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The Jax Files: With Tom Jackson in Pasco

Pasco County News | Breaking News

Rich Nugent is unimpressed ...

Posted Apr 13, 2011 by Tom Jackson

Updated Apr 13, 2011 at 10:13 PM

... with President Obama’s sudden (re?) discovery of America’s calamitous deficit and debt, as well as his fancy footwork shadowboxing the crisis of our day.

Nugent (R-Spring Hill), Florida’s District 5 representative (much of the Nature Coast, plus central and east Pasco, some of Sumter and a corner of Polk) dispatched the following from his Capitol Hill office following Obama’s oddly inspecific, unserious and frequently self-contradictory speech at George Washington University (surely its namesake is restless in his tomb) Wednesday:

“The President tried to take a mulligan today. His actual budget, released just a few weeks ago, was widely criticized as not even being credible. His approval rating on his handling of the deficit is in the low thirties. His advisors told him that he needed to follow the Republicans’ lead and make a real proposal.

“Americans will have to decide if this is a credible proposal or if it is just more of the same fluff. In my estimation, it will take more than a speech and some poll-tested new talking points to convince Americans that he is serious about the deficit.

“He has a great record of using big talk to sound like a leader, but he doesn’t have the best record on following through with that rhetoric.

“In his State of the Union Address, President Obama talked tough about the deficit and then proceeded to outline all of the things that we cannot cut, cannot reform, and cannot discuss.

“In his speech today, President Obama said, ‘I guarantee that if we don’t make any changes at all [to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security], we won’t be able to keep our commitments to a retiring generation that will live longer and face higher healthcare costs than those who came before.’ Then he proceeded to skip proposing any real reforms to those programs and fell back on talking points about raising taxes.

“His speech warned listeners to beware of politicians who talk about ‘eliminating waste’ as cover for not having a real plan. He then proceeded to talk repeatedly about making government programs ‘more efficient’.

“He made a big deal about creating a deficit commission and then flatly rejected their recommendations.

“He is trying to walk back his own budget to avoid the criticism that he’s not serious, but he’s trying to do it with more vague proposals about spending cuts and more familiar proposals about tax increases.

“The most positive thing in all of this is that we are at least talking about how much to cut and not how much more to spend.”

To paraphrase: The President’s message on America’s debt crisis was another high-speed trainload of bovine soil enrichment. If only a way could be found to bag it up.