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Monday, September 23, 2013

obama: germane? or just a germ?

Non-germane President Obama

Non-germane President Obama
One of the biggest mistakes President Obama is making in the current debate over the threat of a government shutdown and the failure to raise the debt ceiling is his repeated and stubborn refusal to negotiate. In speech after speech, Obama crusades against negotiation. Has anyone ever seen anything like this? He’s the president. Supposedly, he’s the chief executive. But Obama doesn’t want to dirty his hands by talking to Republican congressional leaders.
Now, this is an odd paradigm given the fact that the president and his lieutenants are willing to negotiate with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and most recently, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. They are a motley crew at best and a bunch of dictatorial mass-killing thugs in truth.
What does this say about the president’s strategy for the economic health and wealth of his own country, the United States of America?
Lately, there have been reports of a possible White House meeting on the so-called continuing-resolution, CR, budget, but there’s no discussion of the debt ceiling. And you really can’t do one without the other; the deadlines are only a couple of weeks apart.
And then comes Obama’s extraordinary claim that in the history of the United States, non-budget items have never been attached to the debt ceiling. He is essentially calling Speaker John Boehner and the other GOP congressional members extortionists.
Well, according to “Fact Checker” columnist Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, the president’s claim is completely wrong. Going back decades, the debt ceiling bills have been linked to campaign-finance reform, Social Security, ending the bombing in Cambodia, voluntary school prayer, banning bussing to achieve integration, and proposing a nuclear freeze. Way back in 1982, then-Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker unleashed a free for all, allowing 1,400 non-germane amendments to the debt ceiling legislation. Kessler rightly gives Obama four Pinocchios.

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