This is Part 3 of my series on the lies told by Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama in the nearly four years in which he’s been in office. As I said earlier, I’m not concerned with his broken campaign promises so much as I am with his dishonesty while in office.
Last February, Obama had this to say through his Chief of Staff and former Budget Director, Jack Lew. The remarks first came in response to a question from Dick Gregory, of MSNBC’s Meet the Press, and then in an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley.
Gregory: Here’s a stat that a lot of people may not know, but it’s pretty striking. The number of days since Senate Democrats passed a budget is 1,019. Can you just explain as a former budget director, how do you fund the government when there’s no budget?
Lew: Well, you know, one of the things about the United States Senate that I think the American people have realized is that it takes 60, not 50 votes to pass something. And there has been Republican opposition to anything that Senate Democrats have tried to do.
and
Crowley: I want to read for our viewers something that Sen Harry Reid, the Democrat Majority Leader in the US Senate, who said, “We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year. It’s done, we don’t need to do it.”
Lew: He’s not saying that they shouldn’t pass a budget. But we also need to be honest. You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan support.
It stretches credulity far beyond the breaking point for Obama—or his ex-budget director—not to know that it takes 51 votes to pass a budget resolution; budget resolutions cannot be filibustered, the point of the 60-vote red herring. This is a lie, pure and simple.
On the Keystone XL pipeline, there’s this bit of dishonesty. Recall that Obama killed the pipeline that would have run from Canadian oil sands into central and Gulf-coastal US because he felt “rushed” by Republicans. Last March, he staged a photo-op to take credit for “expediting” the permit process for a southern portion of Keystone XL, a part that runs in Oklahoma. And a part that doesn’t need his, or State’s, approval since it doesn’t cross an international border.
And this one:
If you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.
Never mind that more and more companies are limiting the health insurance coverage they’re offering as insurance costs rise (wait—weren’t these supposed to come down?). Never mind that as health insurance coverage alters, doctors are increasingly opting out of—or being driven from by the insurance companies—accepting patients with this or that insurance company’s policy. And never mind that Sears and Darden Restaurants are moving to a plan where they don’t offer health insurance coverage at all. Instead, they’ll give their employees a sum of money and allow them to shop for their own coverage via an online exchange.
And this: Senator Barack Obama spoke against recess appointments, including signing a letter to President Bush the Younger objecting to a recess appointment. He also insisted that it’s “the wrong thing to do,” to appoint people who “couldn’t get through a Senate nomination.”
As president, though, Obama has made “recess appointments” while deliberately bypassing any opportunity for the Senate to weigh in: Donald Berwick to Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services after leaving the position vacant for 15 months before nominating any one at all, just because he didn’t want to hassle with Republicans; Professor Elizabeth Warren to a created just-for-the-purpose “special assistant” position in his office in order to make her the functional head of the new CFPB, when it became clear that she had no hope of being confirmed; three people to the NLRB while the Senate was still in session.