In a conference call with a multidenominational group of pastors, rabbis, and other liberal religious leaders who support his plan to reinvent American health care, President Obama said:
I know there’s been a lot of misinformation in this debate and there are some folks out there who are, frankly, bearing false witness. I need you to spread the facts and speak the truth.
In fact, the number of examples in which Obama himself has borne “false witness” is itself staggering—on everything from the cost of his plan, to its effects, to the endorsements he claims he has received, to the agreements he claims he has made. One reason support for ObamaCare is collapsing is that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has blown apart various false claims made by Obama about his plans. And in the call yesterday, Mr. Obama once again was, well, bearing false witness. “Many of you have older members of your congregations. They’re all now scared to death that somehow we’re talking about cutting Medicare benefits,” he said. “That is, again, simply not true.”
The president’s statement is what’s simply not true. President Obama announced on Saturday, in fact, that he was proposing an additional $313 billion in Medicare and Medicaid cuts—which the White House euphemistically refers to as “savings”—over 10 years, on top of the $309 billion in his 2010 budget. (My colleague James Capretta writes about it here.)
President Obama has developed a nasty little habit. It is not enough for him to spread false and misleading information on an almost daily basis; he has taken to portraying himself as America’s intrepid truth teller. He really should stop doing so. And since Mr. Obama appears to be fond of quoting Scripture to advance his liberal policy aims, he might consult Matthew 7:5 before he speaks again. In that passage, Jesus warns, “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
Where do you come up with this stuff?
Congress will take up card check after the midterms. By then, the economy will be stronger, the price to red state Democrats lower, and Obama will have substantially achieved his policy priorities on health care etc.
And we’ll likely have one more Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania (along with a seated Al Franken) to get it across the finish line.
Believe me, no one on the left is sweating EFCA. It will get done. A recession is always a bad time for labor to ask for more. Soon.
“Big Labor,” especially the SEIU, is everywhere. AIG protests? Who do you think is there and organizing? All I know is that the pictures in the papers show individuals with SEIU signs.
I don’t know what the end-game for SEIU is, but they are working overtime to protest just about everything related to business.
How do these “protests” just seem to spontaneously occur? They protestors have fancy signs and march quite well for the camera.
Are they attempting to appear grass-roots individuals? All I know is that I see ACORN and SEIU people involvement almost every time.
What is their agenda? Truly, I am confused, but I do wonder if any of this is connected to the Obama administration?
Regarding the comments from “Jones,” perhaps he can visualize the future and that EFCA “will get done” – once, I suppose, the recession ends – but another election will occur before then and I don’t think that too many red state Democrats in the Senate will want support of this measure on their resume.
If they’re smart, Democrats will take out the card check provisions out of the bill and just pass its other provisions, which will do a lot to make it easier to organize.
If people are so sure they want to belong to untions, why are only 7-8% members now? This is just another case of Democrat over-reaching. Most people do not want to empower union thugs to cram membership down workers’ throats, or dictate mandatory arbitration. This administration seems to be carrying out a death wish for Ameerican business….which was probably Obama’s goal from day one.
Math IS math, but the chief property of variables is that they are — variable. Specter is no doubt under tremendous and growing pressure. We know the only pressure he can stand up to is that from his own (nominal) party. Big Labor will wait, and push again.
The apprehension in the business community is that the EFCA vampire won’t stay dead despite Senators Spector and apparently Feinstein pounding a stake in its heart. As a labor lawyer for companies for 35 years, I can tell you the following under the current state of the National Labor Relations Act: when employees learn the truth about what a union can do for them, which is limited to asking the employer for more, and then accepting the employer’s final offer or leading the employees out on strike, during which (absent the employer’s unfair labor practices) they lawfully can be permanently replaced, they vote for union representation in a secret ballot election conducted by the NLRB only about half the time. Facts are stuborn things, and employer presentation of the facts causes unions to lose about half of representation elections. The approximate half of those elections won by unions usually results from the employees hating their supervisors or totally disbelieving anything their employer tells them. The Southern senators from both parties just might vote for a toned down EFCA if their price for doing so is leaving the “right to work” provision of the NLRA untouched, since that trade-off probably if not undoubtedly will attract even more businesses to those states. I hope that trade-off is not made and EFCA dies the death it deserves, since the NLRA as now constituted works fine — it gives employees the choice to vote yes or no on union representation, and that statute was enacted precisely for the purpose of employee choice. It is the fact that unions cannot deliver anything they promise to employees unless the employer agrees to do so that the labor movement desperately wants to change.