New Ad Confirms THERE IS NO PLAN
A recent ad from the Obama re-election campaign titled "Table" features President Obama talking into the camera and telling viewers what he would tell them if they were sitting across the table from them. He states that he inherited an economic mess and that everything will be OK now that we have the full time referees back in place. Allright, so I made that last part up.
The difference between this ad and the previous ones is that at the end it asks readers to visit www.BarackObama.com/plans to see his vision for the future. However, just like we have been screaming for weeks, that page like the rest of President Obama's site HAS NO PLAN?
The landing page pointed to in the ad takes you to a page with five bullet points for President Obama and five for Romney. Remember, this is the page you are sent to to actually read the plan. Those five bullet points refer to a plan but never actually tell you what it is or where you can find it. Of those five bullet points, two discuss things that happened already, and the other three refer to the plan as balancing the budget or creating jobs but never actually tell you how the President plans to do that.
- President Obama is taking a balanced approach to cutting the deficit ...
- President Obama has a plan that would create 1 million new manufacturing jobs ...
- President Obama is calling on millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share ...
- President Obama responsibly ended the Iraq war, ...
- President Obama has improved Medicare ...
Also on that page, you see a list of topics ranging from education to energy to taxes and health care. You would thing that these would be the specifics, the meat of the plan. However, selecting any of these things simply takes you another list of bullet points comparing President Obama to Mitt Romney. These bullet points consist largely of things that President Obama did in the first term. For example, here are the bullet points from education:
- Set a goal to cut tuition growth in half over the next decade, ...
- Launched Race to the Top, ...
- Capped repayments on federal student loans at 10% of income ...
- Established the American Opportunity Tax Credit ...
- Expanded and strengthened Head Start and Early Head Start ...
- Invested $2 billion in community colleges ...
Notice how all of these are past tenses. In fact, the only subject that really discusses anything that will take place in the future is the page on jobs and the economy. However, that "plan" is so short, vague, and broad that it is reproduced in its entire form below:
- Eliminate tax breaks for companies that outsource American jobs
- Create tax incentives for businesses bringing jobs back home
- Invest in education and training programs for American workers
- Make tax cuts for the middle class permanent
- Double exports and create one million new manufacturing jobs
So, the President's plan for addressing the US economy is literally a 5 bullet point web page that says he will double exports and create a million jobs, but doesn't feel the need to explain in even the slightest way how exactly he is going to do that. Why not simply claim to create a billion jobs?
Finally, how is the President going to address the debt over the next four years? Well, that entire plan is reproduced here, and as you can see the President views that issue as important enought to warrant another 5 bullet points. Again, note the deception as the plan says that the President will cut $4 trillion from the deficit , but the actual ad states that he will cut the deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade. Note that this isn't the debt, but rather the deficit. The President isn't planning to pay off $4 trillion in debt, but rather heralding a plan that would reduce the amount of debt we accrue over the next decade by that amount. This from a man that pledged to cut the deficit in half in his first term.
- Invest in education, research and technology to grow the economy for the long term
- Cut more than $4 trillion from the deficit while asking millionaires to pay their fair share in taxes
- Strengthen Medicare and Medicaid by cracking down on fraud while making them more efficient and effective
- Responsibly ended the war in Iraq, and will use half the savings from ending foreign wars to pay down the debt and the other half to invest in infrastructure at home.
- A plan that puts our fiscal house in order after inheriting a $1.3 trillion deficit from the previous administration
Here's the bottom line. BarackObama.com used to casually mention that the President proposed a plan in his 2012 state of the union address. However, any reference to the "America Built to Last plan" has been missing from the site for weeks. As far as we can tell, an actual description of the plan never existed on barackobama.com. So the President is campaigning on a plan that no one can find. It isn't described anywhere on the site in any broader detail than 5 bullet point per subject. In fact, if we hadn't visited the site regularly to build profiles we would have no idea that this was the actual plan being referenced.
The Ad
During the last weeks of this campaign there will be debates, speeches and more ads. But if I could sit down with you in your living room or around the kitchen table here's what I'd say:
When I took office we were losing nearly 800,000 jobs a month and were mired in Iraq. Today I believe that as a nation we are moving forward again. But we have much more to do to get folks back to work and make the middle class secure again.
Now, Governor Romney believes that with that even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy and fewer regulations on Wall Street all of us will prosper. In other words he'd double down on the same trickle down policies that led to the crisis in the first place. So what's my plan?
First, we create a million new manufacturing jobs and help businesses double their exports. Give tax breaks to companies that invest in America, not that ship jobs overseas.
Second, we cut our oil imports in half and produce more American-made energy, oil, clean-coal, natural gas, and new resources like wind, solar and bio-fuels—all while doubling the fuel efficiencies of cars and trucks.
Third, we insure that we maintain the best workforce in the world by preparing 100,000 additional math and science teachers. Training 2 million Americans with the job skills they need at our community colleges. Cutting the growth of tuition in half and expanding student aid so more Americans can afford it.
Fourth, a balanced plan to reduce our deficit by four trillion dollars over the next decade on top of the trillion in spending we've already cut, I'd ask the wealthy to pay a little more. And as we end the war in Afghanistan let's apply half the savings to pay down our debt and use the rest for some nation building right here at home.
It's time for a new economic patriotism. Rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong, thriving middle class. Read my plan. Compare it to Governor Romney's and decide for yourself. Thanks for listening.