Unbelievable: Obama White House Stubbornly Refusing to Release Any Written Debt Plan (Update: Video Added)
The Obama White House is so irresponsible, and so fearful of locking itself into anything at all, that it’s refusing to even put a debt plan on paper. Rory Cooper tweeted this from today’s WH press briefing:
Chuck Todd: “Release your plan” Jay Carney: “We’ve shown a lot of leg” Todd: “Why not just release it?” Carney: “You need it written down?”
Yes, Jay, the American people elected your boss in the hope that he might occasionally do his job. Show his work. Demonstrate a little competence once in a while. Is that too much to ask?
Apparently it is. As we blogged yesterday, Obama’s bizarre reticence to lead is as much a headache for his own party as it is for the GOP. Maybe more, since Reid et al just can’t come out and blast him the way they would a Republican president. So Congress sidelined him over the weekend, but as long as he’s the president he can’t really be sidelined: He has to sign something.
And agitate against whatever is heading for his desk before he signs it, of course.
Update: Here’s video of Carney getting grilled over his boss’ lack of a plan. The reporters’ collective groan reacting to Carney is priceless.
Update: So the WH won’t come up with a plan, but is threatening to veto the latest from Boehner. Obama owns this crisis from stem to stern.
This is why the GOP should just say “we passed CCB, balls in your court, we’ve done our job.” And force the Whitehouse and Senate to do something.
I know the Senate tabled CCB, but that just means it’s been set aside, not defeated. Until it’s defeated by the Senate, it is still in play. IMHO.
I suspect the reason for not putting anything in black and white is so that no one can hold him to anything, just as it was during his first presidential campaign when he put forth himself as a blank canvas so that people could project onto him whatever they wanted him to be. Since he’s now, again, in full-on campaign mode, it’s just more of the same. His real agenda is revealed in his unscripted, non-teleprompter moments, and a written plan would expose him unequivocally for what he is.
By not putting anything in writing, you can create a lucrative uncertainty risk of financial turmoil with deceptive political threats while simultaneously giving your political supporters in the banking industry inside information that you’re bluffing so that they can make major financial moves on that info. Then the profits can be pushed back into your campaign.
Obama can’t reveal a written debt plan because he doesn’t know how to create one. There is no secret motive behind this absence of a plan. Obama simply doesn’t know how to do what presidents do. He can’t do it himself and he doesn’t know how to get his subordinates, who might be more knowledgeable, to do it either.
Writing plans, supervising subordinates, creating budgets–these are all skills that executives acquire. He was never an executive before and doesn’t have executive skills. This situation is like the movie “Being There,” where you have an individual who is totally unaware and unskilled making oracular statements that a gullible public imputes meaning to. Obama’s election marked the triumph of video technology over human thought! All technology–no thought.
Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s books, maybe the call should go out to him for this.
Gloria, I completely agree with you. The man has no executive skills and I don’t think anyone in the White House dares tell their boss that this isn’t the way to go. With Daley as chief of staff, you’d think he’d have the guts to speak, but either he doesn’t or the president won’t listen. I’d bet on the latter.
Remember when this was going to be the most transparent administration in history? Who knew that what we’d see through the transparency was…nothing. Just nothing.
The Press groaned, because they got yet another thing to have to whitewash. More work for them.
Seriously, Fox’s guy asked the original question, but even NBC pressed on this, because it is eminently reasonable to ask the President to offer up his own plan, if he does not like the other guy’s plan.
“Well, what’s YOUR plan, then?”, is undeniable. Everyone understands that simple response, even children. When nothing is offered, the next statement is always, “Well, then, shut up!” Even the Press knows this. Thus, the groan.
“What’s your plan?”, is not a Republican talking point, but it should be.
Clearly this is similar to the Nancy Pelosi line during the health care debate of you have to sign the law to see what’s in it.
You have to agree to the compromise before knowing what we consider our position. If you put out a plan than we could look at it , see if there is anything we like and go from there.
This is more like the argument clinic skit from Monty Python …
No written plan, no CBO scoring process.
In ObamaWorld, no written plan means:
- No CBO scoring process
- No brutal point-by-point fiskings by the left and right
- No 14-months of daily BBQs featuring “but in your written plan you said …”
- No fixed goalposts or promises he might choose to abandon tomorrow
- No GOP campaign ads zooming in a piece of paper detailing more spending from the Spender in Chief
What Obumbler SAYS doesn’t mean diddly. We know that. His refusal to share even the simplest written bullet list confirms he believes the same: his spoken words are meaningless conveniences subject to change.
With all due respect to sailors who are honorably serving their country, why expect Obama to have a written debt plan any more than you would expect a drunken sailor to have written debt plan?
How much time do you think this race-hustling, community agitator spends behind the desk in the Oval Office? NONE. He’s like any other flim-flam man-constantly on the move so as to avoid consequences. He’s been a fraud his entire affirnmative action life. Anyone with any sense could have recognized from day one what he was. No wonder Bill Clinton was so nonplussed when Obama steamrolled Hilarhe knew Obama had no game. I also am a huge (no pun intended) fan of terminally resentful Michelle. She walks around Cape Cod with her head perpetually stuffed inside an ice cream cone, wolfs down massive, greasy lunches and then bullies McDonald’s to serve apple slices with their Happy Meals. I can’t wait until she has to move her middle-linebacker physique out of the White House along with her dope-smoking, sports myth breaking weasel of a husband.