I can’t speak for the OP, or, indeed, anyone else but myself. But I’d be very interested in hearing about the “sunshine bill info” business.
A while ago, I started a thread about how this promise had been not complied with. And at the time, the consensus from many of the thread responders was that I was asking too soon, and I should just give his administration time. The suggested time hasn’t passed yet, but inlight of the more definitive moves now to disavow that promise – in other words, in light of the fact that we seem to be moving farther away from keeping the promise instead of closer to it, I wonder if anyone wants to revise their view.
First, that wasn’t the pledge. The pledge was to put non-emergency legislation online for five days before presidential signing. There was no promise about only public deliberation, or about how long amendments had to be considered, or the time at which Congress would take a vote–or indeed about the behavior of Congress at all. The promise was only about how long the final bill would be allowed to sit on the President’s desk before signing.
Am I disappointed about him breaking the real pledge? Yes. It is disappointing whenever a promise is broken. The severity of my disappointment depends both on the content of the promise and the reason for the failure to keep it.
As to the content, I think it was largely symbolic. Citizens already had and retain full access to bills as they go through the legislative process. And I think it would be a rare instance in which a bill coming out of conference is vetoed because it becomes so politically unpopular over the course of a few days on careful reading. That said, I can see how, if your main reason for supporting Obama was process reform–and especially if you disagree with some of his primary substantive proposals–this stuff would be especially disappointing. After all, process reform is often about appearances and opportunities for impropriety, even if there is no impropriety.
As to the reason for breaking it, I think we still don’t really know. I’d like to learn more about the theories why. In the prior thread, we seemed to still be as the baseless speculation stage. The suggestion that it somehow enables the railroading of legislation seems unpersuasive to me (even though Obama suggested this was the reason for it), but maybe that argument can be substantiated. If it can be substantiated, my disappointment will be even more severe.
If you were paying attention after the election, I became a fairly strong Obama defender on this board. I complemented him on the choice of his economic team. At first, I thought his foreign policy was on the right track, and said so. I was very much willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and to support those policies that I thought were the right ones.
Likewise, I hammered Bush on his domestic policy constantly. You can go back and check what I said about his prescription drug benefit, his steel tariffs, and his deficits, to name a few.
I believe in the previous thread I was willing to take a wait-and-see stance although wondering aloud what the delay could be.
Upthread I said I was not happy with this.
At the least now I would like to see him answer why he deep-sixed this idea of his. I’ll assume he lied and backed out of a promise if he cannot provide a good rationale for not doing this.
Eh, your just making up motivations for Obama through mind reading. I point out that he isn’t trying to ram through climate change legislation and you say that he really really wants to.
You’re ducking and weaving. The quote you responded to was in response to your (incorrect) claim that the climate change bill was rushed through the house. Now your talking about stimulus.
Providing tax cuts to small businesses is different then promising not to raise their taxes. And googling gives several cites for Obama thinking about raising the cap, but all mention it would only be on families above 250,000$.
Again, he specifically said he’d pass a spending stimulus bill during the campaign (also googling ‘modus operandi of my goverment’ and ‘obama’ doesn’t reaveal anything, are you referring to something he actually said, and if so can you link so the rest of us can play along.
For better or worse, I don’t think many people cared when Bush did it either.
Presumably he doesn’t think they’re garbage (and the Senate today apparently agreed to cut funding for the F-22, though it hasn’t gone to Obama’s desk yet.)
Heh, I knew as soon as Obama won that we’d be hearing this complaint every time he did something even vaguely similar to any preceding President.
Interesting? Then what percentage of the Stimulus went to infrastructure projects? Must be a pretty big chunk, if your theory about Obama’s nefarious plan is correct, right? Certainly larger then the chunk that went to tax cuts, right?
Also, your point about building a school being a structural increase in the federal budget for purposes of PAYGO is silly.
Yes the total cuts are small to the point of being a bare drop in the bucket but it is not nearly as bad as you try to make it out to be with smoke and mirrors like this.
We do not have $3.5 trillion in discretionary spending. The vast majority of the budget is gobbled up by mandatory spending (e.g. paying interest on the national debt).
We are left with about 1/3 of that $3.5 trillion as discretionary spending. Of that half goes to security related spending (the military, Homeland Security and so on). Then other things like Education and such gobble up some more.
The war in Iraq and Afghanistan are not even budget items.
At the end of the day you are not left with much to play around with.
Depending how you play with it last I saw there is roughly $400 billion to divvy up.
$100 million is still pathetic against that but the picture is not as stark as you’d like to make it out to be.
Let me clarify. I’m not expecting you to cite right-wing blogs, but your posts read like they were lifted from that type of source. Maybe they weren’t, but they read that way, especially without cites. This one in particular looks suspect, and I’m not even sure how one would go about proving it:
Hmmm… I voted for him for pretty much the same reason, but I sure don’t want those first 3 things. One of us is going to be disappointed.
You are correct, but the one being disingenuous was Obama himself in his campaign pledge to go through the budget line by line etc. He implied that he would find meaningful savings, and he either knew or should have known that this was not realistic.
I’m not sure what your point is, but Obama never promised to “accelerate the war there”. He promised to commit more troops there, which is arguably a good tactic. I’d prefer more NATO troops than just US troops, but sometimes we just have to do things ourselves.
Still, it’s going to take more than 6 months to undo all the crap Bush left him with domestically and internationally. If we’re “accelerating the war” in Afghanistan a year from now, then I’ll get on Obama’s back about that. For now, I think he’s making the best of a very bad situation.
Yeah I’m not seeing how Congress conducts business could have ever been, or be seen as, part of how Obama promised his administration would act either.
In fact, AIUI the only power the President has over how Congress conducts business is begging, pleading, and arm-twisting. Which only works if Congress wants to do what the President wants, the way he wants, in the first place.
CMC fnord!
Unless, could it be, Sam Stone is advocating for new (and probably unconstitutional) powers for the executive branch? :eek:
Wait a minute, hold on one second. Are you suggesting that a President made campaign promises before the election and FAILED to keep them once elected?!?!
Actually, it sounds pretty wonderful to the informed, as well. Don’t know what proposal you’re getting your alarmist hypothetical from, but I’d love to see the cite.
“Socialized medicine will mean rationed care, decided by some Washington bureaucrat. Instead of care provided based on ability to pay, which is what God intended.”
While this thread was initiated by Sam Stone, Sam Stone is not the subject of this thread. Let’s stick to cheap shots over the actual Original Post and take a pass on the cheap shots based on the Original Poster. (This extends to cheap shots over other posters, as well. Let’s try something brand new, here, and argue the merits of a statement without wasting half the electrons claiming that the vague and nebulous “other guys”, (whether in the government or on this message board), are hypocritical ignoramuses.)
Ya know, Sam Stone’s technically correct here: Obama is not living up to the highest possible standard of the ideal he expressed during the campaign that he felt his administration would live up to. Of course he hasn’t accomplished a lot yet that, if he were successful, would make **Sam **extrude shit through his nostrils, so I’m not sure why he’s complaining about this particular failure.
But by any practical standard–that of the previous eight years–Obama’s transparancy is clear. Does Sam does-- any tighty-righty?–prefer if Obama actually succeeds in fulfilling his campaign promises, or does he prefer to have him fail in fulfilling them? Either way, they have a non-stop complaint–it’s just funny listening to them complain so bitterly out of both sides of their mouths simultaneously.
Why is the US Government bailing out investment bankers like G-S, and then ALLOWING G-S people to dictate policy? Seems like the investment bankers caused a lot of the chaos we are in…and now we allowing the foxes to guard the henhouse?
Obama made a pledge NOT to allow registered lobbyists into his government…it seems he has forgotten THAT promise.
