The Plan That Isn't There

Once again — action was called for, and Obama gave a speech.

And it wasn't even that good a speech. It was full of attacks on straw men and caricatures. Some said it made a mockery of the debt deal that was only a couple of months old. Whether that was true or not, it certainly proposed something like $450 billion in new spending without proposing where the money would come from. (The White House said it would take them at least a couple more weeks to come up with that proposal.)

What's even worse is this: President Obama intoned “Pass this bill now!” at least 17 times in his speech, but there is no bill! (The White House promised they might have a proposal to Congress “maybe sometime next week” — which makes me think of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi's statement that “We have to pass the bill to find out what's in it.”)

I guess that's why even folks on the floor of the House during the speech (and everyone else who heard it) were incredulous about what Obama was saying (see the “Historic Hysterics” item, talking about Obama's “travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham of a speech to a joint session of Congress”). It seems nobody, including Barack Obama, thought this speech's proposals were really serious. Just another phony excuse for a phony set of proposals from a phony excuse for a president.

I'll be glad when we can get an adult into the Oval Office again.