|
|
|
Obama's Broken Promises
By John Stossel, On January 20, 2010. In a Reason Magazine interview
last year, Ted Balaker asked me about my hopes for the incoming Obama
administration. "Maybe Obama will be financially responsible," I said
[1].
I’m so inclined to wishful thinking.
It's now been one year since Obama took office. He promised fiscal
responsibility. Then he broke lots of those promises. Here is a list of
some:
Promise #6: No Tax Increase on Families Making Under
250k
“Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see
any form of tax increase - not your income tax, not your payroll tax,
not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes,” Obama said in
a September 2008 town hall meeting in Dover.
Reality: In his first year in office, he proposed Cap and Trade,
which would be a fat tax on everyone. He increased the cigarette tax by
159 percent, and now we have that proposed tax on fancy health care
benefits.
During the campaign, he criticized John McCain for just suggesting that.
“My opponent can't make that pledge [not to raise taxes] and here’s
why: for the first time in American history, John McCain wants to tax
your health care benefits," he said in the same speech.
But now it's Obama who wants to tax health plans:
“This reform will charge insurance companies a fee for their most
expensive policies,” he said in his health care address to Congress.
Promise #5: Ban Earmarks
"We are going to ban all earmarks,” Obama said at a press
conference on January 6, 2009.
Reality: The first spending bill he signed had over 9,000
earmarks [2].
Promise #4: I Won't Force Americans To Buy Insurance
During the campaign, Obama attacked Hillary Clinton:
“She believes we have to force people who don’t have insurance,”
he said in a primary debate in January 2008.
In a Feb. 2008 CNN interview, he added [3]: “If a mandate was
the solution, we could try that to solve homelessness by mandating that
everybody buy a house.”
Reality: This September, he told Congress: “Under my plan,
individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance.”
Promise #3: Health care negotiations will be on C-SPAN
Obama promised at least eight times [4] that "we’re going to
do all the negotiations on C-SPAN, So the American people will be able
to watch.”
Reality: They haven’t been there.
Well, briefly. C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb said [5], “The only time
we’ve been allowed to cover the White House part of it was one hour
inside the East Room, which was kind of just a show horse type of
thing.”
Promise #2: Putting bills online
Obama promised “When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as
President, you the public will have five days to look online, and find
out what’s in it before I sign it.”
Reality: He broke that promise when he singed his first bill, the
Fair Pay Act. He's broken it since, for instance on the Credit Card Bill
of Rights and an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance
Program.
Promise #1: Cutting spending
On the campaign trail, Obama promised to cut spending several times. In
the second presidential debate, he said that “actually, I am cutting
more than I’m spending. So it will be a net spending cut.”
In the third debate, he reiterated: “what I've done throughout this
campaign is to propose a net spending cut.”
Of course, Republicans made claims like that, too. Bush Sr. is famous
for his “Read my lips. No new taxes” line. Bush Jr. made
statements like “Prosperity requires restraining the spending
appetite of the federal government.”
Reality: Here’s a graph:
Source:
http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/01/20/obamas-broken-promises/
URLs in this post:
[1] said:
http://reason.com/archives/2009/02/04/we-have-a-lot-of-work-to-do/print
[2] had over 9,000 earmarks:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/02/obama-sign-spending-despite-earmarks/
[3] added:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoSnqofelsQ&feature=player_embedded
[4] promised at least eight times:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1PIWWgDG1k
[5] said:
http://breitbart.tv/c-span-ceo-white-house-has-allowed-only-one-hour-of-health-care-coverage/
[6] Image:
http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/files/2010/01/spending.JPG
|
|
