“Sobering Interview”: “We Are Out Of Money” - With Video
On Friday, C-SPAN sat down with Pres. Obama at the White House for an exclusive interview. He talked with us on a wide-range of topics including the auto industry, health care, and the Supreme Court.
Click here for PDF of entire interview
In a sobering holiday interview with C-SPAN, President Obama boldly told Americans: “We are out of money.”
C-SPAN host Steve Scully broke from a meek Washington press corps with probing questions for the new president.
SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?
OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we’ve made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we’ve seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.
So we’ve got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it’s putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.
So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare. If we don’t reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can’t get control of the deficit.
So, one option is just to do nothing. We say, well, it’s too expensive for us to make some short-term investments in health care. We can’t afford it. We’ve got this big deficit. Let’s just keep the health care system that we’ve got now.
Along that trajectory, we will see health care cost as an overall share of our federal spending grow and grow and grow and grow until essentially it consumes everything…
SCULLY: When you see GM though as “Government Motors,” you’re reaction?
OBAMA: Well, you know – look we are trying to help an auto industry that is going through a combination of bad decision making over many years and an unprecedented crisis or at least a crisis we haven’t seen since the 1930’s. And you know the economy is going to bounce back and we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. I have got more enough to do without that. In the same way that I want to get out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries…
SCULLY: States like California in desperate financial situation, will you be forced to bail out the states?
OBAMA: No. I think that what you’re seeing in states is that anytime you got a severe recession like this, as I said before, their demands on services are higher. So, they are sending more money out. At the same time, they’re bringing less tax revenue in. And that’s a painful adjustment, what we’re going end up seeing is lot of states making very difficult choices there…
SCULLY: William Howard Taft served on the court after his presidency, would you have any interest in being on the Supreme Court?
OBAMA: You know, I am not sure that I could get through Senate confirmation…
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Yeah no shit.
The GDP, that is the General Dumb Public still thinks all is well.
Too bad he had to let the Fed steal 9 trillion of our dollars before he made this little announcement.
The economy and our way of life is how you will indoctrinate others folks, Cheney vs. the usurper is a distraction.
Oh, did anyone hear the social security, or is it just medicare and medicaid causing this.
Scare tactics and fearmongering to fast track socialist health care wrapped in lie after lie after lie.
Is it me or does Obimbo look like he is wearing purple eye shadow?
And what part of “we’re out of money” doesn’t he understand? I wonder if his cap and trade plan will require trees to grow the money this time around.
Thats baboon purple
maybe the purple lipped asshat should just move back to kenya where he was born….he has royally fucked this country! something all of his mentors and teachers want him to do….and the populace is allowing him to ass fuck them.
-aTb
“… we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries.”
Like nationalize?
Get your thieving Marxist ass out of industry Poser.
I do not want to call him a thief. I will call him a fascist and a socialist. We need to get people in the government that understand what made this country great and are willing to go back to those things. The things I am talking about are personal responsibility and not government responsibility.
Take the ‘necessary services’ away and make people be responsible for themselves for a change.
I know too many people who say how they believe in personal responsibility then ask ‘what will the government do for me’ to think it will change.