AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Obama vows to cut huge deficit in half
By MIKE ALLEN | 2/22/09 6:58 AM EST

President Obama will announce Monday that he plans to cut the nation’’s projected annual deficit in half by the end of his first term, a senior administration official said Saturday.

The plan will make explicit what Obama officials have been suggesting for months: Contrary to his campaign promise, Obama will allow the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans expire as scheduled at the end of 2010 instead of seeking their repeal sooner. Officials determined that seeking to raise the taxes earlier during a recession was a bad idea, advisers said.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19124.html

President Barack Obama's pledge to cut deficit in half a huge challenge
Experts say numbers defy halving shortfall by end of his term
By Janet Hook and Peter Nicholas | Washington Bureau
February 26, 2009
WASHINGTON "" As President Barack Obama presents his first budget Thursday, the most daunting goal he sets may not be the ambitious proposals for economic recovery, health-care reform or revamping the nation's energy policy. Big as those challenges are, they may be child's play compared to his promise to slash the federal budget deficit in half by the end of his term.
Two problems already are apparent if he is to cut the $1.3 trillion deficit to $533 billion. First, many of the methods he says he will use have often fallen short in the past""cutting waste, imposing new budget rules, curbing defense outlays and raising taxes on the affluent.

Second and potentially harder to overcome: There is fresh evidence that, for all the talk of fiscal responsibility, Congress is not ready to mend its free-spending ways.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-budget_thursfeb26,0,6698914.story

Obama aims to cut deficit in half by 2013
Updated 2/23/2009
President Obama's 2010 budget includes plans for defense cuts, including a rollback of the Iraq war
By David Jackson, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON "" Now that his $787 billion stimulus bill is law, President Obama plans to spend this week promoting a budget plan designed to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term.
The president will host a "fiscal responsibility summit" at the White House on Monday and will give a prime-time speech to Congress on Tuesday before unveiling a budget overview Thursday.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki confirmed that the administration pegs the current deficit at $1.3 trillion, or 9.2% of the overall economy, and projects that in four years the deficit will be down to $533 billion, or 3% of the economy as measured by the gross domestic product.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-02-22-obamaecon_N.htm Text Size:

President Barack Obama's pledge to cut deficit in half a huge challenge
Experts say numbers defy halving shortfall by end of his term

By Janet Hook and Peter Nicholas | Washington Bureau
February 26, 2009

WASHINGTON " As President Barack Obama presents his first budget Thursday, the most daunting goal he sets may not be the ambitious proposals for economic recovery, health-care reform or revamping the nation's energy policy. Big as those challenges are, they may be child's play compared to his promise to slash the federal budget deficit in half by the end of his term.

Two problems already are apparent if he is to cut the $1.3 trillion deficit to $533 billion. First, many of the methods he says he will use have often fallen short in the past"cutting waste, imposing new budget rules, curbing defense outlays and raising taxes on the affluent.

Second and potentially harder to overcome: There is fresh evidence that, for all the talk of fiscal responsibility, Congress is not ready to mend its free-spending ways.

So apparently you trust journalists and media more than lawyers. Pledge is their headline, and the President in the next "aims" and "plans" to cut the deficit. Another journalist paraphrases with "vows," another word I can't find Obama using. If you that easily tricked my journalists, your just as easily tricked by the lawyers in the Congress and the Senate. They're called headlines, or in journalism, "hooks." They just wait for you to fall for the line and sinker.

So, again, did I miss something or where did Obama himself say, "I pledge to cut the deficit in half?"

Torture does NOT pale in comparison to interning US citizes. Both are reprehensible.

Our government officially apologized for violating the civil rights of Japanese-Americans. The Civil Liberties Act, signed by President Reagan, "provided $1.65 billion in restitution to 82,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry who had been subjected to evacuation, relocation and internment during World War II."

When you stop worshipping Bush's imperial presidency, maybe your head will be clear enough for you to understand that torture and abuse is never acceptable. How much restitution do we owe a human being for nearly suffocating him to death 183 times? How do we make amends to the whole world and regain our moral center? We can start by investigating and prosecuting those responsible for the torture and abuse.

Most legal scholars in this country has already classified waterboarding as torture and illegal.

Torture does NOT pale in comparison to interning US citizes. Both are reprehensible.

Our government officially apologized for violating the civil rights of Japanese-Americans. The Civil Liberties Act, signed by President Reagan, "provided $1.65 billion in restitution to 82,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry who had been subjected to evacuation, relocation and internment during World War II."

When you stop worshipping Bush's imperial presidency, maybe your head will be clear enough for you to understand that torture and abuse is never acceptable. How much restitution do we owe a human being for nearly suffocating him to death 183 times? How do we make amends to the whole world and regain our moral center? We can start by investigating and prosecuting those responsible for the torture and abuse.

Bush was an idiot, as I've said here many times.

You sure seem to worship at the alter of the far left, including the Obama presidency, though.

You are also living in an echo chamber re ‘torture.’ Just because others on the left keep repeating themselves doesn’t make it true.

While some of the repubs are agreeing with Obama, not everyone in the dem party is agreeing with him, either. It is not as clear cut of an issue as those of you on the far left would like to believe.

How about answering my question? Shouldn't the Obama admin track down FDR admin officials who were in the decision making loop re interment camps, much as Germany hunts down Nazis to this day?

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. . . .

Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means-to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal-would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face.

“Do you really believe that we lost 18-to-34-year-olds by 19 percent, or we lost Hispanic voters, because we are not conservative enough?” he said. “No. This is a ridiculous line of thought. The truth is we lost young people because our Republican brand is tainted.”