Jeb Hensarling is a particularly bone-headed backbencher from suburban Dallas who has aspirations to join the Republican leadership. He was the last Republican congressperson to ask the president a question at the House Republican Retreat today in Baltimore. The president insisted on calling him ‘Jim’ even after he was corrected, but it hardly mattered because Obama just eviscerated his talking points and made him look like a fool. Below is the transcript of their exchange.
OBAMA: Jim’s (sic) going to wrap things up?
PENCE: Yes, sir.
OBAMA: All right.
HENSARLING: Jeb, Mr. President.
OBAMA: How are you?
HENSARLING: I’m doing well.
Mr. President, a year ago I had an opportunity to speak to you about the national debt. And something that you and I have in common is we both have small children. And I left that conversation really feeling you’re sincere commitment to ensuring that our children, our nation’s children do not inherit an unconscionable debt. We know that under current law that government — the cost of government is due to grow from 20 percent of our economy to 40 percent of our economy right about the time our children are leaving college and getting that first job.
Mr. President, shortly after that conversation a year ago, the Republicans proposed a budget that ensured that government did not grow beyond the historical standard of 20 percent of GDP. It was a budget that actually froze immediately non-defense discretionary spending. It spent $5 trillion less than ultimately what was enacted into law.
And unfortunately, I believe that budget was ignored.
And since that budget was ignored, what were the old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats. The national debt has increased 30 percent.
Now, Mr. President, I know you believe — and I understand the argument; I respect the view — that the spending is necessary due to the recession. Many of us believe, frankly, it’s part of the problem, not part of the solution, but I understand and I respect your view.
HENSARLING: But this is what I don’t understand, Mr. President. After that discussion, your administration proposed a budget that would triple the national debt over the next 10 years. Surely you don’t believe 10 years from now we will still be mired in this recession. It proposed new entitlement spending and moved the — the cost of government to almost 24.5 percent of the economy.
Now, very soon, Mr. President, you’re due to submit a new budget and my question…
OBAMA: Jim (sic), I know there’s a question in there somewhere, because you’re making a whole bunch of assertions, half of which I disagree with.
(LAUGHTER)
And I’m having to sit here listening to them. At some point, I know you’re going to let me answer.
HENSARLING: That’s…
OBAMA: All right.
HENSARLING: That’s the question.
You are soon to submit a new budget, Mr. President. Will that new budget, like your old budget, triple the national debt and continue to take us down the path of increasing the cost of government to almost 25 percent of our economy? That’s the question, Mr. President.
OBAMA: All right. Jim (sic), with all due respect, I’ve just got to take this last question as an example of how it’s very hard to have the kind of bipartisan work that we’re going to do, because the whole question was structured as a talking point for running — running a campaign.
Now, look, let’s talk about the budget, once again, because I’ll go through it with you line by line.
The fact of the matter is, is that when we came into office, the deficit was $1.3 trillion. $1.3 trillion. So — so when you say that suddenly I’ve got a monthly budget that is higher than the annual — or a monthly deficit that’s higher than the annual deficit left by Republicans, that’s factually just not true, and you know it’s not true. And what is true is that we came in already with a $1.3 trillion deficit before I had passed any law. What is true is, we came in with $8 trillion worth of debt over the next decade.
Had nothing to do with anything that we had done. It had to do with the fact that in 2000, when there was a budget surplus of $200 billion, you had a Republican administration and a Republican Congress, and we had two tax cuts that weren’t paid for, you had a prescription drug plan — the biggest entitlement plan, by the way, in several decades — that was passed, without it being paid for, you had two wars that were done through supplementals, and then you had $3 trillion projected because of the lost revenue of this recession.
OBAMA: That’s $8 trillion. Now, we increased it by $1 trillion because of the spending that we had to make on the stimulus.
I am happy to have any independent factchecker out there take a look at your presentation versus mine in terms of the accuracy of what I just said.
The video is even more humiliating than the transcript (although you’ll have to skip to end to see the exchange). I recommend that you send around the CSPAN video link to friends and relatives, or tell them to watch on the television tonight at 8pm when it will be rebroadcast.
Obama performed as well as any British prime minister during Question Time. The same cannot be said for the Republicans who, by and large, tried to use dishonest arguments and demonstrably inaccurate statistics only to have Obama tell them to get serious and stop trying to score cheap political points. I can honestly say that if as many Americans watched today’s Q & A with the Republicans as watched the State of the Union, our political problems would be over. If we had Question Time, we’d have a much easier time winning over public opinion and sustaining support for progressive policies.
The Republicans certainly will not want to repeat this extremely painful beat-down.
see Man Eegee below. But yes, this is the Obama we’ve needed all along. The Republicans wither under direct confrontation. The President was very, very good today.
Right, but the GOP won’t make this same mistake again.
But the President should offer to do it again. Often. And make a point of calling attention to the GOP declination.
Are you sure about that?
Frank Luntz: Obama Had The Advantage Today, But GOP Should Do This Again
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/president-obama/frank-luntz-obama-had-the-advantage-today-but-gop-
should-do-this-again/
yeah, I’m sure.
Iunno, Chris Matthews is a typical Villager, and he brought Pence on. He allowed Pence to continue his talking points, to which case Matthews just said it was “good for the country, and good for Republicans.”
We’ll see.
To me, this is reminiscent of the presidential debates when the pundits kept trying to claim McCain won but insta-polls showed the people thought otherwise. I think the video is too powerful for the media to spin as a win for conservatives. Even though this loser on Tweety’s show is trying to do exactly that.
I wonder if they can avoid it though. He’s already offered to do it again, monthly even. Are they going to turn him down? And they’ve already done it on C-Span, so can they do it again without the cameras now?
This was an AMAZING move.
If it doesn’t make the front page across the country, it never happened. We can scream all we like here in the blogosphere, but the average bloke at home doesn’t hear it, what reason would we have to praise Obama?
For all everyone knows, it is Obama’s economy and Obama’s deficit. George W. Bush no longer exists.
“If it doesn’t make the front page across the country, it never happened.” More importantly, if it doesn’t become a subject that is talked about by the major media for weeks – “Obama sure schooled the repugs”, it doesn’t exist. Even worse, if it is talked about in the standard format (as it sounds like Matthews used with Pence) then it is instantly forced into a he said-she said frame and it dies. I was afraid to watch the news tonight as I expect the latter.
If the President offered to take 10 questions from Republican members of Congress on, say, the last Thursday of every month, and stood there in the East Room with cameras rolling… would they really not appear?
That’s a great idea.
And so, where are the Republicans hiding George W. Bush these days? And why doesn’t the public associate our vast federal deficit with him instead of Obama? Is it possible that even the Republicans don’t know what damage they did to the country fiscally over the previous eight years?
We all remember the phrase, “the have-mores,” used by Bush in apparent jest to describe his primary constituents, but which was so damned true that it is no longer funny. A 15% tax rate on the top 10% who own 85% of the stock market. Obscene. And where the hell are the Democratic organizations on this issue and why aren’t they screaming out loud, the kind of things Obama told a group of piddly Republicans.
This was the Obama I voted for.
Welcome back.
I agree although I have to go through a process of “dissoiation” in order to look away from the failures in foreign policy and toward the domestic side. It is not easy because he sometimes looks like another George Bush. Imagine morphing George Bush and Obama in one image. Ghastly.
I’m sorry, but I have to take a page out of Obama’s book (or “lecture”) and ask: What foreign policy “failures”?
I cannot think of a political leader more different than W than President Obama. Your tag with Carter’s book reminded me of the way the us progressives ran from Carter and the result was Reagan and the 30 years in the wilderness we have had since. Its refreshing to have a brilliant ethical person leading our country again.
“Its refreshing to have a brilliant ethical person leading our country again.” Indeed. When I look to the repuglican side, none currently in power seem to have any real ethics at all.
One republican I’ve always admired is former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, always saw his as a man of principles. But today I saw Koop on the teevee scaring old people about health care reform with lies about health care in Britain.
Broke my heart … it really did.
SMART of the White House to have the cameras there. Those talking points don’t hold up nearly so well when someone with the actual facts in his head stands up and challenges them.
And I bet that is the LAST time the Republicans allow cameras at an event like this…. Apparently some Republican aide told Luke Russart of MSNBC in private “… that was a mistake…”
(Looking forward to watching some of the video later…!)
It also proves that no one in the party is as good a spokesman for Obama than he is.
I can’t wait to watch Tweety, and I never watch cable news, ever.
Digby didn’t sound that impressed with the whole exchange, but I thought it was something he should do often, very often, and do it with Republicans and Democrats in the same room. He should do it with the Senate, especially, to expose the Blue Dog liars.
I had to go read that and ugh, it seems her objection is that by going to them instead of having them come to him he looked weak. Some claptrap like it made for “dicey optics.” They’ve got an event planned and he’s got an opportunity to show up and kick their asses and he should have said, “no, hold your get together at the White House or I’m not coming”? Then he would have been ducking them by making a silly demand and what kind of “optics” would that have made for?
Russert Spawn said he was told by a GOP rep that they regretted bringing in the cameras today.
Woudn’t you? They’ve already said it won’t happen again; remains to be seen what reason they’ll come up with…. I’ve got a few speculative thoughts but I think I’ll make them do their own thinking if they can.
I hope this begins the trend of making stupidity and ignorance unpopular.
Since Raygun, it has been acceptable to spew nonsense and get away with it. Also outright lies and stories from fantasyland.
http://www.tomberryforcongress.com/
I’m just waiting for Hannity and similar idiots to say that he read it all from a teleprompter.
I’m convinced it’s a prejudiced or racist attack on Obama. Obama is an uppity negro, too stupid that he needs a teleprompter in every setting.
Loved watching President Obama handle the children today! It was terrific.
It’s good to see. Now if he can only follow up with some policy victories.
He should do “Question Time” once a month at the House of Reps. 10 questions from each side.
I’d love it.
Here’s the problem. The Times right now has this headline: “Off Script, Obama and the G.O.P. Vent Politely.” After a throwaway lede, here are the third and fourth paragraphs:
If that’s the media narrative, then nothing was gained.
Somewhere along the line the media confused “unbiased” with “allergic to fact checking”.
They are philosophically opposed to the concept of objective facts. Noam Chomsky describes this nonsense best:
I checked the NY Times coverage too to see if, as I suspected, it would be portrayed in the “he said, they said” manner of “even-handed” journalism. I checked because it was predictable that that’s how they’d play it.
Although it will be nice if “Obama 2010” can, over time, change the way the MSM covers an exceptional State of the Union speech and a Lion’s Den smackdown in Baltimore, I don’t think that’s the main thrust of what’s going on. I think it’s part of Obama’s overall strategy leading up to the 2010 elections and beyond to systematically shine a spotlight on Republican obstructionism. The idea that Obama naively persisted in a wistful attempt at bipartisanship throughout 2009 and into 2010 is absurd. I can assure you, he has no illusions. But by engaging in the exercise he is systematically planting the notion for the majority of voters in the country that he has gone out of his way to more than meet the Republicans halfway. He is painting them further and further into a corner. This frees him up, and frees the Democratic party, to shove through better legislation than they otherwise would. This is where the 60 seat Senate was throttling the agenda, and why we’re better off without it.
The idea of any politician at that level being naive — with the possible exception of Palin, who’s simply ignorant about the world — always struck me as absurd. Especially when the politician in question comes from a machine government like Chicago’s.
Dead on. Like Drew Jones says, you’d have to be incredibly stupid to think that there’s any real chance of getting cooperation from Republicans but every majority party and every president in my memory has used the rhetoric of bipartisanship against the opposition. It sends lefty blog commenters into a frothing rage when Democrats speak of bipartisanship but if Obama can successfully paint the Republicans as obstructionists it will be well worth it.
And you think Obama will break the Republicans? How so? The only way that’ll happen is electing even more Democrats. Unless you think Scott Brown is going to do an Arlen Specter
Who said anything about breaking them?
Fortunately, the NYT will be bankrupt eventually, anyway. They’ve earned it.
again, utterly, you don’t seem to get it.
your gloating here does absolutely nothing about certain facts regarding how our nation works and thinks.
“Never let the facts get in the way of a good argument”. or in the case of how our nation actually works now: never let the facts get in the way of good propaganda put forth daily by the wealthy elite.
do you or do you not agree that numerous (I’d say around sixty percent) of Americans are flat-out stupid? if you don’t agree, then you need to please explain:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A32862-2003Sep5&am
p;notFound=true
The Media has certainly done their “job” well. Dr. Goebbels would indeed be proud.
Yes, but let’s be clear: mainstream media is totally owned and controlled by the wealthy class.
therefore we have to look behind the curtain of “the media” and understand WHO is pulling the levers and cables, and understand what their agenda is.
this obviously powerful tool, “the media” is as you state, working very well– it has to since it’s the tool of the minority ruling class.
it’s unfortunate the rest of “us”, the non-wealthy majority, refuse to use alternative forms of media to do what needs to be done to save our nation.
Absolutely. I’ve watched it happen even with some of the smaller local outlets, such as the weekly newspaper in our small, mostly rural community. The paper was bought up by a right-wing leaning company a couple of years ago and the difference is clearly evident. The community lost a valuable piece of itself and hardly anyone noticed.