Asking the Right Questions, Part IV

Barry is starting to get some good questions. His answers (if you can fight through the pauses and bends of purpose that are scattered throughout) betray his purpose pretty completely. He doesn't want to lie, and doesn't want to tell the truth, so the line he walks is tortuous but revealing. In this series, I have taken the questions from his last press conference, and condensed his answers to the most concise meaning; and I have also added the answer a hypothetical good president would give.

Chip Reid. QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. At both of your town hall meetings in California last week, you said, quote, ”I didn’t run for president to pass on roblems to the next generation.” But under your budget, the debt will increase $7 trillion over the next 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office says $9.3 trillion. And today on Capitol Hill, some Republicans called your budget, with all the spending on health care, education and environment, the most irresponsible budget in American history. Isn’t that kind of debt exactly what you were talking about when you said passing on our problems to the next generation?

Barry: I prefer to call them investments. Kind of like a 30 year mortgage with a balloon payment. You see, I don't have the faintest idea what a trillion is. Is that someone from Trillia?
Hypothetical Good President: Yes, I do see the lunacy in the CBO numbers, and that's why we will totally revamp spending programs to make the numbers work, just like every family has to do with their budgets. Believe me, this will be a lot easier than some people will have you believe. If you stop paying someone to watch the watchers, you have an immediate positive impact. That's better than an investment. We can drop 80-90% of all government programs. It's the responsible thing to do, and we will do it.

QUESTION: But even under your budget -- as you said, over the next four or five
years, you’re going to cut the deficit in half. Then, after that, six years in a row it goes up, up, up.
If you’re making all these long-term structural cuts --
QUESTION: -- why does it continue to go up in the out years?

Barry: Because we don't have to deal with the deficit. We can sweep it under the rug. It's what our constituents expect of us.
Hypothetical Good President: When you talk about cutting the deficit in half, it's like overdrawing your checking account by a massive amount, and then offering to pay back the bank half of what you owe. Why on Earth would anyone brag on that? You still have a massive deficit, and it will hurt you. We need to eliminate the deficit, and begin to retire the debt.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. Today your administration presented a plan
to help curb the violence in Mexico and also to control any or prevent any
spillover of the violence into the United States. Do you consider the situationnow a national security threat?
And do you believe that it could require sending national troops to the border?
Governor Perry of Texas has said that you still need more troops and more
agents. How do you respond to that?

Barry: I'm concerned about violence on border. Yes, very concerned. Next question.
Hypothetical Good President: In my first 60 days I intend to finish the border fence, if I have to go out there and build it myself. Then, Mexico will be forced to deal with their problem, as we are forced to deal with ours. In time, law and order will prevail, because the law enforcement community will be right-sized to deal with a known population. Then we won't have this situational population ebb and flow that can't really be managed.

Kevin Baron, Stars and Stripes. Is Kevin here? There you go.
QUESTION: Mr. President, where do you plan to find savings in the Defense and
Veterans Administration’s budgets when so many items that seem destined for the
chopping block are politically untenable, perhaps?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I’m sorry, so many?
QUESTION: When so many items that may be destined for the chopping block seem
politically untenable, from major weapons systems -- as you mentioned,
procurement -- to wounded warrior care costs, or increased operations on
Afghanistan, or the size of the military itself.

Barry: I'm going to make the military's job as difficult as possible, with poor objectives, poor funding, ;lack of commitment, and meaningless missions. That way, I hope all the volunteers leave the Army before they get hurt. Then we won't need as many VA hospitals. Meanwhile, I am going to choke off the VA funding by making it as much like Hillarycare as i can, and no one will want to work there. How's that for proactive?
Hypothetical Good President: We need to pick our fights much more effectively. I prefer the way Reagan won his wars. He would build a strong enough defense that it was never necessary to use it.