Vote of No Confidence?

What’s to Blame for Wallstreet Meltdown?

Fox News

Are President Obama’s policies to blame for Wallstreet meltdown?

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Both Parties Play the Blame Game for Economic Woes

By LAURIE KELLMAN | Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain deployed heavy sarcasm. Fellow Republican Marsha Blackburn trotted out a chart. A group of conservative House Republicans mocked: “‘Deficit we inherited?’ … Spare us the false outrage.” The war between Republicans and Democrats to frame the blame for the economy erupted in earnest this week.

Republicans pushed back against President Barack Obama’s claim — echoed relentlessly by his Cabinet members and Democrats in Congress — that he didn’t cause the mess and shouldn’t be judged yet on obligating taxpayers for a trillion dollars trying to fix it.

Just how long Democrats can credibly argue that they’re merely responding to — and not responsible for — a crisis created under Republican predecessors depends on which political and economic fortune tellers are doing the predicting.

“Not for too much longer,” says Stanley Renshon, a professor of political psychology at the City University of New York. “People are distracted by the sideshow only for so long, especially when the evidence is all around them. Every day brings a new cash infusion for a new industry, and the stocks drop.” …

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Related News: Hopes of Bipartisanship Have Faded

More Fact-Checking of Obama’s Speech

The president gets facts wrong about oil imports, mortgage aid and the transcontinental railroad, and more.

FactCheck.org

President Obama’s first speech to a joint session of Congress was stuffed with signals about the new direction his budget will take and meant-to-be reassuring words about the economy. But it was also peppered with exaggerations and factual misstatements.

He said “we import more oil today than ever before.” That’s untrue. Imports peaked in 2005 and are substantially lower today.

He claimed his mortgage aid plan would help “responsible” buyers but not those who borrowed beyond their means. But even prominent defenders of the program including Fed Chairman Bernanke and FDIC chief Bair concede foolish borrowers will be aided, too.

He said the high cost of health care “causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds.” That’s at least double the true figure.

He flubbed two facts about American history. The U.S. did not invent the automobile, and the transcontinental railroad was not completed until years after the Civil War, not during it.

He claimed that his stimulus plan “prevented the layoffs” of 57 police officers in Minneapolis. In fact, it’s far more complicated than that, and other factors are also helping to save police jobs.

The president also repeated some strained claims we’ve critiqued before …

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Related News: FACT CHECK: Obama’s Words on Home Aid Ring Hollow

Obama’s Proposes Up to $750 Billion More for Bank Aid

By Roger Runningen and Brian Faler | Bloomberg.com

Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama’s first budget request would provide as much as $750 billion in new aid to the financial industry, as well as overhaul the U.S. health-care system and launch a program to cut carbon-dioxide emissions.

The spending blueprint, being sent to Congress today, anticipates the government will run a deficit totaling $1.75 trillion in the year ending Sept. 30, equivalent to about 12 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Obama has promised to cut the shortfall — the biggest since World War II – - in half by the end of his first term.

“It’s only by restoring fiscal discipline” that the U.S. can produce growth and prosperity “over the long run,” Obama said during remarks this morning. “That means cutting what we don’t need” to pay for necessary programs.

Obama pledged that his administration will “go through our books page by page, line by line” to cut wasteful or inefficient spending, and said officials have already found $2 trillion in deficit reduction …

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FACT CHECK: Obama’s Words on Home Aid Ring Hollow

By CALVIN WOODWARD and JIM KUHNHENN | Associated Press

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama knows Americans are unhappy that their taxes will be used to rescue people who bought mansions beyond their means.

But his assurance Tuesday night that only the deserving will get help rang hollow.

Even officials in his administration, many supporters of the plan in Congress and the Federal Reserve chairman expect some of that money will go to people who used lousy judgment.

The president skipped over several complex economic circumstances in his speech to Congress — and may have started an international debate among trivia lovers and auto buffs over what country invented the car.

A look at some of his assertions:

OBAMA: “We have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and refinance their mortgages. It’s a plan that won’t help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values.”

THE FACTS: If the administration has come up with a way to ensure money only goes to those who got in honest trouble, it hasn’t said so …

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Obama Blames Financial Woes on Bush

By JOSH GERSTEIN | Politico

As President Barack Obama convened a high-level summit Monday pledging to set the country on a more responsible fiscal course, he blamed the government’s financial straits on his predecessor, President George W. Bush, and on gimmicks used to keep hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending off the books.

“This administration has inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit — the largest in our nation’s history, and our investments to rescue the nation’s economy will add to that deficit,” Obama said as he convened a fiscal responsibility summit at the White House on Monday. “We cannot and will not sustain deficits like these without end. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Washington these past few years, we cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences to the next budget, the next administration or the next generation.”

Obama gave policy wonks pride of place in the East Room as he convened about 130 lawmakers, policy advocates and union and business leaders for a meeting to showcase his commitment to reining in the deficit and getting control of exploding federal entitlement programs.

“The long-term fiscal picture is unsustainable,” a liberal economist, Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told the group. “We are on the path to the very debt explosion we must avoid. … To address the daunting long-term fiscal problem, everything on both the spending and tax side … will have to be on the table.” …

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