In a powerful updating of the holiday classic "A Christmas Carol," Barack Obama went before the cameras yesterday to claim that the poor, lame little ragamuffin Tiny Tim would soon die if Ebenezer Boehner didn't give the Cratchit family an extra $40 in each paycheck.
Specifically, the president and the House Republicans have been arguing over a two month extension of the "payroll tax cut," which isn't actually a tax cut at all. It's simply a short "financial holiday" during which workers won't be contributing money to their own social security plans... meaning the critically underfunded program will have even less money to work with in the future.
But Obama and his Democrat cronies have successfully positioned this as a tax cut which will magically give working Americans an extra $40 in each and every paycheck...for two whole months.
And to really seal the deal, the president asked Americans to send him sob stories about what they could do with that precious $40. Unsurprisingly, he reports that with all that money, they won't have to "choose between insulin and paying the water bill," or cancel the "family pizza night" which keeps the kids from joining gangs or contracting interesting sexually-transmitted diseases.
$40 will allow a child in Honolulu to have hot lunches at school (presumably the only low income child in America who has had to pay for a school lunch in a generation), or make an unspecified and frankly unimaginable difference to a man with inoperable cancer and (surprise!) no health insurance.
Seriously, even Tiny Tim would be gagging at all this. But as of Hope n' Change's press deadline (before the really serious drinking starts), Boehner has just caved under these maudlin arguments (and a testicular deficit amongst his Republican House members nearly as significant as the fiscal deficit) and will allow yet another flood of red ink to be added to the books.
Frankly, we're appalled at hearing Obama pretend to care about the buying power of $40 when he trivializes the loss of $1 trillion in "stimulus" spending that did nothing. With that amount of money, we could have paid $40 for insulin, "pizza night," utilities, or hot lunches 25 billion times. But instead we've gotten a shrug, a goofy grin, and an admission that there was no such thing as a shovel-ready job after all. Oopsy!
When Barack Obama then hypocritically claims that $40 is a miraculous, life-changing amount of money, we're reminded of an old story...
A group of poor kids in the inner city were bored out of their minds, had nothing to do, nowhere to go, no toys to play with, and almost no money to spend. They pooled their pocket change and came up with $3, and gave it to one boy to go into a drugstore and buy something they could have fun with.
After 5 minutes, he returns with only a box of Kotex.
"What can we do with that?!" the angry kids demand.
"Well, according to the box," the boy answers, "you can go horseback riding, you can go swimming, you can play tennis..."
Three guesses who that boy grew up to be.
- With $40, you could go to the president's web store and buy this pitcher
with his logo on the outside and, appropriately, nothing on the inside.
Actually, it's $50 - but we're pretty sure he'll lower the price if you tell him you
also need to pay your utility bills, buy insulin, and get new tips for your crutches.
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with his logo on the outside and, appropriately, nothing on the inside.
Actually, it's $50 - but we're pretty sure he'll lower the price if you tell him you
also need to pay your utility bills, buy insulin, and get new tips for your crutches.
-
-
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