Monthly Archives: April 2009

The Chairman’s Weekly Radio Address: April 25, 2009

Barack Obama’s Weekly Radio Address

April 25, 2009

Good morning.

Good morning.  But I bet it gets worse in about 3-2-1….

Over the last three months, my Administration has taken aggressive action to confront an historic economic crisis.

Yup, way worse.  Look, you keep sayin’ it, you Just Keep SAYIN’ it!  This is ONLY historic because it is the first time it has ever really affected YOU.  Stop.  And. Do. The. Math.

As we do everything that we can to create jobs and get our economy moving,

You know, I have tried.  I have read this line and then re-read it.  Like lots.  And I just can’t quite get over this whole part.  YOU CAN’T CREATE JOBS!  YOU don’t produce ANYTHING.  Sigh.

we’re also building a new foundation for lasting prosperity

You are not.  You.  Are lying.

– a foundation that invests in quality education, lowers health care costs,

Now stop, just stop.  You have no intention of lowering health care costs.  In fact, the opposite is true.  You want RAISE the total health care spend, you just wanna pull the cost from the wealthy and give it to the poor.

and develops new sources of energy powered by new jobs and industries.

See, I hear whatcha are sayin’, I just don’t think that yo know how to go about it.  You have to let these entrepreneurs loose in a “sandbox”.  Let them think and learn and invent FREE of government; not beholden to it.

One of the pillars of that foundation must be fiscal discipline.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA  -inhale- HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Stop it.  Please.  Oh lawd, THAT is rich!

We came into office

How much longer are you going to continue to play that card?

facing a budget deficit of $1.3 trillion for this year alone, and the cost of confronting our economic crisis is high. But we cannot settle for a future of rising deficits and debts that our children cannot pay.

Umm, but you did.  Serious.  Check it out.  And, not for nothin’, but YOU did it.

All across America, families are tightening their belts and making hard choices. Now, Washington must show that same sense of responsibility. That is why we have identified two trillion dollars in deficit-reductions over the next decade, while taking on the special interest spending that doesn’t advance the peoples’ interests.

I’m feelin’ it!  I’m a feelin’ it!

But we must also recognize that we cannot meet the challenges of today with old habits and stale thinking. So much of our government was built to deal with different challenges from a different era.

Amen!

Too often, the result is wasteful spending, bloated programs, and inefficient results.

I’ll say it again, AMEN!

It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington.

Hallelujah

To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient,

Yes Lord!

more transparent,

Yes Lord!

and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

The demons have been purged and and we are on our way to fiscal heaven!  I feel, I say I FEEL the love!

Earlier this week, I held my first Cabinet meeting and sent a clear message: cut what doesn’t work. Already, we’ve identified substantial savings. And in the days and weeks ahead, we will continue going through the budget line by line, and we’ll identify more than 100 programs that will be cut or eliminated.

But we can’t stop there. We need to go further, and we need an all-hands-on-deck approach to reforming government. That’s why I’m announcing several steps that my Administration will take in the weeks ahead to restore fiscal discipline while making our government work better.

First, we need to adhere to the basic principle that new tax or entitlement policies should be paid for. This principle – known as PAYGO – helped transform large deficits into surpluses in the 1990s. Now, we must restore that sense of fiscal discipline. That’s why I’m calling on Congress to pass PAYGO legislation like a bill that will be introduced by Congressman Baron Hill, so that government acts the same way any responsible family does in setting its budget.

Second, we’ll create new incentives to reduce wasteful spending and to invest in what works. We don’t want agencies to protect bloated budgets – we want them to promote effective programs. So the idea is simple: agencies that identify savings will get to keep a portion of those savings to invest in programs that work. The result will be a smaller budget, and a more effective government.

Third, we’ll look for ideas from the bottom up. After all, Americans across the country know that the best ideas often come from workers – not just management. That’s why we’ll establish a process through which every government worker can submit their ideas for how their agency can save money and perform better. We’ll put the suggestions that work into practice. And later this year, I will meet with those who come up with the best ideas to hear firsthand about how they would make your government more efficient and effective.

And finally, we will reach beyond the halls of government. Many businesses have innovative ways of using technology to save money, and many experts have new ideas to make government work more efficiently. Government can – and must – learn from them. So later this year, we will host a forum on reforming government for the 21st century, so that we’re also guided by voices that come from outside of Washington.

We cannot sustain deficits that mortgage our children’s future, nor tolerate wasteful inefficiency.

Coulda fooled me.  Have you seen what you have been spending kind sir?

Government has a responsibility to spend the peoples’ money wisely,

THIS I know.  I just don’t think that you know it.

and to serve the people effectively. I will work every single day that I am President to live up to that responsibility, and to transform our government so that is held to a higher standard of performance on behalf of the American people.

Thank you.

Why We Have to Fight the Unions

Certainly this last election was troubling for me here in Carolina.  We saw all the obvious, no need to rehash that here and now.  However, upon further reflection, I am perhaps most troubled by the increased influence of the labor movement here in North Carolina.  As a transplant, my history of struggles between the state and the unions is incomplete, but I understand that it has been brutal at times and even bloody.

Be that as it may, the impact of labor unions on the economic health of a state is dramatic and obvious.  And as the economic health goes, so goes the health of that state in general.  This includes the ability to create jobs, to keep those jobs, to balancing the budget and creating an environment that allows general and overall growth of that state.

This afternoon I came across this entry from Carpe Diem.  In it, Perry is showing that the highest ranking states in the “Economic Outlook Rankings” are almost all Right to Work states while the lowest are not.  Further, the net migration numbers are showing that people are leaving those Union Friendly states in droves.  And where are they moving to?  You got, Right to Work states.

But this is not news, it is just demonstrating what we really, already know.  That unions destroy economic progress.  And people, knowingly or not, vote with their feet and simply leave.  And typically, those that CAN leave are the ones that DO leave resulting in a continued downward spiral.  For example, see California:

California, which once lured Americans from near and far, is now driving out millions of the most productive residents – including high percentages of the most affluent.

“When California faced a Mount Everest-sized $14 billion deficit in 2003, one of the major causes for the red ink was the stampede of millionaire households from the state,” says a report called “Rich States, Poor States” by economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore. “Out of the 25,000 or so seven-figure-income families, more than 5,000 left in the early 2000s, and the loss of their tax payments accounted for about half the budget hole.”

So this is what has me concerned about this past year’s election; the increased influence of the labor movement.  And here is why:

Big Labor’s Top Ten Special Privileges

1.  Exemption from prosecution for union violence.
2.  Exemption from anti-monopoly laws.
3.  Power to force employees to accept unwanted union representation.
4.  Power to collect forced union dues.
5.  Unlimited, undisclosed electioneering.
6.  Ability to strong-arm employers into negotiations.
7.  Right to trespass on an employer’s private property.
8.  Ability of strikers to keep jobs despite refusing to work.
9.  Union-only cartels on construction projects.
10. Government funding of forced unionism.

Just take a look at this list.  While I always have had a good healthy distrust and dislike for Unions, I have never seen it laid out bare like this.  Not ONE of these things even passes the basic sniff test.  Now don’t get me wrong, I fully support the right of worker or workers to “unite” in their common goal to approach management and offer a bargaining position.  What I do not support, is this legal mandate that exists that offers this kind of protection to a single organization.

And this is what scares me.