The National Review apparently thinks the entire $13 trillion national debt was incurred on Obama’s watch: http://bit.ly/dtcqTm.
The National Review apparently thinks the entire $13 trillion national debt was incurred on Obama’s watch: http://bit.ly/dtcqTm.
You do realize that that National Review article is quoting a Democratic senator complaining about $13 trillion in wasted spending…..right?
Yes. And the National Review is erroneously interpreting his comments as a criticism of Obama, on the basis that anyone attacking the $13 trillion debt must clearly be criticizing Obama, who — and this is the point of my tweet — is evidently, according to NRO, obviously and self-evidently responsible for said $13 trillion debt.
The NRO piece makes absolutely no sense if you start off with the assumption that the vast majority of the $13 trillion debt has absolutely nothing to do with Obama. Which, coincidentally, happens to be a completely true statement of fact.
NRO version of what Bennet said: “Bennet is quoted as saying that though trillions of dollars of Federal debt has been incurred through spending since he was appointed to the Senate in January of 2009, ‘we have nothing to show for it’.”
What Bennet actually said: “We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet” and, “in my view we have nothing to show for it.”
So either NRO believes that the entire $13 trillion of debt was “acquire[d]…on our balance sheet” “since he was appointed to the Senate in January of 2009,” or, well, or the lede of their article is incoherent and wrong.
Regarding spending during his (Bennet’s) time in office he said, “We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet” and, “in my view we have nothing to show for it.”
The above Bennet quote is bolded in the NR article.
By the way, I completely agree with the core premise of Bennet’s comment, which is that we’ve racked up all this debt without any real reason, nor any obvious result: we haven’t won a mass-mobilization war, or completely overhauled and modernized our infrastructure, or emerged from a Great Depression, or done anything else that would tend to justify the three-decade fiscal bender we’ve been on. The tail end of the bender that involves Obama policies — not to be confused with a) the continuation of Bush policies on Obama’s watch, b) the ongoing effect of structural deficits that predate both Bush and Obama, or c) reduction in revenue due to the recession — is arguably the most justifiable portion of it, which doesn’t mean you can’t criticize it, but it does mean that Bennet’s stances are not necessarily internally inconsistent, as much as NRO might like to pretend otherwise. But the main point is, Bennet’s point is exceedingly clear, and although I wouldn’t expect NRO to agree with it, at least not without carping that his actions are inconsistent with it, it’s intellectually honest & beneath NRO to pretend they don’t understand it, and act like Bennet is making some stunning comment that will “set political tongues wagging” by seeming to inherently contradict the Obama agenda.
Seems to me your problem is with Bennet and not the National Review……
The phrase “[r]egarding spending during his (Bennet’s) time in office” is not a quote from Bennet, but an (obviously inaccurate) paraphrase by a reporter for some local Colorado rag. If NRO’s excuse is that it was fooled by some random local reporter into believing that the entire $13 trillion national deficit accrued during the Obama Administration, that’s pretty freakin’ weak.
By the way, I completely agree with the core premise of Bennet’s comment, which is that we’ve racked up all this debt without any real reason, nor any obvious result: we haven’t won a mass-mobilization war, or completely overhauled and modernized our infrastructure, or emerged from a Great Depression, or done anything else that would tend to justify the three-decade fiscal bender we’ve been on.
First thing we’ve agreed on for a long time.
I’ve said the same thing a bunch of times, in various different ways. This isn’t a new opinion of mine. It’s the core of my critique of the last 3+ decades of (non-)leadership by Republicans and Democrats alike. It’s a key aspect of my growing pessimism, my Grand Unified Theory of PANIC!!!! and so forth — the belief that our leaders no longer show any interest in leading, and the voters no longer show any interest in being led, and nobody is advancing a sustainable agenda, and everybody is just demagoguing their way to the next election cycle, without any real thought for the future of the country, fiscal or otherwise (but especially fiscal), and that if anybody tries to do something different, the low-information, intellectually lazy electorate (Tea Party most definitely included) will demand to go back to having its cake and eating it too — basically, that America has become ungovernable.
Seems to me your problem is with Bennet and not the National Review
No, because again, BENNET DID NOT SAY that the entire $13 trillion occurred during his time in office. Some local reporter said that, and NRO uncritically picked it up and ran with it, even though it’s demonstrably and f***ing-obviously false.
Then why do you support the biggest spender (with arguably the worst results) we’ve ever had?
Does the ending of the Cold War count ? In the last 3 decades, that is ?
That seems, to me, like a worthy achievement …
I would have said “The Internet” – except that was in spite of the Government more than it was because of it, for all that it started with DARPANet and Packet Switching and attempts to get round the problems of EMP Warfare …
Brendan, with all due respect, this is one of the most asinine criticisms I’ve ever seen you post. The reporter’s paraphrase and the Senator’s direct quote are totally consistent with each other. Do you somehow disagree that we have incurred “trillions of dollars of Federal debt … through spending since he was appointed to the Senate in January of 2009”? There is no way you can charitably interpret that quote as trying to say the entire federal debt occurred under Obama’s watch.
AML- You forget..we are talking about the National Review, so you must automatically assume the worst. Now if this had been on Kos………