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Moderate Democrats Resist

By SusanUnPC on March 25, 2009 at 3:30 AM in Congress (House & Senate), Democratic Party, Obama Administration, Obama's Budget

If you read Larry Johnson’s “The Truth on the CBO Budget Projections,” you must see this video and another of Judd Gregg on Fox News tonight in response to Obama’s snoozer of a press conference (btw, did you notice how he avoided print journalists?):

BELOW, Judd Gregg and clips from CNN’s “Senate Dems propose cutting Obama budget by billions“:

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From CNN’s “Senate Dems propose cutting Obama budget by billions“:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Hours before President Obama was to hold a prime time news conference — in part to boost his $3.6 trillion budget plan — a key Democratic senator Tuesday unveiled a scaled-down budget proposal.

Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said the Senate Budget Committee, which he chairs, will vote on his version Wednesday.

“We’ve made hundreds of billions of dollars of changes to make this work to get down to the deficit goal and at the same time maintain the president’s priorities — education and energy and health care,” Conrad said as he left a closed meeting in the Capitol, where he briefed Senate Democratic colleagues on his plan.

Conrad and other centrist Democratic senators — whose support is critical to passing the legislation — have raised concerns about the long-term impact of the president’s spending plan on the deficit.

HOWEVER, Republicans are blasting Conrad’s compromise plan as well as Obama’s astonishing @ $4 trillion budget:

Republicans who blasted the Obama budget proposal for spending, taxing and borrowing too much also criticized Conrad’s proposal because some of the items Conrad stripped from the spending blueprint might have to be funded anyway.

For example, Conrad’s budget strikes Obama’s proposal to set aside $250 billion in case more money is needed for the financial sector rescue, an aide said.

Conrad’s budget also curtails Obama’s fix of the costly alternative minimum tax and doesn’t account for increased payments for doctors who care for Medicare recipients, said Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the top Republican on the Budget Committee.

“You can get these presidential numbers down by using a lot of gimmicks that the president didn’t use. That would be a mistake. Let’s be honest with the Americans,” Gregg said Tuesday.

“It’s certainly not a gimmick,” Conrad responded. “We faced up to changes.”

Republicans were also critical of Conrad’s plan to calculate the budget deficit over five years instead of 10, meaning a common measure of government spending, the 10-year cost, wouldn’t officially be part of the price. Gregg accused Conrad of trying to hide the true cost of the plan. …

  • Diana

    I really miss listening to Lou Dobbs. He’s always been one of my favorites, but I won’t go back to CNN. I also you to really enjoy Anderson Cooper. Oh well. This press conference was no different than the others. The questions were pre-selected as well as the answers and at the times he stuttered they caught them passing around what appeared to be a cell phone with them adding addition answers to the teleprompter. I don’t think the man has any idea what he’s doing. They tell him what to say and watch him like a hawk to see he doesn’t stray. He has no concept of foreign policy except what they feed him and it appears they could care less about foreign policy.

    • Diana

      I’m sorry. I’m tired that should read used to, not you to really enjoy…

  • tango

    You know what I want to see? A camera crew at a Presidential press conference that doesn’t concentrate on the President alone. I want it to pan the reporters and other staff to see if they are in fact feeding “answers” into something that will zip them to the teleprompter. I also want the cameras to constanly scan over the teleprompter to see what’s written there. I want to know if when Obama starts uhhing and pausing, if something doesn’t pop up on the teleprompter that he then uses as a talking point or start up again comment. If so, then he truly is dependent on his teleprompter.

    • jbjd

      Great teaching tool for those viewers who still believe BO is a great…

  • betty

    I saw Amy Klobuchar in that clip, does that mean she has joined the moderates?
    If she did or not, just the possibility has given me a small sense of relief.
    I have hammered at her almost constantly since she went out on the capital steps and endorsed candidate Obama while telling me I had to call and rant someplace else because she couldn’t use her office for partisan politics.

    And everything is her fault, I don’t let her off the hook for any thing. The 700 billion bailout is “YOUR 700 billion bailout, you personally put my children and grandchildren in debt and cut off their future, Amy Klobuchar”.

    I called and told her that it was her fault that those little girls in Afghanistan had acid thrown in their faces just after Obama was elected because she stood silent while her party savaged two honorable women whose only crime is that they have servant’s heart and were more appealing candidates then Obama.

    When she passed the last bail out with out even reading it I called and told her she had sold my children, grandchildren and great grand children into indentured servitude and single handedly destroyed this democracy and the American way of life.

    Countless times I have called her and asked her why she has not stood up and led or done something about something or other. Lately I asked her why she didn’t stand up against the bail out bill, or the bonuses, or at least why she didn’t come home here and give us a “heads up about the bonuses” so that we could do something about them. Did she know about them, in which case she is complicit or did she not know about them, in which case she is incompetent or worse stupid.

    I told her to get home here and explain herself, and if she dared to think who am I to tell a United States Senator to get home and explain her self while I am a United States Citizen and it is me who put her into office, not Emanual, Pleosi or Reid.

    You can see I am not easy on her, actually I think she is numb when it comes to me. I am not bragging that I may have moved her a nanometer to the center. I am just trying to let you why seeing her in a film clip walking down a hallway while someone is talking about moderation gives me a little ray of hope.

    • bill

      I had the same experience w/ Senator Klobuchar during the primaries. As the Obama as flipping the bird at Sen. Clinton and the press chuckled I wrote and called her to speak out on the Senate floor against sexism. She gave me the same response you got. Frustrating.

      Her interviews w/ MPR on the financial bills have been good. She does appear to clearly understand the mechanics and real intent of the bills.

      Now if she would just give back all the money she got from Petters (her own personal Ponzi).

    • politicalidentitycrisis

      I noticed Klobuchar, too. i volunteered for her campaign and donated money to get her in there and she has been a big disappointment. I doubt she is one of the “Centrists”. All of her email and letter replies are still very koolaidish. She is a loser and will not go against Obama because I have it from a very reliable insider that she is being promised the first woman POTUS. I plan to never vote for her again. I look at her and wonder, how stupid is she and doesn’t she realize that the DNC has probably promised first woman POTUS to several of them just to make them lap dogs???

  • boonies

    from what i see is happening…isnt the teleprompter facing the wrong way?
    It will be easier for Odramamine if we fed the words to the reporters rather than vice versa…

  • Sassy

    Kent Conrad has always been lauded as knowing his stuff.
    We will see if that’s true now that he is supposed to rein in his own party’s spending!
    So far, we have seen the “lockstep” routine of the last adminstration.
    Someone had better start braking hard!

  • Lyn

    OT but I didn’t see an open thread http://radioviceonline.com/dear-aig-i-quit/
    Here is a letter of resignation from an AIG person, please read it.
    I think it is awful the way they were threatened by an ACORN group, but fear it is just the beginning of the Obama Brownshirt Army tactics, who will be next?
    DEAR Mr. Liddy,

    It is with deep regret that I submit my notice of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my decision, I want to offer some context:

    I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

    After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

    I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

    You and I have never met or spoken to each other, so I’d like to tell you about myself. I was raised by schoolteachers working multiple jobs in a world of closing steel mills. My hard work earned me acceptance to M.I.T., and the institute’s generous financial aid enabled me to attend. I had fulfilled my American dream. more at link

    • NoBamaNoWay

      tough shit, dude. welcome to the world the rest of us have been living in for a long time.

      • Diana L. C.

        The guy needs a little understanding. I had AIG insurance for a long time. The people I used to deal with were hardworking, helpful people. This guy did the right thing, and the way our anger against the company is going, I am sure many many employees are looking for ways to leave. Our anger really needs to be directed at the idiots in government who were NOT doing their job, who did not do the regulating and the oversight and who now are just jerking their knees, so to speak.