I feel the same way I used to feel when I saw George W. Bush on my teevee — angry and disgusted:
THE PRESIDENT: Look, we’ve already cut $2.5 trillion in our deficit. Everybody says we need to cut $4 trillion, which means we have to come up with another trillion and a half. The vast majority of economists agree that the problem when it comes to deficits is not discretionary spending. It’s not that we’re spending too much money on education. It’s not that we’re spending too much money on job training, or that we’re spending too much money rebuilding our roads and our bridges. We’re not.
The problem that we have is a long-term problem in terms of our health care costs and programs like Medicare. And what I’ve said very specifically, very detailed is that I’m prepared to take on the problem where it exists — on entitlements — and do some things that my own party really doesn’t like — if it’s part of a broader package of sensible deficit reduction. So the deal that I’ve put forward over the last two years, the deal that I put forward as recently as December is still on the table. I am prepared to do hard things and to push my Democratic friends to do hard things.
If you missed it, he threw progressive Dems under the bus, too: People who “don’t want any cuts at all in anything.”
Call your congress critter. Ask them to vote to the “Cancel The Sequester” bill in the House, and tell them you don’t support any cuts at all in Social Security and Medicare.
That is absolute, utter bullshit. Medicare is more cost-effective than any medical insurance program in the world. Recent articles point out that insurance companies pay a vast amount more per service than Medicare. The problem in our economy in general and the deficit in particular is that we don’t spend ENOUGH on medical care. Medicare for all would lower the cost of health care for everyone in the country by more than 30%. Boom! 30+% reduction in the cost of health care. A recent study found a hospital in Ohio where 14 middle managers were making half a million a year or more. Half a million a year! Does anyone really believe that they couldn’t find anyone competent to do the work for, say, $180,000 a year? In Ohio (Ohio isn’t NYC, folks). There are two reasons health care costs are so high: hospital greed and insurance company greed. But Medicare isn’t the reason.
As for Social Security, maybe Obama doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Social Security is self-funding and contributes NOTHING to the deficit. In fact, it operates at a surplus. Saying that SS needs to be cut is an outright lie. I view his remarks there with contempt and disgust.
I don’t know what “level of chess” this is, but, believe me, after over 2 years looking for a job. watching my retirement savings disappear, my house “underwater” I sincerely hope their is some method in this madness…..
I held my nose and voted for O. If that SOB thinks he can use this smoke and mirrors game as his corporate cronies are bidding him to destroy the already-ravaged safety net shreds that millions are hanging on to by their chewed fingernails without serious repercussion, he is deluded. That might finally wake up the USA but it’s gonna be ugly.
This just doesn’t make any sense. Medicare for all would make sense (if he were truly interested in cutting health-care costs). Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit, as everybody knows. And everybody (except Versailles) needs Social Security now that the bankstas have gambled away our 401ks (which were garbage to begin with).
This is all yet another try by Obama to cut Social Security and Medicare for his masters. It has nothing whatsoever to do with anything else. This is his sole purpose for being the chosen one, an end in and of itself: destroy Social Security and Medicare.
He is an idiot, a whore, and a liar. What he is not is a Democrat.
If the sequester is so bad, Mr. President, why did you negotiate for it, and then sign it into law?
If you were not prepared for the possibility that nothing would take it’s place, why did you sign the bill into law in the first place? Mr. President?
Called yesterday . . . for all the good it’ll do.
“He is an idiot, a whore, and a liar. What he is not is a Democrat.”
Right,right,right; ah, wrong.
DBK said “There are two reasons health care costs are so high: hospital greed and insurance company greed. But Medicare isn’t the reason.”
Right on brotha/sista, but you forgot reasons #3-5 for atrocious 2X+ actually civilized & also rich OECD nations health care costs
3. pharma greed
4. medical device greed
5. “provider” (physician/dentist/etc) greed
These 5 protected oligopoly cartels/Mafias are jointly charging the US 2X+ the cost of Canada & other rich nations. If there were “free market competition” in the US health care, Sen Dorgan (D-ND) amendment to reimport a pharma product made in Raleigh, NC & shipped to a Winnipeg, CAN warehouse, back into ND for under half the cost of a ND distributor is charging, would not be illegal & killed by 0bama/Boner/other plutocrat PR hacks. If there were “competition”, a “social entrepreneur” could “start-up” a “non-profit hosptiable” & abuse the H1-B visa system to bring in dozens of exprienced, English-speaking specialist physicians like cardiologists at say $50K or $100K salaries (Just like other US employers do to get non-protected professionals, like STEM PhDs, at the same or superior skill level of physicians, say Google does with H1-B to get Computer Scientists or Merck does to get cheap Biochemists).
Medicare For All, NOW, with aggressive actions to break the health care cartels & get US pricing in line with Canada benchmarks, within 5 years! What a joke that Plutocrats like criminal pension-thief Steven Rattner says that we must raise the Medicare age to 67/70 “because the economy can’t afford it”. All the civilized nations like Canada with Medicare Eligibility Age = 0 would be in a permanent economic depression if the Ratt’s insulting propaganda were true. However reality shows us that Canada has a superior economy than the US!
I earnestly wonder if the US has gotten to the point, that for non-connected-to-the-DC-NY-elite USian, eg at least 99% of we USians, that is among fortunate enough eligible to emigrate to a civilized rich nation like Canada via
1. immigrant worker visa
2. ~$400K “buying permanent residency” visa by buying a local biz hiring 5 local citizens or buying sovereign bonds, etc
should be working 60+ hr/wk on tasks that will allow her a greater chance of pursuing such a goal, working “as if their life depended on it”. It could literally be a “life vs. death” scenario for a USian. For example, working hard to emigrate to Canada (or New Zealand, Norway, heck even troubled Spain, etc) now such that you emigrate in say 2016 may prevent your death in 2030 by either private insurance company death panel or gutted Medicare.
I am deathly serious with this comment. I would love for it to be that I’m incorrect, that a new FDR/ Newer Deal-er like say Elizabeth Warren may be elected in 2016 & re-civilize the US to civilized nation standards, but sadly I do not see this as likely. 0bama Reagan Jr., Boner, & CorpMedia is openly talking about the “need to cut Social Security & Medicare”, already a weak Social Insurance compared to civilized nations, & only a minority percentage of us USians are outraged or even notice it (many distracted by nonsense like reality TV)!
Please talk me down if I am missing something here.
Obama’s Big Lie is in this quote from above:
Well, two big lies. What he refers to as entitlements are earned benefits, but, worse, he says he wants to do things his “own party” doesn’t like.
Except his actual party, the Corporatist Party, loves what he wants to do. It’s part of why they hired him. It saw this Democrat in sheep’s clothing as their chance to finally screw over the great social safety nets put in place in the 29th Century. The people who are going to be negatively affected, which includes people from all parties and no party at all, plus actual Democrats of the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party, who don’t like what he wants so desperately to do, will bear the pain.
Obama is willing to make a mess of the US economy to create the crisis conditions he needs to pressure Congress and fool the people, all to please the Powers That Be, his base. Obama has been trying to engineer crises for years now, even though he came to office because of a huge actual crisis.
But he used that first one to save Big Money, Big Banksters, Big Bidnesses. So he’s been working to set up new crises and throwing away chances he had to actually raise more revenue. He could have just let the damn Bush(then Obama) tax cuts for the rich expire and have had revenue pouring in from the Tippy Toppers, along with some from the rest of us. But he couldn’t do that to his actual base, the Big Money, etc., crowd.
Now, he’s set in motion not just the Fiscal Cliff face crisis, but this latest Sequestration crisis, and will have the next Debt Limit crisis, Budget Deadline crisis, and more that he will gin up if he needs to in order to cut/gut SocSec and Medicare.
Damn him.