Opinion: Obama Town Hall: Breaks for the taxpayers, restoring fiscal responsibility, first question
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President Obama’s speech is familar: It’s basically the talk he delivered in Costa Mesa on Wednesday.
He talks up his Recovery Act, how horrible the economy is, how things spiraled out of control with the ‘burst and bubble’ economy.
‘We can’t go back to a culture on Wall Street that bends and breaks the rules and a culture in Washington that looks the other way. We can’t go back to that.’
The audience seems pleased by his announcement of tax credits for new home buyers that kick in this year. Also, that California will receive $145 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help buy and rehab foreclosed homes and to provide mortgage assistance to low- and middle-income families.
The straw man moment arrives: ‘There are those who say these plans are too ambitious, that we should be trying to do less, not more,’ said Obama. ‘Somebody today was saying I shouldn’t be on Leno, that I can’t handle that and the economy at the same time. Listen, here’s what I say. I say our challenges are too big to ignore, the cost of our healthcare is too high to ignore, our dependence on foreign oil is too dangerous to ignore, our education deficit is too wide to ignore.
‘To kick these problems down the road, for another four years or eight years, that would be to continue to the same irresponsibility that led us to this position in the first place. I did not run for president to pass on our problems to the next generation, I ran for president to solve these problems.’
He said it would ‘be nice to pick and choose which problems to face and when to face them’ -- war, healthcare -- ‘but that’s not how things work.... You don’t get to choose between paying your mortgage bills and your medical bills.... You’ve got to take on all those problems at the same time, and you need a government that does the same.’
Now the questions begin. But first, said Obama, ‘a couple of rules: We’re gonna go girl boy girl boy .... We’ll try to go around the room ... stand when I’ve called on you.’
The first question is from an extremely fast-talking woman named Patricia, who is ‘glad and thankful that you are president.’
Her question is about how to make people healthier, and Europe and trans fats ... and she is talking a million miles an hour.
‘If you burn that many calories asking a question, I mean ... she’s fired up,’ said Obama. ‘You’ll be able to eat whatever you want.’
-- Robin Abcarian
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