(CNSNews.com) – President Joe Biden has been accusing Republicans of trying to cut Social Security and Medicare, but it was Biden who proposed that very thing back in 1995 when he was a senator debating the Balanced Budget Amendment.
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2023/02/phony-populist-joe-biden-says-hes-not.html
Social Security is Broke, but American Taxpayers Just Gave Ukrainian Pensioners a Double-Digit Raise
As American taxpayers paying into Social Security today stare down the barrel toward substantial cuts to their own benefits, estimated to take place in 2034, they can at least take solace in knowing that all categories of Ukrainian pensioners will get a 20% raise in March 2023. “As early as this March,” says Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, “the government will index pensions by 20%” for about 10 million Ukrainians.
Indexing the payments “is not mandatory according to the Law of Ukraine on the State Budget for 2023,” but benevolent President Zelensky has instructed them to reprice the benefits upwards anyway.
And why wouldn’t he? His government is swimming in American cash.
Americans have spent more than $100 billion on aid to Ukraine. And, as the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian government is undoubtedly well aware, money is fungible.
This is an example of a common shell game that politicians love to play with the rubes when it comes to government spending. The Ukrainian government could have certainly diverted government spending from its pension outlays toward its own national defense in a time of war while calling for foreign aid to support its pension program, and the fiscal effect might have largely been the same. It’s just more politically defensible for Ukraine to continue paying uninterrupted pensions while demanding that massive amounts of foreign aid are needed to finance its national defense. And now, because Ukraine’s government no longer has to spend its own money on its own national defense, it has plenty of money to give generous raises to Ukrainian pensioners.
But we all know that few Americans would have signed on to billions in foreign aid if the impetus was to preserve Ukraine’s pension infrastructure. What’s truly amazing, though, is that Joe Biden and the media are just coming right out and saying exactly that — the government is using your money to pay Ukraine’s obligations to ten million of its pensioners. American aid to Ukraine, Biden says, is “going to allow pensions and social support to be paid to the Ukrainian people.”
One might think that senile Joe is just saying the quiet part out loud by directly telling us that our dollars are being sent overseas to pay for a corrupt government pension system and to support its vast welfare system. That’s possible, but not likely. What is incredibly disheartening is that it’s far more likely that he and his handlers meant for him to say exactly what he said, because they simply don’t have any fear of the electorate’s response anymore. They know we won’t like it, but in the eyes of the ruling class in Washington, we Americans are just too sedated, ignorant, and powerless to do anything about it.
How would the average American feel about paying billions of dollars to support Ukrainian pensioners, after all?
He/she probably doesn’t feel very good about that. If the government actually had any money to spend on pensions, it should probably deploy those resources in shoring up America’s national pension infrastructure first, most Americans would argue.
But, of course, the government doesn’t even have the money to pay for Social Security, much less Ukrainian pensions. America’s pension infrastructure is utterly broken, and most Americans instinctively know this to be true, despite the countless prominent idiots with microphones who try to convince us otherwise.
As of its 2022 report, the Congressional Budget Office:
…projects that if Social Security outlays were limited to what is payable from annual revenues after the trust funds’ exhaustion in 2033, Social Security benefits would be about 23 percent smaller than the scheduled benefits in 2034.
Even this is a rosier picture than may be deserved. Social Security pays benefits from only two sources — payroll tax income and Social Security’s trust fund “assets.” It’s been well over a decade since payroll tax income has covered the bills. Only after all payroll taxes are accounted toward benefits does the Social Security Administration tap into the “assets” of the trust funds.
These “assets” aren’t in a piggybank somewhere. The trust funds are owed principal and interest for non-marketable bonds that they purchased from the Treasury during those years when payroll tax income exceeded the benefit outflows. In other words, the assets and debts only exist on paper, and without any marketable value, while the government that owes the debt spent that money a long time ago. While the principal and interest are listed as an asset to the Social Security trust funds and as debts to the Treasury, the Treasury can’t even come close to paying its bills, and is running at incredible annual deficits. In fiscal year 2022, the government spent nearly $6.3 trillion, collected $4.9 trillion in revenue, and experienced a $1.3 trillion deficit.
So, it will happen like this for the next decade or so, barring any intercession. Social Security will not be able to meet its obligations by collecting payroll tax income, so it will call on the Treasury to repay the principal and interest on its debt so that full benefits can be paid to beneficiaries. But the Treasury will continue running at a huge deficit, so it has no money to pay the Social Security Administration what it owes. However, the Treasury is obligated by law to pay it, so it must take on new debt in order to repay its old debt to Social Security.
This cycle will continue until roughly 2034, until the IOUs from the Treasury run out, and the Treasury is no longer obligated to pay for the shortfall between what is owed to beneficiaries and payroll tax receipts. God only knows what the national debt will be at that time, but what we do know is that you, your children, and grandchildren will be on the hook for whatever is owed by the Treasury. And at that time, again, barring any intercession, all Americans on Social Security are expected to get a 20%+ pay cut.
Most people who contribute very little while standing to collect a lot from Social Security, along with those already collecting the benefits of the program, don’t care much to listen about these problems with Social Security. And most people who contribute substantial amounts of money into the system know that it’s a government boondoggle and a terrible “investment” that they are coerced to make. There are a lot more of the former than the latter, which unfortunately makes it a death sentence for politicians to even begin addressing any potential changes that might fix it.
But if there’s one thing that all Americans in both of those categories should be able to agree upon, it’s that, for the love of God, American taxpayers should not be paying billions of dollars that we don’t have to provide millions of Ukrainian pensioners a 20% raise.
President Biden Claims GOP Wants to ‘Sunset’ Entitlements
But what about Clinton, Obama and then-Sen. Biden?
During President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, he got booed after accusing “some” Republicans of seeking to “sunset” some of the so-called entitlements[SP1]. Biden said: “Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans … want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. … Anybody who doubts it, contact my office. I’ll give you a copy. I’ll give you a copy of the proposal.”
It is certainly true that President George W. Bush set up a bipartisan commission to address the long-term problem with Social Security solvency. Their 2002 report proposed allowing workers to devote a portion of their Social Security contribution to a private account to invest, for example, in the stock market for a better rate of return. The report concluded: “Social Security will be strengthened if modernized to include a system of voluntary personal accounts. Personal accounts improve retirement security by facilitating wealth creation and providing participants with assets that they own and that can be inherited, rather than providing only claims to benefits that remain subject to political negotiation.” It is also true that Bush abandoned the plan after Democrats denounced it as a “risky” scheme to “privatize Social Security.”
But it is equally true that both Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton called Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — without reforms — “unsustainable.” As for Biden, as senator in 1975, he proposed reexamining every federal program. In a floor speech, he said, “One thing that we must do is to begin reviewing existing programs to determine whether they are still effective and whether they are worth the money that we are putting in them. We must eliminate the wasteful ones.” Awkward.
Obama set up a bipartisan “federal deficit commission” that made several recommendations. About its final report, ABC News wrote: “The president had tasked commission co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson with devising a plan to reduce the deficits and redirect the country from its ‘unsustainable’ fiscal path… To dig the country out of debt, the plan put forth by the panel today calls for drastic changes such as raising the Social Security retirement age, making cuts to Medicare and doubling the federal gas tax. It made only minor changes to the earlier draft released by Bowles and Simpson last month.”
As for Clinton, he too set a bipartisan commission to tackle the entitlements problem. The federal government’s Social Security website states: “On November 5th 1993 President Bill Clinton — by Executive Order #12878 — created the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement Reform. The Commission — which began work in February 1994 — was co-chaired by Senators Robert Kerrey (D-NB) and John Danforth (R-MO[SP2]). The Commission was comprised of ten U.S. Senators, ten members of Congress, and twelve members of the public, along with a professional staff of 27.
“In their approach, the Commission went well beyond the topics of Social Security and Medicare and lumped together everything that might be considered an ‘entitlement’ — from welfare programs to the home mortgage interest tax deduction to the cost of federal civilian and military retirement. Its goal was to devise a package of proposals which would reduce the overall cost of all of these programs. …
“The two co-chairs of the Commission developed their own Social Security proposal, which featured raising the retirement age to 70, a cut in the Social Security payroll tax, with the money redirected into mandatory private accounts, and adopting price-indexing (among other changes). This was perhaps the first advocacy of ‘carve-out’ private accounts, and of price indexing, by a prominent mainstream group.”
Were those Democratic presidents, both of whom established commissions on entitlements, seeking — to use Biden’s characterization — to “sunset” these programs?
The federal budget devotes about half of its spending to the “entitlement” programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare. Then there is income security, which includes general retirement and disability insurance; federal employee retirement, disability and military retirement; unemployment compensation; housing assistance; nutrition assistance; foster care; Supplemental Security Income; and the earned income and child tax credits. Throw in national security and interest on the debt and there’s almost nothing left. Both Republican and Democrat presidents concede that without reforms these programs are “unsustainable,” yet members of both parties attack reform as “risky” and “irresponsible.”
Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking.
Biden in 1995: ‘When I Argued That We Should Freeze Federal Spending, I Meant Social Security as Well. I Meant Medicare and Medicaid’
(CNSNews.com) – President Joe Biden has been accusing Republicans of trying to cut Social Security and Medicare, but it was Biden who proposed that very thing back in 1995 when he was a senator debating the Balanced Budget Amendment.
In a speech on the Senate floor on Jan. 31, 1995, then-Sen. Biden said that Congress should be honest with the American people about how much something will cost, and how Congress intends to balance the budget.
Whatever happened to the old conservative discipline about paying for what you spend? Paying for what you spend. I thought that meant that if we spend, then we ought to tell people how much it will cost to spend. If they do not want Members to spend, then we should not spend. But if they want to spend, we should be honest, must tell them what it will cost.
Which brings me to the argument raised by some that before passing this amendment we should tell the American people how we intend to balance the budget. There are those who claim that this is just a sham on the part of the opponents of the balanced budget amendment. Well, I am not an opponent of that amendment, but I want to tell Members it does not seem to be unrealistic for someone to lay out in broad details at least how it will work.
Those people say, ‘‘Wait a minute; if you are for the balanced budget amendment, you ought to say how to balance it.’’ Most people who are against the balanced budget amendment are not saying that we have to balance the budget; they are saying that our budget should be somewhere around 19 percent of GNP, that we should not put ourselves in the position where we are out of whack.
They argue, like many economists, that balancing the budget in and of itself is not a sacred undertaking and could be counterproductive. It seems to me that we should tell the American people.
He then said that he wanted to go on the record and wanted to remind everyone what he did at home which would cost him politically.
Biden said at the time that he argued for freezing federal spending and that he meant Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
I look at the polls out there. For example, I want to go on record, and I am up for reelection this year, and I will remind everybody what I did at home, which will cost me politically.
When I argued that we should freeze Federal spending, I meant Social Security as well. I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the Government. And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time.
Somebody has to tell me in here how we are going to do this hard work without dealing with any of those sacred cows, some deserving more protection than others. I am not quite sure how you get from here to there. I am sure that we should tell the American people straight up that such an amendment is going to require some big changes.
The Balanced Budget Amendment will not end our deficit in one fell swoop, nor will it cause our Nation to turn its back overnight on those who depend on us.
Joe Biden Tried to Sunset Social Security, All Other Federal Programs as a Senator
10 Feb 20233
3:42
Joe Biden introduced legislation that would sunset all federal programs, including social security, every four years when he was a freshman United States senator in 1975.
On Tuesday night at the State of the Union, Biden stated that “some Republicans” wish to “sunset” social security and Medicare, leading to significant pushback from GOP lawmakers on the House floor while millions watched.
C-SPAN
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has said on several occasions that Republicans in the House – where the framework to a debt ceiling resolution will be formed – are not seeking to slash the programs as part of their desired cuts to offset the $31.7 trillion debt ceiling reached last month. He shook his head in disagreement when Biden made the claims from the rostrum.
On Thursday, Biden spoke at the University of Tampa in Florida and noted that Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) “Rescue America” policy plan included a proposal to sunset all federal legislation every five years.
“If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again,” the plan adds.
Biden said that maybe Scott had “changed his mind, maybe he’s seen the Lord – but he wanted to… sunset social security and Medicare every five years.”
But Biden made an even more aggressive proposal when he represented Delaware in the United States Senate, seeking “to sunset all federal programs, including social security and Medicare,” every four years, Fox News reported, when he introduced S. 2067 on July 19, 1975. Biden’s central argument for reviewing all programs was the rapid increase of the federal budget.
“It is not just the size of our budget that is staggering, but even more the rate at which it is increasing,” Biden said at the time. “We cannot long continue such growth rates in expenditures.”
“In brief, this bill limits to 4 years the length of any spending authorization for a program,” he added. “Furthermore, it requires that each committee make a detailed study of the program before renewing it for another 4-year period.”
He then echoed a very similar sentiment to Scott’s.
“The examination is not just of the increased cost of the program, but of the worthiness of the entire program,” said then-Sen. Biden.
Scott issued a statement after the president spoke in Florida Thursday and challenged him to a debate on the matter.
“Joe Biden spent 20 years trying to slash Social Security and Medicare. Does he really think Americans are stupid enough to believe anything he said today?” the senator wondered. “The President should accept my invitation to debate him on this issue. Floridians deserve to know the truth about Biden’s war on Social Security and Medicare.”
While Republicans desire cuts to federal spending outside of social security and Medicare, according to McCarthy, Biden has floated tax hikes as a way to offset the debt ceiling. However, his posturing that he would not negotiate with the GOP over cuts seems to have changed following the State of the Union standoff.
Biden said Thursday that McCarthy “has been reasonable in terms of discussion with me so far,” before expressing his openness to negotiating the upcoming budget proposals.
“I said, ‘Look, why don’t we just – I think it’s the first week of March – why don’t we just lay out our budgets, you put yours down, I put mine down, and our people sit and compare them. Decide where we can make a compromise if we can make a compromise,” the president recalled.
162 Democrats Vote to Allow Illegal Aliens to Vote in D.C.’s Local Elections
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Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images
10 Feb 2023179
2:16
Dozens of House Democrats — 162, to be exact — voted to allow illegal aliens to vote in Washington, DC’s, local elections.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) provided a list of the 162 Democrats who voted to allow this by opposing H.J.Res.24, or the “Disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022.”
The measure, introduced in the House January 31, 2023, would nullify the D.C. council’s Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022, which allows “noncitizens who meet residency and other requirements to vote in local elections in the district.” This includes illegal aliens.
“This is the list of 162 Democrats who voted to allow illegal aliens to vote in elections in Washington, DC,” Massie wrote, providing a list of those Democrats.
The list includes Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, as well as Reps. James Clyburn (D-SC), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Katie Porter (D-CA), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and many more:
This is not the first time Massie has put Democrats on blast this week. He also provided a list on Thursday of 201 Democrats who supported the continuation of a vaccine mandate for noncitizen international travelers.
“We are now the only country in the free world that has this xenophobic policy,” he said, explaining that the rule “doesn’t apply to illegal immigrants who are apprehended and released into the US”:
While the Republican-led House passed the measure 227-201, it now heads to the Senate, which remains under Democrat control.
9 Most Ridiculous Claims Biden Made During State of the Union Address
Getty Images
February 8, 2023
Though he reportedly spent weeks rehearsing, President Joe Biden made a number of clumsy, strange, or outright ridiculous claims during his State of the Union address Tuesday night. Here are the top nine:
1. Cashiers at Burger Joints Need To Sign Non-Competes
Biden took credit for banning burger joints like McDonald’s from forcing employees to sign non-compete agreements. "So a cashier at a burger place can’t cross the street to take the same job at another burger place to make a couple bucks more," he said. Republicans balked.
"They just changed it because we exposed it," Biden retorted. "That was part of the deal guys, look it up."
The president is apparently referring to his July 2021 Executive Order, which encouraged the Federal Trade Commission "to ban or limit non-compete agreements."
Most fast-food chains have never made any such requirement of their workers, though some did prevent them from working at nearby franchise locations. During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden made frequent use of this talking point, even earning the rebuke of left-leaning fact checkers.
"Get your facts straight, Jack!"
2. Paul Pelosi Was Attacked Because of Election Deniers
Biden tied the brutal assault of 82-year-old Bay Area resident Paul Pelosi to the rhetoric of election deniers. "Just a few months ago, unhinged by the Big Lie, an assailant unleashed political violence in the home of the then-speaker of this House of Representatives, using the very same language that insurrectionists who stalked these halls chanted on January 6th," he said.
David DePape, a deranged 42-year-old who reportedly lived inside a school bus, attacked Pelosi with a hammer inside his San Francisco home just days before the 2022 midterms. He has presented conflicting reasons for the attack since his arrest, including government corruption and the reduction of individual liberties. While legacy media tried to paint DePape as a right-wing extremist, his son told the Daily Mail that his father was a "progressive" and "hardly a right-wing conservative."
3. COVID Shut Down Businesses and Closed Schools
Biden in his prepared remarks blamed an airborne virus for having "shut down our businesses" and "closed our schools," when referring to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In reality, politicians chose to initiate lockdowns and stay-at-home orders to "slow the spread" of the coronavirus beginning in March 2020. While some Republican governors like Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.) reversed course within months, Democratic governors and lawmakers kept lockdown orders and mask mandates in place for years, damaging many small businesses and harming children’s educations.
Biden has still not lifted the federal emergency declaration for COVID-19, which is set to expire on May 11.
4. Republicans Want To Get Rid of Social Security
"Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share," Biden said, "some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset."
The president was referring to an ongoing debt ceiling fight with Republican lawmakers, in which the Republican Party has floated various spending cuts to avoid a default. But House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) has said that cuts to both Medicare and Social Security are "off the table." Many Republicans also stood and applauded when Biden pledged to not cut either program.
5. Jill Biden, Ed.D., Came Up With an Obama-Era Education Slogan
Biden credited his wife, "Dr." Jill Biden, with having coined the expression: "Any nation that out-educates us will out-compete us."
She did not come up with it. The expression has been used before by Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama. During his first year in office, the former president remarked, "In a world where countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow, the future belongs to the nation that best educates its people."
Cameras caught Biden’s wife cheating with more than her words at the beginning of the speech last night, when the first lady stole a kiss from second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
6. Biden Takes Credit for Changing the Conversation on China
"Before I came to office," Biden noted in his address, "the story was about how the People’s Republic of China was increasing its power and America was failing in the world. Not anymore."
Former president Donald Trump has often been credited with changing U.S. policy toward China. Under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, his administration cracked down on Chinese espionage campaigns and moved to ban TikTok.
Biden made no mention that a Chinese spy balloon traversed the United States just days before his State of the Union.
7. Biden Talks Up Smoking Trees
In apparently off-the-cuff remarks about climate change, Biden said that "more timber has been burned [due to wildfires] that I have observed from helicopters than in the entire state of Missouri." He also blamed global warming for "floods and droughts."
Leaving aside for the moment whether the president has indeed observed wildfires from a helicopter, Biden may just have been mixing up his words, as he’s been prone to do. His administration last July greenlit more than 200 helicopters to respond to wildfire incidents, according to the White House.
The claims follow a long tradition of liberals using debatable scientific results to push their agenda. Biden’s prepared remarks, for instance, touted his administration’s green energy initiatives as a response to the wildfires.
"We’re building 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations installed across the country," he said. "And helping families save more than $1,000 a year with tax credits for the purchase of electric vehicles and energy-efficient appliances."
8. America Needs Oil for ‘At Least Another Decade’
As part of a reelection campaign preview, Biden floated the idea that America might "need oil for at least another decade."
The apparent olive branch to the oil and gas industry is far from reassuring, given the vast economic and social repercussions of abandoning fossil fuels in just 10 years' time. The shift would threaten jobs, food supply chains, and the entire global economy. Most progressives are pushing for the United States to have net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 at the earliest.
Early in the pandemic, lefties loved to suggest that a government-forced reduction in travel by fossil fuels could transition to a permanent change. If they stay in power, that idea could go up like a Chinese spy balloon over the continental United States.
9. Nobody Wants to Be Xi
In another unscripted remark, Biden said, "Autocracies have grown weaker, not stronger. Name me a world leader who changed places with Xi Jinping. NAME ME ONE! NAME ME ONE!"
The attempt to ape his predecessor’s tough talk on malign foreign powers left more than a few pundits scratching their heads. The reference apparently reaffirmed Biden’s commitment to protecting the fate of democracy amid the rise of authoritarian powers—namely, China, which last week flew unimpeded over the nation to gather intelligence on U.S. military bases.
In fact, tyrants from Kim Jong-un to Vladimir Putin and Kamala Harris would probably kill to have Xi’s absolute power and cult of personality.
At least one person seemed to get what Biden was saying: Lincoln Project alum Tom Nichols, who said Biden’s geopolitical ad lib "was great" for "wonks" like himself.
"I guess I just got it on an intuitive level: 'Who'd want to be riding that tiger.' We spend so much time embiggening China when in fact their leaders have to sweat out every damn day and pray for enough growth to keep them in power."
Whatever that means.
Published under: China , Coronavirus , Joe Biden , Republicans , State of the Union
Sen. Ted Cruz: 'It Was Out of Touch and It Was Fundamentally Dishonest'
(CNSNews.com) - President Joe Biden's State of the Union Address was "divisive, it was angry, it was out of touch and it was fundamentally dishonest," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Fox News's Sean Hannity Tuesday night.
"Throughout the speech Biden would periodically just scream out randomly. He reminded me of a crotchety old guy on his front porch screaming at the kids, get off my lawn," Cruz said:
"And it was deliberately dishonest. It was designed -- you know, Biden could have taken this moment to acknowledge we just had an election, the American people elected a Republican majority. The American people are unhappy with the direction of this country -- two-thirds of the American people believe we're on the wrong track.
"Inflation's out of control, crime's out of control, the southern border's out of control. He could have acknowledged all that and said we're going to change course. He didn't do that. He doubled down on the same failed policies.
"And let me focus on three of the most dishonest things he said:
"Number one, he stood up and said, support my plan to secure the border and to stop fentanyl. And literally, the chamber began laughing, because Joe Biden made a political decision (to) have open borders; the result is the worst illegal immigration in the history of our country and the worst fentanyl crisis this country has ever faced, with over 100,000 overdoses each year. And he doesn't intend to change that, yet he is claiming he wants to secure the border.
"A second big lie he had was when he said that the world knows now that the Biden White House and he's tough on China. You know, Sean, as you pointed out, the whole world just finished laughing at the president when, for over a week, a Chinese spy satellite, a spy balloon, conducted espionage on our military bases, while the president impotently wrung his hands and did nothing.
"And then finally, you mentioned this lie as well, when he demagogued on Republicans want to take away Social Security and Medicare. It's the classic Democrat lie -- they are going to throw granny off the cliff. Again, the entire chamber, at least half the chamber, began laughing because it's fundamentally false. We should be strengthening and preserving Social Security and Medicare.
"But I'll tell you when Biden stood up and said we are going to stand up for seniors, there is no group in America who has been hurt more under Joe Biden than seniors. With rampaging inflation, the cost of rent and food and electricity skyrocketing, seniors are getting hammered, and their retirement has dropped 20 or 30 percent. For him suddenly to claim to be a champion of seniors is profoundly out of touch with the failures of his policies."
Cruz said he doubt Joe Biden will be the Democrat presidential nominee in 2024, however much he may want to be. "I think Democrats recognize he is too old. And his policies have failed," Cruz said.
Biden Sabotaged State of the Union With Too Many Lies
Too many words and too many lies.
February 8, 2023 by Daniel Greenfield Leave a Comment
Some records are good, others are bad.
Many viewers sitting through Biden’s State of the Union address noted his rushed delivery. I wrote, “His pathetic rant, breathy, rushed, angry.”
One reason for the rushed delivery is that he was trying to get in too many lies.
Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday set the record for most words spoken at a such a speech in six decades, beating the former lead by just one word.
Biden spoke 9,191 words, which is one more word than then-President Clinton’s 1995 State of the Union, according to a count
Too many words and too many lies.
If Biden’s people hadn’t insisted on shoving so much stuff into his State of the Union address, he could have delivered it more effectively and in a more measured fashion.
And if Biden wasn’t acting like a puppet, he would have told the speechwriters to cut some material so he could deliver it more effectively.
The State of the Union showed what Biden is.
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
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Trial Ballon: Biden Previews Reelection Campaign in One-Sided Appeal for Bipartisanship
POTUS vows to protect American sovereignty after letting Chinese spy balloon traverse entire country
February 8, 2023
President Joe Biden's second State of the Union address was his first with a Republican majority in the House, which is probably why he began the speech by touting his belief in bipartisan cooperation. It was also his last State of the Union address before the 2024 campaign season gets underway, which explains his conflicting efforts to pick fights with Republicans while attempting to channel the populist spirit of his former (and potentially future) political adversary Donald Trump.
Tuesday's speech offered a preview of Biden's soon-to-be-announced reelection campaign, waving the banner of bipartisanship like a matador's cape. He urged Republicans to help him build on the "historic" progress of his first two years in office, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.
"To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there's no reason we can't work together and find consensus on important things in this Congress as well," Biden said. "Let's finish the job."
Knowing full well that such bipartisan cooperation is unlikely to materialize—as evidenced by the repeated jeers from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) and others—Biden's "finish the job" refrain is best understood as an appeal to American voters to reelect him in 2024 and restore Democratic power in Congress so they can enact their controversial agenda without Republican support.
Biden delivered his address to Congress with the confidence of a president who has the luxury of forgoing the bitter primary fight Republicans are about to wage against themselves. He positioned himself as a sensible moderate, standing above the fray. "The people sent us a clear message," he said. "Fighting for the sake of the fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere."
It's a message that presumably polls well, along with some of Biden's other proposals that might be described as soft-core Trumpism. Making the country great again by reviving the manufacturing sector and increasing our consumption of domestic goods. Taking on "powerful interests" while protecting Social Security and Medicare. Restoring national "pride" as part of a "blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America" that invests in "places and people that have been forgotten," while promising not to raise taxes on the Democratic Party's base of urban professionals making between $300,000 and $400,000 a year. "Americans are tired of being played for suckers," he said.
Biden won the 2020 Democratic primary in part because he refused to entertain the thought that professional pundits and other left-wing activists knew anything about what normal Americans actually want. That doesn't mean he is actually a sensible moderate who stands above the fray and tells it like it is. Contrary to what he claimed in his speech, inflation is not "coming down." (Its growth has merely slowed.)
COVID-19 didn't harm a generation of American children by keeping schools closed on his watch. Democratic politicians and their union allies did that. American concerns about rising crime are unlikely to be assuaged by blaming the pandemic. It's mathematically impossible to reduce the deficit over the long term while hiking spending on all the goodies Democrats want to fund. It's unclear how letting a Chinese spy balloon traverse the country is protecting America's "sovereignty."
We have a long year and a half ahead of us. Polling suggests most Americans, including most Democrats, don't want Biden to run again. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party lacked a viable alternative to the first octogenarian president in U.S. history, and Biden refused to step aside. Now they're stuck with him. And unless Republicans get their act together, we are too.
Published under: China , Democratic Party , Feature , Joe Biden , State of the Union
Read The White House Talking Points for Biden’s Big Speech
Biden touts his accomplishments and 'historic progress' in talking points obtained by the Free Beacon
Getty Images
February 7, 2023
President Biden’s third State of the Union address will center on the theme "finish the job," according to White House talking points obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
"President Biden ran for office for three main reasons: to rebuild the backbone of the country, to unite the country and to restore the soul of the nation. In the State of the Union, he’ll say that we need to finish the job," the document reads.
The eight talking points focus on a variety of areas where Biden is pledging to "finish the job," including rebuilding the economy, building clean energy, and combating gun violence. The outline notes that the step mother of Tyre Nicholas, whose recent death caused a wave of anti-police protests, will join First Lady Jill Biden as a guest at tonight’s speech.
The president will also discuss how his administration can "invest in America" without cutting runaway entitlement spending "by finally making the largest corporations and wealthiest Americans begin [to] pay their fair share."
The outline suggests that Biden’s third State of the Union will focus less on partisan differences than some of his previous addresses. The president is widely expected to announce that he will seek reelection in the coming weeks, and many are viewing this speech as an unofficial kickoff of his 2024 campaign.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The talking points can be read below:
Fact Check: Biden Claims ‘Unlawful Migration’ Dropped by 97 Percent
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John Moore/Getty Images/Inset Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
7 Feb 2023281
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CLAIM: President Joe Biden claimed to have cut “unlawful” migration by 97 percent.
VERDICT: Mostly False
Joe Biden used his State of the Union speech to claim he has gotten the U.S. border back under control, saying, “Since we launched our new border plan last month, unlawful migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has come down 97 percent.”
Biden’s narrow focus on just four countries in one month obscures his larger record of encouraging massive illegal migration through a variety of quasi-legal loopholes and programs.
The claimed reduction for the four countries ignores the many other national populations that Biden is allowing easy access into the United States, where they are given “parole” or unfettered access to U.S. jobs while they maintain years-long requests for asylum.
The claim also ignores Biden’s creation of a hidden “parole pathway” that is importing at least 50,000 economic migrants per month into the jobs needed by Americans who have seen their wages and opportunities decline for many years. That pipeline includes 30,000 people from the four countries.
That massive pipeline alone — without any of the waived-through illegals — can boost the delivery of job-seeking migrants into the United States by at least 60 percent above the roughly one million set by Congress in 1990.
Overall, Biden’s doorways are adding almost one migrant for every American who turns 18 each year, or almost three times the level set by Congress’s laws in 1990.
That Biden-engineered inflation of the labor supply will help investors and Wall Street by cutting market wages for Americans and by driving up the market price of the housing needed by young Americans and American families.
The Los Angeles Times described on February 5 how one Cuban was whisked through the new parole pipeline into the U.S. job market:
HAVANA — In barely a week, 25-year-old engineer Marcos Marzo went from riding his small electric motorcycle past the low buildings of Havana’s Vedado district to traveling the mega-highways of Florida, amazed by the towering high-rises and giant supermarkets.
A close relative told Marzo on Jan. 21 that he had applied online to sponsor the young engineer’s trip to Florida as required by the new parole program for Cuban migrants set up by the Biden administration. The next day the sponsorship had been confirmed and the day after that it was approved.
With his printed authorization in hand and a small blue suitcase, Marzo climbed aboard a plane to Hialeah, Fla., last Friday, shaken by the speed of it all.
Meanwhile, 20 Republican state officials are arguing in court that Biden’s parole pipeline is illegal.
The reality of migration-imposed wage cuts on Americans is fully recognized by investors and deeply unpopular among voters. For example, by 50 percent to 22 percent of Americans agree companies “should raise wages and try harder to recruit Americans even if it causes the prices of their products to rise,” according to a July 2022 poll by YouGov.com.
Social Security should be in the spotlight
The mainstream media coverage concerning President Biden’s remarks about Social Security during his State of the Union address and the Republican reaction has been remarkable in its ability to miss the point. Pundits sparred over whether the Republicans or Democrats won, when the real story is who lost in this sideshow. After all, it is the average, hard-working American who has paid into and therefore deserves Social Security.
Unfortunately, everyday Americans who need to know whether or not they can rely on the trust fund received no worthy news coverage, and likely won’t for the next decade.
During his speech, Biden said, “So we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the books now?” In other words, we have agreed not to reduce benefits that weren’t materially at-risk anyway. It was an agreement to do nothing, and Congress erupted in applause.
That moment of unanimity made Congress look like a townhall of Yondu and the Ravagers, a spectacle of political theater through and through.
As cosmetic as the exercise was, it spells real trouble for the millions of Americans who are in or approaching retirement. At this point, someone who is turning 76 years old today on average expects to outlive the system’s ability to pay scheduled benefits. That is, in a good economy.
If you are younger than 76 years old, the key point about the State of the Union Address to understand is simple: stop worrying about what the GOP is going to do to Social Security, and start paying attention to the nothingness that both parties are doing to stabilize the system on which millions depend for retirement security.
In reality, doing nothing is more destructive to Social Security than the passage of time. Over the course of 2021, the program generated about $800 billion in unfunded liabilities solely because the calendar advanced from 2021 to 2022. In fact, the majority of the problem we face today stems from congressional inaction over the past few decades.
To be clear, there is no one in the GOP with a plan that would reduce benefits more than Social Security plans to reduce benefits on its own.
When Biden says that “some Republicans want to sunset Social Security,” he is talking about one person -- Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL). However, what Biden described as a “Republican proposal” is actually a single sentence that doesn’t mention Social Security.
Here is Scott’s actual plan: Congress will do its job. That plan may not work, but no one in Washington is planning to put Social Security on the chopping block every five years.
Did Biden use the State of the Union Address to outline his vision for the future of Social Security? Not really. He loosely suggested that the solution to the problem is higher taxes on the wealthy, but did not go as far as to promote a specific plan.
For example, Biden could have used the platform to sell voters on Social Security 2100: A Sacred Trust Act. That proposal would raise more than $10 trillion in new money -- all of it from the rich.
Most people would think that sum would solve the problem to some extent. But they would be sadly disappointed. The Social Security Administration projects that the trust fund would spend the new money so fast that Social Security would actually shorten the window for benefit cuts.
If I have a concern about the Republicans, it is that they have no plan at all. They tend to talk vaguely about trimming the expense of the program without taking into account that the program generates more than a trillion dollars of revenue every year.
It seems like for now, the plan is to reduce benefits somewhat while continuing to collect the same amount of taxes. The thorn in that plan is that Social Security is scheduled to reduce benefits by a huge amount unless Congress finds a way to generate more cash for the program.
The State of the Union Address was an opportunity lost. Biden could have used the platform to frame the problem for voters, and offer a vision for the future. Instead, he pursued the path of unanimity to do nothing, and Congress applauded itself.
I can’t tell you whether Biden won, or the Democrats won, or the Republicans won. I can tell you who lost: every American who is nearing retirement and believes they can depend on Social Security.
Brenton Smith (think@heartland.org) is a policy advisor with The Heartland Institute
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