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Obama: Congress to Blame for Debt - It's Not My Fault

Wednesday, 29 Jun 2011 01:00 PM

By Martin Gould and Caroline Rawls

President Barack Obama came out swinging at Congress, blaming both
parties in both Houses for getting the country into the debt crisis in a
bid to deflect criticism about his own leadership.

At his first press conference since March, he said he is "amused" that
he is getting the blame when it is Congressional leaders who need to
step up to the plate and work.

"I met with every single caucus for 1-1/2 hours each," Obama said.

"Republican Senators, Democratic Senators, Republican House, Democratic
House. I've met with the leaders multiple times. At a certain point they
need to do their job."

He said that too many senior members of Congress "say a lot of things to
satisfy their base or get on cable news," but it is now time to change.

"Hopefully leaders will rise to the occasion and do the right thing for
the American people. Call me naïve but my expectation is that leaders
are going to lead."

Obama made it clear that the debt crisis has been caused by measures
passed by Congresses in the past and the current one cannot walk away.

"This isn't a situation where Congress is going to say 'okay we won't
buy this car or we won't take this vacation.' They took the vacation,
they bought the car and now they're saying 'maybe we don't have to pay
or we don't have to pay as fast as we said we were going to pay.'

"That's not how responsible families act. And we're the greatest nation
on earth and we can't act that way."

The President warned those in Congress looking forward to a long summer
break that they are going to have to "cancel things" and stay in
Washington until a deal on raising the $14.3 trillion debt limit is
reached as, he said, the Aug. 2 deadline set by Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner is real and there would be serious implications of the
parties cannot compromise. "This is urgent," he said.

"I'm President of the United States and I want to make sure I'm not
engaging in scare tactics. I try to be responsible and somewhat
restrained, so folks don't get spooked. But Aug. 2 is a very important
date."

He said too many seemed to be thinking that once the recess is on them
"Obama's got to step in." But he told them, "You need to be here. I've
been here. I've been doing Afghanistan and bin Laden and the Greek
crisis. You stay here. Let's get it done."

At one stage, he even mentioned his own daughters, comparing them to
Congress. "Malia and Sasha generally finish their homework a day ahead
of time. It's impressive. They don't wait till the night before and pull
an all-nighter.

"They're 13 and 10. Congress can do the same thing. If you know you have
to do something, just do it."

Obama had no compromise for Republicans who say that the only way to
solve the debt crisis is to cut spending. Playing to his own Democratic
base, he insisted that revenues will have to be raised through tax hikes
and closing loopholes for corporations and the very wealthy. Several
times he referred to oil companies, hedge fund managers and the owners
of corporate jets as those who will have to make sacrifices.

He said "every single observer who's not an elected official" agreed
that the only way to bridge the debt gap was to address both spending
and revenues and he called on Republicans to accept that, saying,
"Democrats have had to accept some painful spending cuts that hurt some
of our constituents and that we may not like. We've shown a willingness
to do that for the greater good.

"If everybody else is willing to take on their sacred cows and do tough
things, then I think it will be hard for the Republicans to stand there
and say that the tax breaks for corporate jets is sufficiently important
that we're not willing to come to the table and do that."

He also stressed that he wanted to make sure that cuts to payroll taxes
are extended, but he said that if Republican Senate Leader Mitch
McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner came to him with a deal on the
debt ceiling he could deal with it.

"If that was the situation they presented, I think we would have a
serious conversation about that. I would not discount that completely.

Obama started the meeting by saying that his administration is trying to
relax regulations on business in a bid to jump start the economy.

"We are reviewing government regulations so we can fix any rules that
are in place that are unnecessary. We're working with the private sector
to get small businesses and startups the finance they need to grow and
expand."

Then he immediately jumped in with what was to be the theme of the day -
his criticism of Congress, calling on it to pass bills on patent reform,
on creating jobs for construction workers, on trade agreements and by
extending the cuts to payroll taxes.

"Many of these ideas have been tied up in Congress for some time, but
all of them have enjoyed bipartisan support and all of them could help
the economy," he said.

On the deficit talks, he insisted that everything has to be on the
table. "We can't get to the $4 trillion in savings we need by just
cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical
research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather
service.

"And we can't just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare. We're
going to need to look at the whole budget. We have to eliminate waste
wherever we find it and make tough decisions about priorities.

"That means trimming the defense spending. It means we'll have to tackle
entitlements as long as we keep faith with seniors and children with
disabilities by maintaining the fundamental security that Medicare and
Medicaid provide. And yes we're going to have to tackle spending in the
tax code.

"If we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires
and corporate jet owners and for oil and gas companies who are making
hundreds of billions of dollars then that means we got to cut some kids
off from getting college scholarships. That means we've got to stop
funding certain grants for medical research. That means that food safety
might be compromised. That means that Medicare has to bear a large part
of the burden."

Not to worry, my friend. Barry will have his own Dealey Plaza.
Figuratively speaking, of course. We wouldn't want anything to happen to
the Magic Negro, now would we? The first president to spend more time
playing golf than .......... fill in the blank.

Steve