True Liberal Nexus

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

July 23, 2011

WEEKLY ADDRESS: A Bipartisan Approach to Strengthening the Economy

(Note: True Liberal Nexus has acquired the unabridged version of this speech.  Sections deleted from the version released by the White House appear in italics.)

For years, the government has spent more money than it takes in.  The result is a lot of debt on our nation’s credit card – debt that unless we act will weaken our economy, cause higher interest rates for families, and force us to scale back things like education and Medicare.

Now, folks in Washington like to blame one another for this problem.  But the truth is, neither party is blameless.

Democrats, like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, are just much to blame as Republicans like John Boener and myself.

And both parties have a responsibility to do something about it.

Every day, families are figuring out how stretch their paychecks – struggling to cut what they can’t afford so they can pay for what’s really important.  It’s time for Washington to do the same thing.

Because, just like a family, the government has no way to raise extra cash by selling bonds, printing money, or simply raising the debt ceiling every few months.

But for that to happen, it means that Democrats and Republicans have to work together to do what’s right for the country.  Everyone is going to have to be willing to compromise.  That’s why we need a balanced approach to cutting the deficit.

And by balanced, I mean making all the cuts the Right insists on, without any of the revenue proposals from the Left.

We need an approach that goes after waste in the budget and gets rid of pet projects that cost billions of dollars.

Like my wars. Except we’re not touching any of those.

We need an approach that makes some serious cuts to worthy programs – cuts I wouldn’t make under normal circumstances

— unless I had this debt limit crisis as a smoke screen.

And we need an approach that asks everybody to do their part.

Everyone except the wealthiest 2% of the population.  They’re better than the rest of you, and shouldn’t be imposed upon to give up a penny more of their well-deserved fortunes. 

So that means, yes, we have to make serious budget cuts; but that it’s not right to ask middle class families to pay more for college before we ask the biggest corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.

Which is why the proposal includes a lowering of the top corporate tax bracket. 

It means that before we stop funding clean energy, we should ask oil companies and corporate jet owners to give up the tax breaks that other companies don’t get.

Don’t get me wrong, we will be killing clean energy funding.  But that jet thing alone will cover a whopping .075 % of the deficit reductions.

Before we cut medical research, we should ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries.  Before we ask seniors to pay more for Medicare, we should ask the wealthiest taxpayers to give up tax breaks we simply cannot afford under these circumstances.

This assumes that the Republican-dominated congress will allow those tax breaks to expire next year, but I’m going to get the ball rolling by cutting Medicare today.  There’s also a clause that ensures that Social Security, even though it’s self-funding, will be gutted as well.

That’s the heart of this approach: serious cuts, balanced by some new revenues.

To be specific, 74% cuts balanced equally by 26% revenues.

And it’s been the position of every Democratic and Republican leader who has worked to reduce the deficit, from Bill Clinton to Ronald Reagan.

Following in the footsteps of those two presidents, I intend on standing firm and giving my opponents every single thing they demand.

In fact, earlier this week, one of the most conservative members of the Senate, Tom Coburn, announced his support for a balanced, bipartisan plan that shows promise.

That’s no surprise, considering that plan is a conservative’s wet dream co-authored by Coburn.

And then a funny thing happened.  He received a round of applause – from a group of Republican and Democratic senators.

A group known as the “Gang of Six”, the other co-authors of that plan.

That’s a rare event in Washington.

See, I told you my mojo would transform politics.

So there will be plenty of haggling over the details in the days ahead.

But don’t worry — anyone who opposes my plan will be labeled a racist.

But this debate boils down to a simple choice.  We can come together for the good of the country and reach a compromise; we can strengthen our economy and leave for our children a more secure future.

Or we can sell our country down the river, complete the destruction of our economy, leave our seniors out in the cold, and ruin the future for our children.

Well, we know the right thing to do.  And we know what the American people expect us to do.

But the corporate donors to our re-election campaigns expect us to do the opposite.  And they’re the ones running the show, not you sorry dupes.

So, fuck you, America, up the ass, and goodnight.

— Barack

(c) 2011 by True Liberal Nexus.  All rights reserved.