Fact check Obozo
This is from the AP, who have been on Obozo's dick since day one. Funny when even what is in reality the media wing of the DNC points out Dear leaders lies.

FACT CHECK: Obama disowns deficit he helped shape
By CALVIN WOODWARD –

WASHINGTON (AP) — "That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One. It actually was him — and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years — who shaped a budget so out of balance.

And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still.

Obama met citizens at an Arnold, Mo., high school Wednesday in advance of his prime-time news conference. Both forums were a platform to review his progress at the 100-day mark and look ahead.

At various times, he brought an air of certainty to ambitions that are far from cast in stone.

His assertion that his proposed budget "will cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term" is an eyeball-roller among many economists, given the uncharted terrain of trillion-dollar deficits and economic calamity that the government is negotiating.

He promised vast savings from increased spending on preventive health care in the face of doubts that such an effort, however laudable it might be for public welfare, can pay for itself, let alone yield huge savings.

A look at some of his claims Wednesday:

OBAMA: "Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit.... That wasn't me. Number two, there is almost uniform consensus among economists that in the middle of the biggest crisis, financial crisis, since the Great Depression, we had to take extraordinary steps. So you've got a lot of Republican economists who agree that we had to do a stimulus package and we had to do something about the banks. Those are one-time charges, and they're big, and they'll make our deficits go up over the next two years." — in Missouri.

THE FACTS:

Congress controls the purse strings, not the president, and it was under Democratic control for Obama's last two years as Illinois senator. Obama supported the emergency bailout package in President George W. Bush's final months — a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.

To be sure, Obama opposed the Iraq war, a drain on federal coffers for six years before he became president. But with one major exception, he voted in support of Iraq war spending.

The economy has worsened under Obama, though from forces surely in play before he became president, and he can credibly claim to have inherited a grim situation.

Still, his response to the crisis goes well beyond "one-time charges."

He's persuaded Congress to expand children's health insurance, education spending, health information technology and more. He's moving ahead on a variety of big-ticket items on health care, the environment, energy and transportation that, if achieved, will be more enduring than bank bailouts and aid for homeowners.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated his policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years, even accounting for his spending reduction goals. Now, the deficit is nearly quadrupling to $1.75 trillion.

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OBAMA: "I think one basic principle that we know is that the more we do on the (disease) prevention side, the more we can obtain serious savings down the road. ... If we're making those investments, we will save huge amounts of money in the long term." — in Missouri.

THE FACTS: It sounds believable that preventing illness should be cheaper than treating it, and indeed that's the case with steps like preventing smoking and improving diets and exercise. But during the 2008 campaign, when Obama and other presidential candidates were touting a focus on preventive care, the New England Journal of Medicine cautioned that "sweeping statements about the cost-saving potential of prevention, however, are overreaching." It said that "although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not."

And a study released in December by the Congressional Budget Office found that increasing preventive care "could improve people's health but would probably generate either modest reductions in the overall costs of health care or increases in such spending within a 10-year budgetary time frame."

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OBAMA: "You could cut (Social Security) benefits. You could raise the tax on everybody so everybody's payroll tax goes up a little bit. Or you can do what I think is probably the best solution, which is you can raise the cap on the payroll tax." — in Missouri.

THE FACTS: Obama's proposal would reduce the Social Security trust fund's deficit by less than half, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

That means he would still have to cut benefits, raise the payroll tax rate, raise the retirement age or some combination to deal with the program's long-term imbalance.

Workers currently pay 6.2 percent and their employers pay an equal rate — for a total of 12.4 percent — on annual wages of up to $106,800, after which no more payroll tax is collected.

Obama wants workers making more than $250,000 to pay payroll tax on their income over that amount. That would still protect workers making under $250,000 from an additional burden. But it would raise much less money than removing the cap completely.

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OBAMA: "My hope is that working in a bipartisan fashion we are going to be able to get a health care reform bill on my desk before the end of the year that we'll start seeing in the kinds of investments that will make everybody healthier."

THE FACTS: Obama has indeed expressed hope for a health care plan that has support from Democrats and Republicans. But his Democratic allies in Congress have just made that harder. The budget plan written by the Democrats gives them the option of denying Republicans the normal right to block health care with a Senate filibuster. The filibuster tactic requires 60 votes to overcome, making it the GOP's main weapon to ensure a bipartisan outcome. The rules set by the budget mean that majority Democrats could potentially pass health care legislation without any Republican votes, sacrificing bipartisanship to achieve their goals.

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

Washington Examiner

Obama’s transparency is clear as mud

Mark Tapscott
"Other than the blinding speed with which he abandoned the moderate image so crucial to his winning the White House, President Obama has done little since Jan. 20 to surprise anybody who listened closely to what he said on the 2008 campaign trail.
But Obama’s actions in one area are surprising and disappointing. He promised the most transparent government ever, yet in a mere 100 days, he’s made it extraordinarily difficult to find basic information about economic recovery spending.
How can this be, considering the landmark Federal Financial Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 was more commonly known as “Coburn-Obama,” after Obama and Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican senator.

Coburn-Obama mandated creation of the first Google-like, searchable Internet database of federal spending, now online at USASpending.gov. Regular readers here know how rhapsodic I get about this law’s capacity to assure the public’s business in Washington is actually done in public.

Sadly, Obama is slamming doors shut right and left. Lest you think that assertion is mere right-wing spin, consider the recent conclusion of the Sunlight Foundation concerning the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Toxic Assets Recovery Program (TARP).

Three and a half months into the Obama era and Sunlight’s Real-Time Investigations team recently found that “some of the most elementary details about the [TARP] program - like who is actually managing distribution of the bailout money to financial institutions - is still shrouded in secrecy.”

Then there is that pork-stuffed $787 billion economic stimulus package rammed into law by Obama and his buddies on the Hill, led by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA. This monument to politicians’ insatiable thirst to waste tax dollars ought to be called Porkulus Maximus.

Good luck trying to find out where those billions are going. Obama promised the public would have unprecedented access to stimulus spending information, saying “our goal must be to spend these precious dollars with unprecedented accountability, responsibility, and transparency.”

Obama is uncommonly good at saying the right words. The new government web site, recovery.gov., is unprecedented alright, but not the way Obama promised.

There has been some improvement in recent weeks, but recovery.gov remains chock full of colorful charts, links to official PR babble, and mildly interesting summary statistics. Mostly, the site is a tax-paid propaganda tool to persuade the gullible that Obama is doing a wonderful job.

The recent upgrades in the government’s site likely came in response to pressure from the private sector. If you really want to get a handle on what is being done with your tax dollars via Porkulus Maximus, check out recovery.org., a free web site maintained by Onvia, a Seattle-based private company that specializes in getting information about government spending.
Unlike Obama’s government site, Onvia’s is remarkably timely, comprehensive and free of self-serving propaganda. Recovery.org makes it easy to find specific stimulus projects in your state, city or county, and the site is rich with facts, figures, sources, links and useful analyses.

If Obama was serious about making federal stimulus spending genuinely transparent, he would order the General Services Administration to toss recovery.gov into the cyber waste basket and replace it with a link to Onvia’s for recovery.org.

One more thing while we are on the subject of Obama and transparency. Remember his campaign promise to not sign any major bill for five days after it reaches his desk, in order to allow the rest of us sufficient time to read the full text online?

Hasn’t happened. He delayed signing Porkulus Maximus for a weekend, but that was to make room for a shopping spree with Michelle and the girls back home in Chicago.

Whatever else is said of Obama’s first 100 days, this much has become crystal clear – his campaign promises are as worthless as those of any other politician who thinks Lincoln was wrong about how many of us can be fooled for how long."

* Last updated by: Toecutter on 5/1/2009 @ 2:28 AM *