A Spending Freeze?

I'm trying hard not to buy into all this voter anger directed at Obama.  I'm trying to be optimistic that he is going to learn from his first year mistakes and the economy is going to improve and the next three years are going to be better, but a spending freeze?  That's what you're going with?  A spending freeze?

To get the proper level of disdain I feel about this proposal, watch this short clip of Jim Mora.  Every time he says "playoffs" replace it with the words "a spending freeze."




Rachel Maddow lays out how Obama and the Democrats have driven all the way down the field to the one-yard line and are now ready to punt..

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And by all means, yes, if you're going to have a spending freeze, don't dare mess with the bloated Pentagon budget. Jeez!

Obama Responds to the Supreme Court

In a followup to my previous post, President Obama devoted this week's weekly radio and Internet address to discussing the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, vowing that "as long as I am your president, I'll never stop fighting to make sure that the most powerful voice in Washington belongs to you."

Transcript:

One of the reasons I ran for President was because I believed so strongly that the voices of everyday Americans, hardworking folks doing everything they can to stay afloat, just weren’t being heard over the powerful voices of the special interests in Washington. And the result was a national agenda too often skewed in favor of those with the power to tilt the tables.

In my first year in office, we pushed back on that power by implementing historic reforms to get rid of the influence of those special interests. On my first day in office, we closed the revolving door between lobbying firms and the government so that no one in my administration would make decisions based on the interests of former or future employers. We barred gifts from federal lobbyists to executive branch officials. We imposed tough restrictions to prevent funds for our recovery from lining the pockets of the well-connected, instead of creating jobs for Americans. And for the first time in history, we have publicly disclosed the names of lobbyists and non-lobbyists alike who visit the White House every day, so that you know what’s going on in the White House – the people’s house.

We’ve been making steady progress. But this week, the United States Supreme Court handed a huge victory to the special interests and their lobbyists – and a powerful blow to our efforts to rein in corporate influence. This ruling strikes at our democracy itself. By a 5-4 vote, the Court overturned more than a century of law – including a bipartisan campaign finance law written by Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold that had barred corporations from using their financial clout to directly interfere with elections by running advertisements for or against candidates in the crucial closing weeks.

This ruling opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy. It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way – or to punish those who don’t. That means that any public servant who has the courage to stand up to the special interests and stand up for the American people can find himself or herself under assault come election time. Even foreign corporations may now get into the act.

I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections.

(more of the transcript and the video of the address after the jump)