Clueless in Washington

The poll showed support for Obama’s economic agenda has begun to slip in the past nine months. The percentage of people who said Obama has made the economy worse jumped six points since October to 37 percent. That creates a bigger opening for Republican attacks as the presidential campaign begins to heat up. The latest viral video by the Republican National Committee hones in on the jobs lost since Obama took office. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has made “Where are the jobs?” a catchphrase of his campaign. – More Americans unhappy with Obama on economy, jobs

Talk about a disconnect.

Whether it’s Pres. Obama, establishment Republicans and Democrats, or the extortionist Tea Party House wing, nobody seems to get it. Unfortunately, it begins with Barack Obama, who simply hasn’t one clue in ten what he’s doing or the economic priorities of Americans.

Read Dean Baker, for starters, who pounces on Pres. Obama’s “gaffe” about the deficit heading toward $1 trillion. We begin Baker’s column with a quote from Pres. Obama…

“For the last decade, we have spent more money than we take in. In the year 2000, the government had a budget surplus. But instead of using it to pay off our debt, the money was spent on trillions of dollars in new tax cuts, while two wars and an expensive prescription drug program were simply added to our nation’s credit card. As a result, the deficit was on track to top $1 trillion the year I took office.”

This is seriously mistaken.

The Congressional Budget Office’s projections from January of 2008, the last ones made before it recognized the housing bubble and the implications of its collapse, showed a deficit of just $198 billion for 2009, the year President Obama took office. In other words, the deficit was absolutely not “on track to top $1 trillion.”

This is what is known as a “gaffe” of enormous proportions. It indicates that President Obama does not have the most basic understanding of the nature of the budget problems the country faces. He apparently believes that there was a huge deficit on an ongoing basis as a result of the policies in place prior to the downturn. In fact, the deficits were relatively modest. The huge deficits came about entirely as a result of the economic downturn brought about by the collapse of the housing bubble. This misunderstanding of the origins of the budget deficit could explain President Obama’s willingness to make large cuts to core social welfare programs, like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Pres. Obama and his team are relying on stupid, yours, that is.

This brings me to the incoming from people, emails that verify that Pres. Obama and both parties have most people thoroughly fed up.

I feel sure you are getting a lot of emails about the politicians throwing the middle class and seniors under the bus with trying to get the social security and medicare/medicaid cuts. I don’t understand why ALL the Democrats are not yelling to the top of their lungs every time they are in front of a camera not only about social security not causing this deficit but ALSO the Republicans are just using the deficit to get what they have wanted for years to either get rid of social security and medicare/medicaid or cut it as much as they can. They need to be making ads showing in all states showing videos of the Republicans that have made comments such as the one Republican that said he would get his hands off medicare when there is no medicare!! Are Democrats going to cave? Well, some already have I just don’t get it. Surely Obama knows we are not stupid? [...] President Obama is so wrong!! We do not have to compromise in a way that hurts even one middle class or poor person. Too many other ways to solve this mess. Thanks for listening! – RLaS

People are mad as hell and by the time 2012 rolls around it’s quite likely everybody in Washington is going to pay.

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