to put on someone to criticize Obama.

"Oh no, this Republican even't isn't supporting the narrative we want to pass off on the American people as "news"! Hurry up and turn it off, turn it off, TURN IT OFF!!!"

I think the forum wasn't right for a debate, it was a simple question and answer session. The answer for the first issue would have been "Rollback all this liberal pork and earmarks, reduce spending dramatically and lets stimulate the economy by leaving more money in the hands of those who earned it and can create new wealth and new jobs instead of depending on your life-sucking faceless bureaucrats to steal it all and funnel it to their friends while punishing anyone who disagrees with them".

On the second issue, there's a very good list of reforms that the Republicans have been advocating for a long while that they can go to that are market based changes that don't require a government takeover and that would increase coverage, reduce costs and maintain our incentives for medical innovation and leadership. However, they knew better than to try to overhaul the whole thing and put it all into government control when they had two wars to battle and a teetering economy thanks to the foolish liberal policy of insisting on making loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back (because that's "fairness" in action). Again, world-wide TV isn't a good forum for telling the President that his policies are ruinous for the country (that he's full of shit).

If he decides that he wants to listen (he probably won't), he'll get a more complete story in private where we won't do as much damage to the Office of the Presidency and the nation as a whole.

I think you don't hear the real swirl of politics under the obvious and public.

Good luck with the cliff.

 

[Powertone]

How about you address the argument instead of shooting the messenger? I'm sure you can find someone's opinion to mimic.

I'm watching the full video now.. No teleprompter and yet the President fucking slaughtered the place. The House GOP got schooled.

Want to lay odds that the GOP won't allow cameras the next time the President comes to do a Q&A session?

smoke a cigarette and come back when you've settled down

 

[trysail]

Sure Medicaid/Medicare have problems...

Saying Medicaid/Medicare has problems is like saying the Titanic has a leak.

The demand for healthcare ( especially that which has no apparent cost to the purchaser ) is infinite.

The supply is not.

How do you propose to resolve that problem?

 

[RightField]

I think a lot of this commentary addresses his comments at the Republican meetings also.

Mis-Statements of the Union
By Rich Lowry

Justice Samuel Alito let a pained expression pass his face and muttered, "Not true." His reaction to Pres. Barack Obama's demagogic attack on the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision aptly summed up the entire State of the Union address.

Obama warned that the decision striking down restrictions on corporate spending opened "the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections." But the court explicitly left untouched a statute that bans election spending by foreign corporations, even "indirectly." There isn't even a "loophole" for U.S. subsidiaries of foreign firms, as the White House claimed in damage-control mode.

Since Massachusetts, the Left has been badly disoriented. It can't process the fact that the cradle of contemporary liberalism elected a Republican in a contest that was a referendum on health care. So, it has thrown up a thick cloud of rationalizations and delusion from which Obama emerged briefly to man his teleprompters before the nation.

He spoke for more than an hour, but the quick gloss might have been, "It's not my fault, and please ignore your lying eyes." Obama did everything in the speech - reach out to the middle class, feel people's pain, try to recapture the stirring magic of past oratory - except acknowledge what people dislike about his agenda and recalibrate accordingly.

Obama noted that we had a budget surplus of more than $200 billion in 2000, and a deficit of more than $1 trillion before he took office. It's true that the fiscal picture deteriorated dramatically with the recession and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, prior to Obama's ascension. But Obama's historic spending spree and ever-growing entitlements are what create the current $1 trillion deficits as far as the eye can see.

As an antidote, he now wants a three-year spending freeze on about 13 percent of the federal budget. This portion of the budget has seen an almost 20 percent increase during the past two years, not including gigantic boosts in the stimulus bill. The freeze is supposed to save $15 billion next year, but Obama called in his address for a new "jobs bill" that, in the House, has a price tag of another $150 billion. The freeze, in other words, is a simulacrum of fiscal restraint painted in red ink.

So alarmed is Obama by the spiraling debt that he committed to the bold step of naming a bipartisan commission. Of course, nothing's stopping Obama from proposing a budget that puts us on a more sustainable path. He is, after all, president of the United States. (You can tell by his stately and impressive teleprompters.)

But Obama has another priority - namely, passing a new health-care entitlement. He attributed its difficulties to his failure to explain it "more clearly." The real problem is that he can't explain it more honestly.

He said in his address that the bill would "preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan" - even though the Congressional Budget Office says millions will lose their current employer-provided coverage. He said it would reduce premiums for millions - when it will increase premiums for millions of others. He maintained that the CBO estimates it will reduce the deficit by "as much as $1 trillion over the next two decades" - but even the CBO considers the assumptions behind that estimate flimsy. (because it includes massive new taxes to offset the massive new spending---how much more tax can you pay? - Rightfield comments)

It isn't that people haven't heard all this before from Obama; it's that they don't believe it. This is what Obama refers to as "a deficit of trust."

To heal it, he plugged for more lobbyist disclosure. Is that going to stop the White House from, say, cutting deals to give unions special exemptions from taxes? Obama must have a truly audacious faith in the forgetfulness and credulity of the public.

The president has a reality problem. He's crafted a fantasy universe where he and his friends can live unperturbed by our center-right country, comforted by just-so stories. The rest of us can only, like Justice Alito, crinkle our noses and mutter, "Not true."

 

[cebalrai]

I think the forum wasn't right for a debate, it was a simple question and answer session. The answer for the first issue would have been "Rollback all this liberal pork and earmarks, reduce spending dramatically and lets stimulate the economy by leaving more money in the hands of those who earned it and can create new wealth and new jobs instead of depending on your life-sucking faceless bureaucrats to steal it all and funnel it to their friends while punishing anyone who disagrees with them".

A quick Google search on earmark/pork/etc will show you that during the Bush administration, with almost entirely Republican control, earmarks set new record highs with EVERY SINGLE BUDGET THEY PASSED. And Bush signed all of them. In fact, Bush vetoed no spending/pork at all during his 8 years. The Republicans kept piling on record amounts of pork and he kept signing it.

To be fair, both parties are known to pork it up. But you saying "rollback liberal pork and earmarks" shows that you've bought into the Fox News propeganda instead of looking into facts on your own.

On the second issue, there's a very good list of reforms that the Republicans have been advocating for a long while that they can go to that are market based changes that don't require a government takeover and that would increase coverage, reduce costs and maintain our incentives for medical innovation and leadership. However, they knew better than to try to overhaul the whole thing and put it all into government control when they had two wars to battle and a teetering economy thanks to the foolish liberal policy of insisting on making loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back (because that's "fairness" in action). Again, world-wide TV isn't a good forum for telling the President that his policies are ruinous for the country (that he's full of shit).

WTF? Republicans have been advocating for health care reform measures for a long time? Then why the hell didn't they lift a finger to do something about it when they controlled the presidency, House, and Senate?

Secondly, the House Republican healthcare plan is available online. Read it and you'll see that it's ridiculously weak. It's a tiny band aid for a gaping bullet hole. But despite what Fox News will tell you, some of the ideas have been incorporated into the President's plan, ie small business tax credit and guaranteeing that Americans with pre-existing conditions can't be denied coverage.

Thirdly, it's apparent that you are (yet again) buying into Fox News propeganda. Otherwise you would not be here falsely claiming that the Obama plan is "putting it all into government control". Seriously, read it for yourself and stop letting Fox News do your thinking for you.

Seriously, you have no clue what the facts are. None. And since you don't know what Obama's plan actually is, how do you know you're against it? The only awareness you have about it is the limited, extremely distorted Fox News version that they manipulate the hell out of in order to tell their right-wing narrative to the public in the lame disguise of news.

By the way, the Republican health care plan doesn't have any numbers in it. It doesn't say how they're going to pay for anything whatsoever. It's just a bunch of tweaks to the existing system that they claim will do great things. They wont tell anyone how much it will cost or submit their plan to the Congressional Budget Office for a nonpartisan calculation.

I'll give you one guess why they wont put a dollar sign on it!

 

[BigGator5]

A quick Google search on earmark/pork/etc will show you that during the Bush administration, with almost entirely Republican control, earmarks set new record highs in each budget.

Yeah, but Bush didn't campaign on pork reform, did he?

 

[RightField]

A quick Google search on earmark/pork/etc will show you that during the Bush administration, with almost entirely Republican control, earmarks set new record highs in each budget. And Bush signed all of them. In fact, Bush vetoed no spending/pork at all during his 8 years. The Republicans kept piling on record amounts of pork and he kept signing it.

To be fair, both parties are known to pork it up. But you saying "rollback liberal pork and earmarks" shows that you've bought into the Fox News propeganda instead of looking into facts on your own.



WTF? Republicans have been advocating for health care reform measures for a long time? Then why the hell didn't they lift a finger to do something about it when they controlled the presidency, House, and Senate?

Secondly, the House Republican healthcare plan is available online. Read it and you'll see that it's ridiculously weak. It's a tiny band aid for a gaping bullet hole. But despite what Fox News will tell you, some of the ideas have been incorporated into the President's plan, ie small business tax credit and guaranteeing that Americans with pre-existing conditions can't be denied coverage.

Thirdly, it's apparent that you are (yet again) buying into Fox News propeganda. Otherwise you would not be here falsely claiming that the Obama plan is "putting it all into government control".

Seriously, you have no clue what the facts are. None. And since you don't know what Obama's plan actually is, how do you know you're against it? The only awareness you have about it is the limited, extremely distorted Fox News version that they manipulate the hell out of.

By the way, the Republican health care plan doesn't have any numbers in it. It doesn't say how they're going to pay for anything whatsoever. It's just a bunch of tweaks to the existing system that they claim will do great things. They wont tell anyone how much it will cost or submit their plan to the Congressional Budget Office for a nonpartisan calculation.

I'll give you one guess why they wont put a dollar sign on it!

I don't watch Fox news. I work too much (in DC) to watch TV. I did take the time to read most of the bill (because its important and I needed to know about it for work). It is, indeed, a government takeover. If you don't believe so then you should try to read it again and think through the provisions. I think you should take your own advice and take your rose colored glasses off. I work in a job that requires that I know what the facts are.

The stimulus package was about $787B of pork....an tsumani of pork compared to the cup of water of Republican pork. There is an issue of scale here. Saying that the Republicans had a deficit too is disingenious...similar scale....400% growth in the deficit is more than an objective comparison. We are drowning in liberal excess and the country is begining to wake up to the problem and VA, NJ and MA were only the first sparks of it.

 

[cebalrai]

Yeah, but Bush didn't campaign on pork reform, did he?

Yes, he did.

"[O]ne of the best ways we can impose more discipline on federal spending is by addressing the problem of earmarks. … My administration will soon lay out a series of reforms that will help make earmarks more transparent, that will hold the members who propose earmarks more accountable, and that will help reduce the number of earmarks inserted into large spending bills"

Not only did he utterly fail to do this, he signed off on 31,709 pieces of pork, vetoing nothing whatsoever for eight years.

 

[RightField]

Saying Medicaid/Medicare has problems is like saying the Titanic has a leak.

The demand for healthcare ( especially that which has no apparent cost to the purchaser ) is infinite.

The supply is not.

How do you propose to resolve that problem?

Good observations...and humorous also.

 

[cebalrai]

I don't watch Fox news. I work too much (in DC) to watch TV. I did take the time to read most of the bill (because its important and I needed to know about it for work). It is, indeed, a government takeover. If you don't believe so then you should try to read it again and think through the provisions. I think you should take your own advice and take your rose colored glasses off. I work in a job that requires that I know what the facts are.

The stimulus package was about $787B of pork....an tsumani of pork compared to the cup of water of Republican pork. There is an issue of scale here. Saying that the Republicans had a deficit too is disingenious...similar scale....400% growth in the deficit is more than an objective comparison. We are drowning in liberal excess and the country is begining to wake up to the problem and VA, NJ and MA were only the first sparks of it.

Okay you don't watch Fox news, but you're parroting the exact conservative propeganda you're hearing somewhere.

The stimulus package was 787 billion of spending to stimulate the economy. The entire purpose of it was "pork" if you will. It pumped 787 billion into a floundering economy that badly needed it.

And stop it with your scale. If Bush had a third term NOTHING would be different. Bush was in favor of the stimulus and would have had a similar incarnation of it. Stop blaming Obama for not turning around the biggest recession since the 1920s in 12 months. (even though it's turning around already).

Even though freaking independent analysts, including the CBO, are saying that the deficit is due mostly to the decrease in government tax revenue and NOT spending, you're still going to parrot the partisan line... Sheesh.

 

[cebalrai]

Saying that the Republicans had a deficit too is disingenious...similar scale....400% growth in the deficit is more than an objective comparison. We are drowning in liberal excess and the country is begining to wake up to the problem and VA, NJ and MA were only the first sparks of it.

If you weren't sucking so hard at the teat of the conservative media. Why not do your own reasearch and stop being spoon fed their narrative?

Let's look at the whole story about the non-partisan OBO's projected deficit. Wha?!? Fox News forgot to mention that the deficit is expected to drop by about 70% during the next two years under Obama?

Shocking.

 

[Pookie]

No, we just wanted him to keep the faux foam Roman columns that he used in his pre-election rally at Denver. Did he have eagle standards there also?

So you're more worried about the faux foam Roman columns. You wingers are some fucked up peoples.

 

[RightField]

Okay you don't watch Fox news, but you're parroting the exact conservative propeganda you're hearing somewhere.

The stimulus package was 787 billion of spending to stimulate the economy. The entire purpose of it was "pork" if you will. It pumped 787 billion into a floundering economy that badly needed it.

And stop it with your scale. If Bush had a third term NOTHING would be different. Bush was in favor of the stimulus and would have had a similar incarnation of it. Stop blaming Obama for not turning around the biggest recession since the 1920s in 12 months. (even though it's turning around already).

Even though freaking independent analysts, including the CBO, are saying that the deficit is due mostly to the decrease in government tax revenue and NOT spending, you're still going to parrot the partisan line... Sheesh.

The $787B didn't stimulate the economy, it was only payola to democrat constituencies that supported Obama during the election, a very bad "investment" that didn't make a blip in our overall national economy and will, in fact, have a long term deleterious effect from the huge increase in the outstanding debt.

Our economy needs to transform itself and this administration is retarding the process and prolonging the pain and the recession. It's like putting massive investment into horse and buggies because the horse and buggy union gave them a big donation. It makes the horse and buggy union happy, but everyone else has to pay the bill and it provides no benefit to the overall economy.

When you don't get as much money to spend....you trim spending, you don't increase it. It's a fundamental difference in approach and is one of the principal reasons that libs can't lead.

 

[RightField]

So you're more worried about the faux foam Roman columns. You wingers are some fucked up peoples.

I thought it was pretty funny. I'm allowed humor aren't I?

 

[cebalrai]

The $787B didn't stimulate the economy, it was only payola to democrat constituencies that supported Obama during the election, a very bad "investment" that didn't make a blip in our overall national economy and will, in fact, have a long term deleterious effect from the huge increase in the outstanding debt.

Our economy needs to transform itself and this administration is retarding the process and prolonging the pain and the recession. It's like putting massive investment into horse and buggies because the horse and buggy union gave them a big donation. It makes the horse and buggy union happy, but everyone else has to pay the bill and it provides no benefit to the overall economy.

When you don't get as much money to spend....you trim spending, you don't increase it. It's a fundamental difference in approach and is one of the principal reasons that libs can't lead.

Any financial analyst will tell you that it's too early to determine the extent of the impact that the stimulus had. You, despite your lack of being in a position to make that analysis and having virtually no access to data (because not enough data exists yet), have made a pseudo-analysis anyway. This shows your pattern of "thinking" in a partisan way rather than in a rational one.

By the way, even Bill O'Reiley and Cabuto (or whatever his name is) have been acknowledging that the stimulus had an effect. Not only that, but since a lot of the spending on the stimulus comes in a delayed fashion (ie public works projects), it will continue to stimulate for the next few years.

O'Reily's criticism of the stimulus recently was not that it did nothing but that some of the jobs it will create will not be created until late 2010 or 2011.

 

[RightField]

If you weren't sucking so hard at the teat of the conservative media. Why not do your own reasearch and stop being spoon fed their narrative?

Let's look at the whole story about the non-partisan OBO's projected deficit. Wha?!? Fox News forgot to mention that the deficit is expected to drop by about 70% during the next two years under Obama?

Shocking.

Breathtaking how much the dems have increased the deficit and wishful thinking that it's going to come down anytime quickly. The slope depends on the assumptions that you make and those are some pretty rosy assumptions to give you that slope. Elementary my dear Watson.

 

[Pookie]

I thought it was pretty funny. I'm allowed humor aren't I?

Keep your day job.

 

[BigGator5]

Yes, he did.

"[O]ne of the best ways we can impose more discipline on federal spending is by addressing the problem of earmarks. … My administration will soon lay out a series of reforms that will help make earmarks more transparent, that will hold the members who propose earmarks more accountable, and that will help reduce the number of earmarks inserted into large spending bills"

Not only did he utterly fail to do this, he signed off on 31,709 pieces of pork, vetoing nothing whatsoever for eight years.

Not that I don't believe you, but... Source?

 

[cebalrai]

Breathtaking how much the dems have increased the deficit and wishful thinking that it's going to come down anytime quickly. The slope depends on the assumptions that you make and those are some pretty rosy assumptions to give you that slope. Elementary my dear Watson.

Brainwashed you are...

The slope depends on assumptions I make? Huh? It's not my slope. This is from the non-partisan congressional budget office. Your "analysis" (where you're not even analyzing anything) is based on being a parrot.