Friday, September 28, 2012

President Obama at the DNC: Too Little Too Late

 

For Immediate Release
September 7, 2012

Contact:

Leslie K. Paige

202-467-5334

Luke Gelber

202-467-5318

President Obama at the DNC: Too Little Too Late

(Washington, D.C.) – Today, Tom Schatz, President of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), issued the following statement in response to President Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC):

“The Democratic National Convention started with the news that the national debt had reached more than $16 trillion and ended with the news that job growth in August was weaker than expected,” said Schatz. “The labor participation rate is at 63.5 percent, its lowest level since 1981. The question for voters is just what does President Obama want to ‘finish,’ as he said in his speech last night? Whether or not he gets a second chance will be decided in 60 days.

“Perhaps a majority of voters will let the President finish his outstanding work that has led to record debt and economic stagnation. It is possible that enough of them will be happy enough with these results and the potential for more of the same to agree that he deserves four more years.

“However, it would behoove voters to closely examine what the President said last night before they decide what to do on November 6. For example, his touted ‘victories’ were decidedly underwhelming. His claim to have added 4.5 million private sector jobs during his presidency is based on the number of jobs added since the very bottom of the recession, and ignores the fact that the ongoing ‘recovery,’ which began in 2009 when the recession officially ended, has been the weakest post-recession improvement on record. While it is true that President Obama inherited a difficult economic crisis, the recovery under his leadership is the lamest the nation has ever seen.

“Amazingly, as has been the case for nearly all of his major speeches, the President managed to deliver more than 4,000 words without uttering the phrase ‘government waste.’ As the leader of an administration that has never completed a fiscal year with a deficit of less than $1.2 trillion, that is not surprising. And his promise to ‘invest savings’ from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ignores the fact that there is no such ‘peace dividend.’ The wars and other government expenditures were mostly funded with borrowed money and any ‘savings’ should be used only to reduce the $16 trillion debt. His most absurd claim is that he wants to reach an agreement to cut the debt based on his Simpson-Bowles bipartisan debt commission, which rings hollow in light of his decision to neglect those recommendations in each of his annual budgets.

“The most accurate comment made by President Obama was that it will ‘take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades.’ He has already had four of them, and voters will have to decide if they want to give him more time or elect someone who will lead the country in a different direction,” concluded Schatz.

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

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