I'm Beginning to Wonder if Barack Obama Has Ever Said Anything That's True

During his Obamacare salesmanship speech today, President Barack Obama declared — without bursting into laughter or flames — that Obamacare “has nothing to do with the budget.”

Seriously, that’s what he said.

Whatever effect Obamacare might have on the economy is far less than even a few days of government shutdown.  (Applause.)   I mean, even if you believe that Obamacare somehow was going to hurt the economy, it won’t hurt the economy as bad as a government shutdown.  And by the way, the evidence is that it’s not going to hurt the economy.  Obamacare is going to help the economy.  And it’s going to help families and help businesses.  (Applause.)

Obama provides no evidence to back any of his claims, because they are not true.

As for not letting America pay its bills, I have to say, no Congress before this one has ever – ever — in history been irresponsible enough to threaten default, to threaten an economic shutdown, to suggest America not pay its bills, just to try to blackmail a President into giving them some concessions on issues that have nothing to do with a budget.

The current fight over the debt ceiling, a budgetary issue, is tied to Obamacare, also a budgetary issue. Charles W. Cooke lays out just how dishonest Obama’s speech was.

This is a law, remember, that was crowbarred through Congress with the questionable use of reconciliation, a parliamentary procedure that is reserved exclusively for budgetary matters; a law that was sold as a deficit-reduction measure; a law that contains a significant spending component, including a 5-10 percent increase in the size of the federal budget; and, alas, a law that boasts a central mandate that was upheld (rewritten) by the Supreme Court as a tax, thus ensuring that any changes to the penalties must be approved by the House. “Nothing to do with the budget”? This is what we call a lie, Watson.

Indeed.

The man’s mendacity is staggering. That he has acolytes and supporters who applaud his every word and pretend that the math of Obamacare and this president’s insanely profligate spending won’t eventually come crashing down on this country is disturbing. Obama and company must believe they have suspended the laws of physics.