Jake Tapper for ABC News): "Everybody dislikes Washington right now, and everybody wants to lower their taxes. Everybody hates waste in government. But at the same time, you know, government does some important things like helping to make sure you've got clean drinking water and that your roads aren't full of potholes."
Everybody dislikes Washington, so you ran as an outsider. Everybody wants to lower their taxes, so you ran as a tax cutter (for 95 percent of us, that is). Everybody hates waste in government, so you promised to lower the deficit, curtail earmarks and bring about open, transparent government.
Now you try to justify higher taxes, more waste, a much greater deficit and a coming avalanche of taxes on the basis that "government does some important things"? Some? Few question the some, but they have very serious issues with the many other things the government does. As did you, before your election. Before the Change.
Or this: "I noticed I didn't get a lot of clapping about the whole 'We're gonna have the hard choices' thing."
No? Maybe it's because people know how abjectly false that "hard choices thing" is. They know it's a euphemism for much higher taxes because you and Congress always make the easy choice to spend more, more, more. The people know they don't face a choice at all; they cannot choose freely not to pay those higher taxes. They know it will be hard, but only for them.
By now, of course, they also know what you've done the past year and a half since Candidate Hope & Change morphed into President Business As Usual On Steroids.
Or this: "As this debate unfolds, I just want everybody to pay attention to what folks are saying. A lot of times politicians will tell you, 'I'm going to cut your taxes, I'm going to lower the deficit, I'm going to expand Medicare.' [Don't settle for that.] Ask every politician when they say they're going to balance the budget and deal with the deficit: 'What exactly are you going to cut? What spending are you willing to eliminate?'"
Goodness, people are doing those things already. It's called the Tea Party movement, Mr. President. You and your ridiculous message crafters and media toadies are busy calling them racists, mobs, fringe kooks, ad nauseam, even though in 2007-08 you seemed to share right many of their concerns. What happened?
The people are asking those very questions, but they're asking them of you, you see, since you promised to cut taxes, lower the deficit and so forth, but instead delivered one deficit-ballooning program after another.
Now they sense, correctly, that you're preparing to make them and their children and grandchildren pay for your own spending party. You and your supporters and pals got their power and payoffs, now you want to pretend as if you're at the mercy of your own farcical Debt Commission, unable to stop a crippling influx of tax increases to solve, supposedly, those problems which you deliberately made much, much worse.
Oh, and we remember how you said we faced a "crisis" back when you were campaigning. Before the Change.
But have at it, Mr. President. What exactly are you going to cut? What spending are you willing to eliminate? These are your questions; you cannot be afraid of them.
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