What has the Obama White House really achieved in its first 100 days?
Here is a list:
1. He passed a stimulus bill that was largely negotiated and completed before he got into office. It got no Republican votes in the House and only three in the Senate.
2. He signed a spending bill that was completely last year’s business. (It even had earmarks from Obama, his chief of staff and other members of his Cabinet from their time in Congress.)
3. He signed a children’s health care bill that was largely unchanged from legislation that was vetoed by President George W. Bush.
4. He appointed a treasury secretary who didn’t pay his taxes.
5. He tried to appoint a Health and Human Services secretary who didn’t pay his taxes.
6. He schmoozed with Jay Leno on the Tonight Show.
7. He did very well on his NCAA college basketball pool.
8. He fired the CEO of General Motors.
9. He appeared on “60 Minutes” a couple of times.
10. He went to a Bulls-Wizards basketball game.
11. He got a dog for the White House.
12. He threw $787 billion at the recession and as a result the only new jobs created were the hiring of a few bureaucrats.
13. He went to Canada and then to Europe.
14. He gave the British prime minister a bunch of DVDs that don’t work in Europe and gave the queen an iPod loaded with his speeches.
15. He asked the French and the Germans to spend more money (they declined).
16. He asked the Europeans for more help in Afghanistan (they declined).
17. He said he was sorry that America got the world into this mess.
18. He reversed a regulation that would have made it harder for labor union bosses to abscond with their members’ hard-earned pension money.
19. He schmoozed with Hugo Chavez.
20. He lifted the travel ban to Cuba.
21. He helpfully let everyone in the world know exactly what kind of interrogation techniques we use, just in case anybody wants to get ready should they ever get caught trying to terrorize the United States.
He hasn’t done much on the legislative front that wasn’t already cooked up in the last Congress.
He hasn’t come up with a cap-and-trade proposal.
We haven’t seen his health care proposal.
His budget still isn’t done.
We haven’t seen legislation that would regulate the financial services sector.
We do know that his proposal to increase taxes on charities and mortgage deductions is dead.
We know that the Senate will not do cap-and-trade under reconciliation and may not do it at all.
Health care reform might happen under reconciliation but it is not a done deal.
The Obama administration has done a magnificent job of talking a good game when it comes to change.
It has completely reworked the art of political communication and has largely kept the fawning media bamboozled.
But by historic standards, the first 100 days of the Obama administration have been a lot of sizzle and not a lot of substance.
A picture of my cave
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