Geithner confession: Plan? We don’t need no stinkin’ plan… and thanks for not noticing

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Now that Obama has successfully shifted the GOP campaign off of the economy, jobs, debt and spending, and into a bizarre form of acceptance of federal intrusion into national health care criteria, events that should be good news for the GOP are getting buried under passionate rhetoric. I’m not sure if any one has spent time, pondering the convenient timing of this contraceptive mandate’s rise to prominence, two years after it’s creation and in a hot election year. But does the usual Alinksy bait and switch maneuver come to mind? How convenient to steer the conversation away from Obama’s past and looming future fiscal failures, and into a predictably divisive conservative arena…. to the exclusion of most everything else.

That’s not wise…

The contraceptive mandate that insurers include birth control and emergency contraceptives as part of their prescription plans was specifically laid out in the O’healthcare legislation almost two years ago, and already implemented in more than half the states over the past decade via their 10th Amendment powers. Some of these state mandates do not include any exceptions for religious or conscientious objection and – considering the passion it inspires – quizzically remained unchallenged in all that time. But the overlooked state battles are not the point on a federal level.

The point is that when the GOP argues that the contraceptive mandate should not apply to the religious, they are simultaneously admitting that the feds, indeed, have the right to mandate insurers minimum coverage nationwide… just as long as they include some religious exceptions.

Arguing that perspective differs little from the old adage, “We have established what you are, madam. We are now merely haggling over the price.”

Instead the GOP is getting bogged down in details, and allowing Obama to frame his performance as being the compromising adult in the room by “accommodating” for religious exemptions – all for a mandate the feds have no Constitutional authority to implement in the first place. He’s like the savvy flea market barker who wants $10 for a stolen, defective lamp, so he asks $20. The gullible buyer wanders it, and walks off feeling like he got a bargain – half off the asking price. It never occurs to him that the barker never had the right to sell that lamp, or that when he gets it home and plugs it in, he’ll find out it doesn’t even work.

And then, after selling the stolen goods that he had no right to sell, that same savvy flea market barker/thief goes on late night TV with adverts about what a great outlet he is for lamps (albeit stolen…). Come on.. get serious. Is this where you really want the O’healthcare/federal powers debate to go?

Forget religious exceptions and compromises from Obama. Do not be lulled into false victories for wide religious exceptions, for you will have won nothing. The feds do not possess the constitutional authority to demand *anyone*, religious or not, acquire or provide coverage including contraceptives. Nor do they have the right to tell insurers nationwide that their prescription packages contain that benefit.

The contraceptive mandate ties into the larger issue that O’healthcare, in it’s entirety, is a costly and defective overreach of stolen federal powers, and needs to be repealed and replaced. And part of that replacement is reform of the entitlement programs doomed to bankrupt this nation.

Considering that the largest issue on all voters’ minds- both parties – is the economy, jobs and out of control debt/spending, the GOP needs to seize upon the largest gift that will keep on giving throughout the campaign season… Treasury Secretary, Tim “tax cheat” Geithner has made an unapologetic confession to the House Budget Committee chair, Rep. Paul Ryan, that not only did Obama and his admin *not* have a “definitive solution” on the out of control long term debt, but the only thing they *were* definitively sure of is that they didn’t like the GOP solutions.

This is the perfect political personification of the infamous line from the the 1948 movie, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, by Alfonso Bedoya’s character Gold Hat – later resurrected in Mel Brooks’ successful comedy, Blazing Saddles:

“Badges/Plans? We ain’t got no badges/plans! We don’t need no badges/plans! I don’t have to show you any stinking badges/plans!”

And what is the reason for our out of control debt? The entitlements… the very same issue that Obama and the Democrats refuse to address at every avenue. Instead, they are piling on to the cost of the entitlements with O’healthcare and unconstitutional mandates, despite Geithner’s second confession that entitlements are the problem.

Partial and pertinent transcript below:

Congressman Paul Ryan: Let’s show Slide 8. I know you didn’t necessarily want to see this chart. The red is the status quo, that’s the baseline we’re on.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: You could have taken it to 3,000 or 4,000…

Congressman Paul Ryan: Yeah, right. We cut it off at the end of the century because the economy, according to the CBO, shuts down in 2027 on this path.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: I like this chart; I looked at this chart yesterday. You’re talking about I think more than half a century. But if you look at the gap between us—

Congressman Paul Ryan: I understand the gap.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: —between 10 and 20, it’s a pretty small gap. In that gap though—that 10 to 20 gap, which is all we’re debating today—is a gap where you’re achieving that slightly diminished path.

Congressman Paul Ryan: Here’s the point, if you’ll allow me. This is your time, so we’ll just take a long time. Here’s the point. Leaders are supposed to fix problems. We have a $99.4 trillion unfunded liability. Our government is making promises to Americans that it has no way of accounting for. And so you’re saying yeah, we’re stabilizing it but we’re not fixing it in the long run. That means we’re just going to keep lying to people. We’re going to keep all these empty promises going.

So what we’re saying is, in order to avert a debt crisis—you’re the Treasury Secretary, of all people—if we can’t make good on our bonds in the future, who is going to invest in our country? We do not want to have a debt crisis. It comes down to confidence in trajectory. Do we have confidence that we’re going to get our fiscal situation under control and prevent the debt from getting to these catastrophic levels?

If we go back to the preceding chart, Chart 13, you’re showing that you have no plan to get this debt under control. You’re saying we’ll stabilize it but then it’s going to shoot back up. So my argument is, that’s Europe. That is bringing is toward a European debt crisis because we’re showing the world, the credit market’s future seniors—people who are organizing their lives around the promises that are being made to them today—that we don’t have a plan to make good on this.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: Mr. Chairman, as I said, we’re not disagreeing in that sense. I made it absolutely clear that what our budget does is get our deficit down to a sustainable path over the budget window.

Congressman Paul Ryan: And then it takes off.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: Let’s ask ourselves why they take off again. Why do they do that?

Congressman Paul Ryan: Because we have 10,000 people retiring everyday and healthcare costs going up.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: That’s right. We have millions of Americans retiring everyday and that will drive substantial growth rates for healthcare costs. We’re not becoming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem. What we do know is that we don’t like yours.

The chart in question? The future of publicly held debt under the recently submitted Obama budget.

Still, this chart – showing only an Obama possible second term making headway against the debt and spending – requires the “willing suspension of disbelief”. As James Pethokoukis points out at AEI’s Enterprise Blog.

Well, at least the president’s budget keeps the debt problem from getting any worse over the next decade, right? Not really. Despite $1.7 trillion in tax increases, debt as a share of GDP—already at a historically high level—actually ticks up a bit to 76.5 percent from 67.7 percent in 2011 and 74.2 percent in 2012.

And even to achieve this, the Obama White House has to assume rosy economic growth. As the CRFB says:

OMB’s economic assumptions are somewhat more optimistic than CBO’s, as well as the Blue Chip consensus ranges. The Administration projects real GDP growth to be 2.7 percent in 2012 and 3.0 percent in 2013, compared to 2.2 percent and 1 percent, respectively, from the CBO. Importantly, much of this difference is due to the fact that CBO assumes a temporary economic contraction in 2013 due to all the tax cuts expiring and the automatic spending sequester going off at the same time in the start of 2013.

However, OMB continues to be more optimistic than CBO beyond this contractionary period, with estimated growth rates of 2.5 percent per year by the end of the decade as opposed to 2.4 percent by CBO. On the whole, these faster growth rates likely lead to a more favorable fiscal picture than what CBO would show using its economic projections. By our estimates, if OMB were to employ CBO assumptions debt would stabilize at about 80 percent of GDP as opposed to 76 percent.

This is a political era where the GOP is constantly being accused of being “obstructionists”. Yet what can be more of an obstacle than a leadership that refuses to deal with the opposition party’s solutions on the entitlements that are obviously going to destroy the US economy? Instead, the campaign plan seems to be to keep the conservatives squabbling over limited federal mandates so that they don’t notice that the admin will implement measures designed to look good for their legacy, then let it explode under future Congresses and admins, allowing them to take the blame.

Is this anyway to run a country? Having leaders this cowardly, and this short sighted as to deliberately ignore genuine long term problems?

As obviously foolhardy as it was for Geithner to admit Obama’s lack of solutions and leadership – archived on the Congressional records – he did no apology on the faux pas. Instead he went on to the talking heads Sunday circuit to defend this “no solution” POTUS and administration to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, effectively denying that admission and accusing the Republicans for spinning his words.

Is this “no plan” a new event in performance for this administration? Of course not. Nor is the accusation by the GOP for a lack of leadership new. Even July of last year, Speaker Boehner was pointing out the same lack of leadership.

So what’s different now? We have a confession from the horse’s mouth. In essence, what Geithner has done was hand the GOP a winning campaign slogan

“Obama? Plan? I don’t need no stinkin’ plan! And thanks for not noticing.”

The gifted slogan should be replayed on every Republican campaign commercial for every GOP candidate, and broadcast everywhere possible – if for nothing else to drive home that reality that this admin is clueless to effective leadership – a message valuable to *all* registered voters.

Now the question is, will the GOP return to the most important issue as use this gift, or continue to shift the debate away in order to “negotiate the price” for unconstitutional federal contraceptive mandates on any individual or business – religious or not?

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Mata, it is the height of irony that Obama has made mandatory FREE birth control for all a campaign issue when their assumptions are so bad BECAUSE of demographic problems based on our low birth rate!
It appears Obama wants to brown-up America by encouraging zero population growth among the white (and other native- in that they have been born here) Americans while he opens the borders to ”new Americans,” from south of our border.
This will not bode well for building a taxpaying population base.
Read all around that chart found on page 58 of the White House’s own pdf and you’ll see that this is the ”plan.”
All I can say is, dumb plan.

Mata:

Not to worry, we probably need a couple of weeks of rest from the fetid economic news. Just noticed that the Saudis are cutting production and crude is now $105/barrel and climbing (Gasoline = $4+ in Southern California this afternoon). Obozo and his minions shut down the Gulf, California coast remains shutdown by its wacko environmentalists, East coast only allowed to prospect hundreds of mile out on the Shelf, and the Keystone pipeline nix are their latest and continuing commitments to subsidizing the worthless “Green Revolution”. Based on the continuing Department of Energy disaster, it is obvious that the Greenees are following the Al Whoar mode of funneling obscene profits into the pockets of those same enviro-nazis ‘Crony Capitalists’ otherwise called thieves/Democraps.

For once, Putin (or Putrin) has it right that our FED’s Quantitative Easings are none other than the rest of the world funding our Democrap Fannie/Freddie disaster and Obozo/Demo self-hate regime. The rest of the world is not stupid (IE: Saudi Arabia). We will be punished for our deceits and thefts via our abuse of the world currency – the Dollar. So, have faith, the continuing economic disaster is roaring back to the forefront as we type: Foreclosures, Unemployment – real + 15.1%, and we do not produce anything anymore except unlimited Government encouraged dependency.

Now that Obama has successfully shifted the GOP campaign off of the economy, jobs, debt and spending, and into a bizarre form of acceptance of federal intrusion into national health care criteria . . .

Obama doesn’t control what the republican front runners focus on. The conservative elements that they’re attempting to play to determine that.

The main focus of the GOP legislation has been on social issues ever since they regained control of the House. They haven’t done anything in connection with the economic initiatives, except to offer resistance.

House Budget Committee on Thursday, Chairman Paul Ryan produced another version of that chart posted above.
His ended in 2075 with our debt at 900% GDP.
When asked, Rep. Ryan said, “We cut it off at the end of the century because the economy, according to the CBO, shuts down in 2027 on this path.”

Obama’s Social Issue of ObamaCare and free STERILIZATION, ABORTION and birth control (the media keeps leaving the 1st 2 out of their narrative) and our economy falling off a cliff are directly related.
Some European countries have free birth control and now face futures where they hope 40 grandchildren can support the welfare of 100 grandparents.
These numbers will never work no matter how high taxes on the rich get.
Obama seems to want Americans living here now to follow France and Russia and Greece down that demographic black hole.
Read beyond the graph on page 58 of the PDF I supplied above.
Use the search feature to find ”demigr” so you can see how demography and demographics falling will destroy our country’s future.
Look at the really scary graph having to do with the costs of treating those over 65.
Anyone remember Logan’s Run?

@Greggie: You said:

They haven’t done anything in connection with the economic initiatives, except to offer resistance.

You not only know this isn’t true, but you’ve been provided with links to prove it, yet you keep regurgitating the same old lies, hoping they will come true.

25 House-Passed Jobs Bills Stuck in the Democratic-Run Senate
The House passed three more common-sense jobs bills last week, bringing the current number of jobs bills awaiting a vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate to 25. Each of these bills is focused on removing government barriers – excessive regulations, the threat of tax hikes, and ‘stimulus’ spending policies – that are hurting job growth, and many have bipartisan support. Speaker Boehner has called on President Obama to “urge Senate Democrats to immediately vote” on the 25 jobs bills before them. – Source

I’ve said it many times – this administration has no regard for anything lawful, constitutional, patriotic, decent, considering etc.; everything they do is done in malice.
Some attack me for saying this, but what other conclusion is there? Is Fast and Furious, Solyndra type criminal corruption, class warfare etc. anything other than malice?
Mooch going on vacation again one month after returning from a 17-day vac in Hawaii – what’s the intent there? In-your-face sticking it to americans or ‘whiteys’ in particular? And we wonder why these grifters have no sense of anything ‘budget related’, responsible spending?The left don’t even pass budgets anymore!
What’smost troubling is the neutered GOP; they just twiddling around the edges, totally void of taking these issues head-on, start impeachment of Holder etc…let the chips fall where they may.

Until the GOP grows some ba**s, they keep doing what they are doing. Bullies bully, until put into place, then they’ll back off.

MATA
GOOD POST, It seem that the people have gave up on being alert to attack from the leader’s lack of
response to their big problems, they are influence by the socialist communist way of taking over everything until nothing is left for the people to survive the chaos in front of them,
what is coming will have to be defended with strength, who will get to do it, only the CONSERVATIVES are showing resolve in fighting them for what they impose to the population now and also for the future,
they are destroying the children’s future as well with what they borrow of their wealth,
NOVEMBER is a key exit to that and everyone must exit or fall.
bye

NO wander he has no plan, he is an impostor, but those traitors who put him there
are responsible for the destruction of AMERICA, they should be prosecuted
in the same time as OBAMA not forgetting their faithful MEDIA,
and it will be the most scandalous eye opening from AMERICANS and the WORLD OVER, a shame for those guilty of such treasonous actions, in a COUNTRY with such tolerant people as to wait for the days of judgement to have justice follow it’s course.

Hi Mata, No administration in history has ever presented a long term debt solution plan, even though anyone with a calculator could have projected where the debt is headed.

When Reagan took office in 1981, we’d paid down the debt from 1.15X GDP to 0.31 X GDP (your chart). But the Baby Boomer generation existed back then; so things weren’t rosy, going out into the 21st Century. Beginning in 1981, the GOP has been transfixed with the idea of tax cuts. We’ve been over and over this particular argument, over several years, and I’m not dredging it up, yet again. I’m simply saying that Reagan didn’t have a 50 year time line and GHW B didn’t have a 50 year time line and GW B certainly didn’t have a 50 year time line (remember Cheney saying “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter?”).

http://www.ontheissues.org/2004/Dick_Cheney_Budget_+_Economy.htm

Politics is the art of the possible. Conditions create opportunities. Right now, the Senate hasn’t passed a budget in a very long time (I just read this today, on another Flopping Aces thread). You’ve got to crawl before you walk. You need a one year budget. You need the next year’s budget. If you project ahead 10 years, that’s something that has never been seriously attempted. So Geithner and Obama are being skewered because they aren’t presenting a plan to go out 50 years.

In today’s political climate, there’s a lot that needs to get done right away that barely gets done. What everyone is saying is that we can’t begin to seriously address the 50 year problem until after the election. Let’s say that Geithner comes up with a 50 year plan this month. Let’s say that it’s a credible plan. Any credible plan is going to have tax hikes. What are the chances that anything at all will come of it, besides giving the GOP ammunition to use against Obama in the Fall?

This election is going to be a referendum on the relative role of spending cuts vs tax hikes. Once this issue is settled, it will be possible to at least start floating some serious, long term proposals. But this will be unprecedented fiscal planning. It’s never been done before — by any prior administration. Ryan himself (a lowly congressman in a safe seat) presented the outlines of a credible plan — from which all the important GOP politicians promptly ran away. There was (and is) a lot in the Ryan plan which makes for great negative electioneering fodder. No one wants to gift the other side with such fodder.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

openid.aol.com/runnsiwm
hi,
you know that OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS had everything they ask for given to them always with a warning to make good use of it, if you give money to your child with the same warning, he end up being careful and appreciate the warning as a good learning,
but OBAMA spend but forgot the warning all the time,
so, it’s high time for the GOP TO STOP BEING SO TOLERANT, and the buck stop here. or there,
OBAMA is now on election mode and the other party is catching up to finally
get their feet on election mode also’
bye

@anticsrocks, #6:

You not only know this isn’t true, but you’ve been provided with links to prove it, yet you keep regurgitating the same old lies, hoping they will come true.

I don’t count any bill that included a partisan poison pill that guaranteed it couldn’t be passed in good conscience by the Senate.

Such bills are nothing more than the featured acts of a meaningless dog and pony show. They’re political posturing. Nothing more.

Eliminate those from the touted count of 25, and how many are left?

If my characterization is incorrect, which republican jobs bills didn’t fall into that category?

People understand things like this. It’s one of the reasons that the Congressional job approval polls are in constant danger of dipping below a single digit percentage.

@Greg: You said:

I don’t count any bill that included a partisan poison pill that guaranteed it couldn’t be passed in good conscience by the Senate.

Fair enough.

Name one.

Link it.

@MataHarley: Any bets as to whether I ought to hold my breath waiting for Greg to link one of those “poisonous” bills?

anticsrocks
GREG HATE POISONOUS BILL,?
how’s bill? is he going to survive?
I never would have thunk that of GREG, but I notice change in him lately,
he is not as usual, he look dangerous,
be careful

I suppose the so called forgotten 15 represent over half of the 25 republican “jobs bills”.

I don’t see much point wasting our time arguing about their benign or toxic components. I’m beginning to think that opinions not only vary, but seldom change, and that the underlying disagreement may be a philosophical one.

All that matters is that republican thinking and intentions continue to be revealed and openly displayed right up until election day.

Anyone can run down that list of the forgotten 15 for themselves. Either a person is bright enough recognize that there’s something akin to a smarmy used car dealer’s sales pitch hidden in each brief description, or not. As a matter of fact, the packaging of the whole thing into a box collection labeled “the forgotten 15” is yet another sales pitch.

Each of the 15 “jobs bills” consists of little more than some selected item from some special interest’s wish list.

As to the count of 25, I have no idea what the other 10 might be.

If you want to talk about poison, maybe the first on the list of 15 would be a good example. Since it actually deals with poison.

(1) The Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act (H.R 872) – Reduces overlapping and unnecessary regulation on pesticides; thereby reducing costs to both farmers and small business owners.
• Introduced by Rep. Bob Gibbs (OH) on March 2, 2011
• Passed the House by a vote of 292-130 on March 31, 2011

The poison pill is that democrats generally resist efforts to free people up to spray toxic crap around with wild abandon, even if keeping the environment safer for disposable human beings costs farmers and small business owners a bit more money. Democrats generally won’t go for it.

We could run down the entire list. But the points and counterpoints are predictable, and neither of us would change our minds, so why even bother?

Greg the propagandist doesn’t care what the truth is, just being a useful marxist idiot.

I’m sure Hard Right will agree that reducing controls on the freedom to spray toxic chemicals into the environment and onto things that wind up being fed to American children is fundamentally a “jobs bill.”

Psssst greg, I don’t buy leftist BS on pesticides thanks to the junk science your kind pushed about DDT and Alar.
But keep midlessly spewing dem talking points to excuse their obstruction of job creation and energy independance.

GREG
THE THING IS THAT they should not throw their weight around but give a n explanation to why it is a poison to who they notice over doing the spray, why does a GOVERNMENT ELECTED BY PEOPLE,
SHOULD IMPOSE ANYTHING THEY SEE FIT BY THEIR OWN STANDARD alone.
DO YOU THINK THAT AMERICANS ARE SO STUPID ENOUGH TO NOT UNDERSTAND ANY POSITIVE EXPLANATION as oppose to a force regulation hitting them like a bullet in the head forcing them out of nowhere to spend a lot of money to comply with the multiple agencies targeting them constantly,
with thousands of laws made up by ingnorant desk licking people with their bum always sitting and gazing on their computer with the intent to find some more of it to choke the AMERICANS AS THEY ARE BEING TOLD TO TAKE AS MUCH AS THEY CAN FROM THE FREEDOM OF THE SAME PEOPLE
WHO ELECTED THEM TO SERVE AND PROTECT THAT FREEDOM.
AND THE PEOPLE ARE SICK AND TIRED OF IT,

@Greg:
We sure do have a lot of pollutants in our new Obama-approved light bulbs.
But the Left doesn’t want to do a thing about that, huh?
http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup-detailed.html

@MataHarley, #29:

H.R. 872 would amend FIFRA and the Clean Water Act to say that no permit is required for the labeled use of any registered pesticide. It would also instruct EPA and the courts that Congress did not intend other environmental laws to overtake FIFRA.

Why would it be beneficial to public health and safety that no CWA permit be required?

The CWA permitting process deals specifically with the application of pesticides and herbicides directly to forest canopies, streams, rivers, and lakes. Agricultural use is exempted. Situations involving inadvertent agricultural run-off are exempted. Non-target spray drift is exempted. CWA permitting is involved because the specific issue is applying chemicals to water. Anyone who wants to apply toxic chemicals directly to water should need to get a permit under the more stringent provisions of the Clean Water Act before doing so. I don’t care that they consider it annoying red tape. Regulatory agencies aren’t there to rubber-stamp whatever the hell industry wants to do.

Which is all beside the point. The point was that this is being pitched as a republican jobs bill. That characterization is complete horse hockey.

@MataHarley: Was it Reagan that said facts are stubborn things? Pity they keep getting in Greg’s way.

I almost feel sorry for him…

Almost

Greg isn’t one to have real debate, rather he prefers to stick to his bomb-throwing, emotional rhetoric.