Today, President Obama used a colorful metaphor to describe the current fiscal squabble in Washington. The squabble concerns whether Obama will be granted, or whether he will seize, unilateral power to raise the nation’s debt limit.
In the final press conference of his first term, President Barack Obama warned he would not negotiate with Republicans who he said were holding “a gun at the head of the American people” over raising the country’s debt ceiling.
Coming from a president who is threatening to enact executive order action on gun control, in order ostensibly to curb violence by cracking down on the law-abiding citizen’s right of self-defense, the metaphor is more than a bit out of place.
It’s also not a first for this president.
On June 6, 2011, President Obama accused Republicans of holding a gun to the head of the American people over the debt ceiling.
OBAMA in 2011: The debt ceiling is not something that the Republicans should hold as a gun to the head of the American people to extract tax breaks for corporate jet owners, or oil and gas companies that are making billions of dollars because the price of gas er oil er gas has gone up so high.
Let’s be clear. This is what the president who once said he was working on gun control “under the radar” is accusing the Republicans of doing, when they suggest that the United States should stop spending so much money that it does not have, and should spend within our means.
Yes, that’s the late Daniel Pearl.
“Nobody move or the taxpayer gets it!”
– Blazing Deficits
I don’t see what he is talking about–the Constitution gives Congress the power to positively set both budget and debt. All the President can do is exercise a veto, a negative. He can’t, by the Constitution, do anything but….
….hold a gun to someone’s head and say “hold it, or the black man gets it”.
To emphasize the point once more–to Congress goes the affirmative power to set budget and debt. The President can never actually set a number. Never. He has no power to put into place a single dollar. Not one. If Congress never acts, the President could say he would sign all he wants–nothing could be done. Congress, and Congress alone, *sets* the budget.
Now, the Congress is divided, but if left to their own devices (and if the Senate was actually a body composed of equal states, instead of being apparently Nevada’s personal property, a discredit to that state and perhaps something to be remembered for the future)–at any rate, they would eventually come up with a compromise. So it is the President stopping progress, through the veto threat, and therefore for the one man promising to destroy America if he doesn’t get what he wants (oh, the irony!), well, for that man to claim the side exercising its explicitly granted affirmative Constitutional grant of power to set budget and debt is holding a pistol to the head of America, well, it is like the man who killed his parents askng for mercy because he’s an orphan.
And I would like to add that the Constitution does not require a regular 2/3 majority for the Congress to pass bills, so somewhat like the filibuster, excessive use of veto threats goes against the *spirit* of representative democracy.
You should consider removing the picture of Daniel Pearl. His murder has no place with the disgraceful doings in DC.
I agree. There’s no reason to disrespect Daniel Pearl by showing how he was used by his murderers.
Not cool.
“What we have he-ah iz a fail-yuh to communicate.” Cool Hand Duke . . . of Earl
– he and Biden will commit murder.
Why can’t Republicans come back and accuse him and the Democrats of sacrificing our children on the alter of their religion of spending? Make a commercial of Obama holding a baby over an alter of burning money or something, you know if they’re going to use this sort of rhetoric we can’t be afraid to hit them back. Or maybe run an add campaign showing what the portion of the national debt that each newborn child inherits is and overlay that with quotes of Obama saying we don’t have a spending problem.
Sorry, that should be “altar” darn spell check
anyone else think obozo acts like a spoiled brat with no real parenting and accustomed to getting his own way by bullying and lying????