This is truly unbelievable – President Obama said today: “But as I’ve said, in the long run, we can’t continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences; as if waste doesn’t matter; as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money.”

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Transcript here:

When my administration walked through the door, the country faced a growing economic downturn as well as a deepening fiscal hole. Washington had passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy (producers) and an expensive new entitlement program without paying for any of it. Health care costs continued to rise, year after year. And little effort was made to cut wasteful spending. As a result, over the previous eight years, the national debt doubled — doubled. In January, the deficit stood at $1.3 trillion. And we had to make the difficult decision to add to the deficit in the short term to prevent the potential collapse of our economy.

But as I’ve said, in the long run, we can’t continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences; as if waste doesn’t matter; as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money. That’s what we’ve seen time and time again. Washington has been more concerned about the next election than the next generation. It’s put off hard choices in spending bill after spending bill, budget after bloated budget.

H/T to Gateway Pundit

wideawake123 @ YouTube had these comments:

“Growth and Progress”…”New ways”…”unique opportunity”- empty catch-phrases that hide the agenda. The more unemployment and chaos the easier to sieze power. “Never let a good crisis go to waste”. “…encouraging their efforts” = raising taxes on small independant oil companies doing offshore exploration. He’s lying and the media is lapping it up. An 11 YO kid just created an math app. for the I-Phone and will make millions. That’s more than Obama has created in his entire life. Empty Suit.

And

To replace the millions of jobs we lost since you took power? “We are deeply concerned” with the fact that you are an empty suit “celebrity” POTUS who’s showing that “Hope” and “Change” were as hollow as the man who offered them as his plan to “fix” this great country. Well he’s “fixing” us all right…unemployment at a 25 year high, and all he can do is blame Bush, who’s unemployment average was 5.19% for 8 years. How about creating the jobs you promised instead of excuses. “Blame Bush” is BS.

From RCP

We’ve been hearing a lot of criticism of Barack Obama in recent days from pro-Obama corners — from celebrity investor Warren Buffett, from moderate conservative columnist David Brooks, from one of the Democratic Party’s deepest thinkers, William Galston — all along the same lines. Put aside your plans, announced in your budget, for national health insurance, for a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gases, for effectively abolishing the secret ballot in unionization elections. And, they might have added, for higher taxes on, and a reduction in, their charitable deductions to channel money away from charities and nonprofits and toward the government. Pay attention to the first thing on your platter and the nation’s, Buffett and Brooks and Galston say: the financial crisis.

The answer Obama has given, in advance, is that we can only solve our economic problems by advancing these other programs. But the real answer came from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”

Michael Barone is right, concentrating on every liberal agenda-driven pet project (like cap-n-trade) instead of focusing on the financial crisis at hand Obama is losing support, focus, and aproval ratings!

Obama’s New Tack: Blaming Bush

President Points to ‘Inherited’ Economy

In his inaugural address, President Obama proclaimed “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

It hasn’t taken long for the recriminations to return — or for the Obama administration to begin talking about the unwelcome “inheritance” of its predecessor.

Over the past month, Obama has reminded the public at every turn that he is facing problems “inherited” from the Bush administration, using increasingly bracing language to describe the challenges his administration is up against. The “deepening economic crisis” that the president described six days after taking office became “a big mess” in remarks this month to graduating police cadets in Columbus, Ohio.

“By any measure,” he said during a March 4 event calling for government-contracting reform, “my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster.”

Obama’s more frequent and acid reminders that former president George W. Bush left behind a trillion-dollar budget deficit, a 14-month recession and a broken financial system have come at the same time Republicans have ramped up criticism that the current president’s policies are compounding the nation’s economic problems.

Obama had initially been content to leave partisan defense strategy to his proxies, but as the fiscal picture has continued to darken, he has appeared more willing to risk his image as a politician who is above petty partisanship to personally remind the public of Bush’s legacy.