What’s got Glenn announcing there could be “scattered showers of journalism”? Apparently, someone has actually decided to do their job and ask questions of President Obama’s budget proposal. The radio crew gave their reaction on radio this morning.
Reporter Chip Reid had the audacity to ask Obama, “You said that this budget is not going to add to the credit card as of about the middle of the decade and, as Robert Gibbs might say, I'm not a budget expert and I'm not an economist, but if you could just explain to me how you can say that when, if you look on Page 171, which I'm sure you've read, it is the central page in this, the deficits go from 1.1 trillion down to 768 billion and then go down again all of the way to 607 billion in 2015 and then they start to creep up again and by 2021 it's at 774 billion and the total over those 10 years, the total debt, is $7.2 trillion on top of the 14 trillion we already have. How can you say that we're living within our means?”
Obama’s response? “Here's -- hold on one second because I'm not suggesting that we don't have to do more. We still have all this accumulated debt. As a consequence of the recession and as a consequence of a series of decisions that were made,” the President said.
Glenn said, “Listen to this. This is what he's saying. He's saying this is accumulated debt, this is debt that -- no, no, no. Mr. President. This is new debt. This is $7 trillion of new debt.”
Obama continues, “ Over the last decade, we piled up -- we racked up a whole lot of debt and there is a lot of interest on that debt. So, in the same way that if you've got a credit card and you've got a big balance, you may not be adding to principal. You've still got all that interest that you've got to pay. Well, we've got a big problem in terms of accumulated interest that we're paying and that's why we're going to have to whittle down further the debt on -- that's already been accumulated.”
Stu said, “I think what he's trying to say here is that he shouldn't be held accountable for the interest on the debt that's been accumulated in the past 200 years of our country.”
“And he can keep spending because he's not responsible for interest payments,” Pat added.
“So essentially we would be even if you just took out the part of the budget he doesn't want to include. We wouldn't be adding to debt if you don't count the debt that we're adding. It's one of the most unbelievable disconnects from reality I've ever heard,” Stu concluded.
“He's saying if you have a thousand dollars that you owe and you get a $100 payment but $60 of it is interest, he's only paying the $40 and he's saying that that's -- do you know what a credit card does when you do that? They shut your credit card down, they raise your interest rates, they ruin your credit, and eventually you go bankrupt. You have to pay the interest. It's your responsibility,” Stu added.
“Look what he's doing. All he's doing here is changing the formula. That's all he's doing. He's saying we're not going to count this part, exactly what they do with inflation, the rate of inflation. They just change the formula so they can say there is no inflation, but you and I both know there is.,” Glenn said.