Crimes Against Liberty Page 7
We’ll take a closer look in the next several chapters at how Obama’s true nature and personal attributes emerged during his first year-plus in office, and revealed that he was nothing like the messianic figure he had presented himself to be, in attitude or substance.
Chapter Three
THE LIAR
CRIMES AGAINST GOOD GOVERNANCE AND THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENCY
Obama was certainly duplicitous on the campaign trail, but he’s been even more deceitful in office. As an Investors Business Daily op-ed noted, “Barack Obama has an elastic (capable of being stretched) approach to reality. Facts that do not suit him are set aside and replaced with fabrications.... He is a master practitioner of sophistry.... In Washington, nearly everything said or done is calculated to deceive. Many of its residents are of the fabulist persuasion, but none compares to Obama.”1
While the typically cynical view is that all presidents break campaign promises, the truth is that some—like Obama—are worse than others. Not only has he already broken an astounding number of core campaign promises, but he’s done so with brazen dishonesty; when he breaks a promise, he simply changes it—retrospectively. Everything about him reeks of Alinskyite, end-justifies-the-means politics. It’s as if he’s saying he owes the electorate no moral obligation to live up to his promises, so long as he fundamentally transforms America—not in the ways he led us to believe he would, but toward a socialist utopia he knows will be better for us even though we disagree. What are a few hundred broken promises en route to nirvana? Let’s review a smattering of Obama’s broken promises and other deceits.
TRANSPARENCY
Obama promised to be the most transparent president in history and make himself readily available to the press—but at one point went over 300 days without a press conference. He has also been strongly critical of “foot high” budgets being “rushed through without any deliberation or debate.” The official White House website says, “Transparency—President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise.” It further vows, “One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days. And allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.”2 Obama made the same promise during the campaign: “When there is a bill that ends up on my desk as a president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government is doing.”3
Obama grossly and repeatedly breached this promise. He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act on January 20, 2009—two days after it passed Congress. He signed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program three hours after Congress passed it. He waited one business day to sign the enormous, far-reaching, $800 billion stimulus bill.4 The Cato Institute’s Jim Harper reported that as of April 13, 2009, Obama had broken this five-day posting pledge ten—arguably eleven—times out of the eleven bills he had signed. He only bothered to post six of the eleven bills on the website, and none were posted for a full five days. Only the DTV Delay Act came close.
Harper discounted the occasional White House efforts to satisfy the pledge by posting a bill while it was still pending in Congress, because they didn’t give the public ample time to review the final legislation. Most of the bills Obama signed, as those mentioned above, were signed within a day or two from their presentment from Congress. Other bills he signed without posting for five days include an appropriations bill and the omnibus spending bill.5 On the transformative ObamaCare legislation, the House passed the bill Sunday night, March 21, 2010, and Obama signed it two days later.
During the Democratic presidential primary campaign, Obama promised (the promise being captured on videotape no fewer than eight separate times)6 he would televise the healthcare debates on C-SPAN, in contrast to the Clintons’ attempt in the 1990s to broker HillaryCare behind closed doors. At a debate in Los Angeles on January 31, 2008, he declared, “That’s what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process.”
But until the final few weeks of the process, he wouldn’t even allow Republicans to participate, much less open the process to the cameras. When asked about it in an interview, he dissembled, saying, “Now, keep in mind, most of the action was in Congress, so every committee hearing that was taking place, both in the House and the Senate, those were all widely televised. The only ones that were not were meetings that I had with some of the legislative leadership trying to get a sense from them in terms of what it was that they were trying to do.” Only after that qualifier did he grudgingly concede it was a “fair criticism.”7 PolitiFact agreed, declaring his promise “broken.”8
In a townhall meeting a few days later, Obama rationalized his broken pledge again, saying it was “tricky” because if the proceedings were televised, some participants would just “posture” instead of debating honestly.9 He later admitted in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer that he would “own up” to his broken promise, but even here, he characterized it as a “legitimate mistake”—as if it had been unintentional. He also employed another Clintonesque personal accountability dodge in pretending he had played a passive role, assuring us he’d be addressing the fact that “the process didn’t run the way I ideally would like it to.”10
Pushing bills through Congress without the promised transparency was part of the Obama administration’s overall strategy to weaken the impact of any organized opposition. Another component of that strategy was to overwhelm the opposition with the sheer volume of programs the White House pushed at any one time, thus impeding Republicans’ ability to coordinate effective opposition.
But Obama doesn’t just owe the public answers about being AWOL on White House press conferences, his conducting of healthcare meetings in secret, or his failure to post bills in a timely manner on his website. We also deserve answers on his broken promises concerning lobbyists and, more consequential, his surreptitious packaging of unpopular provisions in larger pieces of legislation to avoid public scrutiny. These include his reversal of the highly successful welfare reform of the 1990s and his establishment of a super medical bureaucratic board (which some call a “death panel”), both of which were contained in his “stimulus” bill,11 as well as the government takeover of student loans buried within the ObamaCare bill.
He should come clean about myriad other deceptions as well: his townhall meetings where he took questions only from planted supporters; his phony assertions of executive privilege; his punitive firing of AmeriCorps watchdog Gerald Walpin for investigating his friend; his administration’s lack of accessibility on stimulus fund data; and his Justice Department’s dismissal of the already-won voter intimidation case against New Black Panther Party members, along with DOJ’s subsequent stonewalling of both the Civil Rights Commission and a Freedom of Information Act request by the Washington Times seeking reasons for the arbitrary dismissal.
He should explain his frequent denials of other FOIA requests; his FCC’s shielding of diversity czar Mark Lloyd from media questions about his past advocacy of using federal regulations to squelch conservative talk radio; his withholding of documents requested by Republicans from private meetings between the White House and medical providers; his withholding of data from the Cash for Clunkers program; 12 his hiding of information on the expenditure of union dues; his failed effort to exclude FOX News from access to his pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg; and his “secret slush fund . . . for taxes and spending on climate change hidden inside the administration’s 2011 budget,” as reported by FOX News.13
BIPARTISANSHIP
Bipartisanship was unquestionably a central theme of Obama�
��s campaign. When he introduced Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate, he proclaimed Biden would “help me turn the page on the ugly partisanship in Washington, so we can bring Democrats and Republicans together to pass an agenda that works for the American people.” In USA Today Obama wrote, “The only way to end the petty partisanship that has consumed Washington for so long and make a difference in the lives of ordinary Americans is by bringing Democrats and Republicans together to pass an agenda that works for the American people.”14
But as president, Obama deliberately and consistently cordoned Republicans off from the political process. He didn’t pass an agenda that “works for the American people,” but one that contradicted their express will. Only three Republican senators and no House Republicans supported his “stimulus” bill, while no GOP senators and no GOP House members voted for ObamaCare. In fact, the only evident bipartisanship was the opposition to ObamaCare in the House, where thirty-four Democrats joined all the Republicans in voting nay.15
“HE’S BEGINNING TO NOT BE BELIEVABLE TO ME”
Don’t confuse actual bipartisanship with Obama’s feints toward bipartisanship in order to advance his agenda. We saw this opportunism in his offer to drop the $50 billion fund in the financial reform bill, which sounds major but would not constitute any substantive change. We saw it in his false assertion that he’d adopted numerous Republican ideas in his healthcare bill. We saw it in his belated push for offshore oil drilling, his promise to jump start nuclear energy production, and his duplicitous overtures to the coal industry after he had promised to bankrupt it. Addressing Obama’s stated commitment to coal, Senator Jay Rockefeller complained Obama “says it in his speeches, but he doesn’t say it in [his 2011 budget proposal]. He doesn’t say it in the actions of [EPA Administrator] Lisa Jackson. And he doesn’t say it in the minds of my own people. And he’s beginning to not be believable to me.”16
We saw the same counterfeit bipartisanship in Obama’s pretend promise to look into tort reform as a means to curb some “defensive medicine [that] may be contributing to unnecessary costs”—while his Health and Human Services Department stated in a congressional staff report that medical malpractice reform was “not a priority” of the administration. 17 A comically weak provision eventually made its way into the final healthcare bill, involving a negligible $50 million grant to states to launch “demonstration projects” to test tort reform. Lisa Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform, commented, “I don’t know anybody who thinks this is actual medical-liability reform, or finds this meaningful at all.... The bill is a demonstration of the interests of the trial bar over the views of the American people.”18
CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS
PolitiFact called Obama out on his boast that “the vast majority of the money I got was from small donors all across the country.” It reported that the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute found that though Obama raised more than his opponents from small donors, that money did not constitute the majority of the funds he raised. In the primary, he received 30 percent of his money from those who gave $200 or less, 28 percent from those giving between $201 and $999, and 43 percent from those contributing at least $1,000. In the general election, 34 percent of his funds came from small donors ($200 or less), 23 percent from those giving between $201 and $999, and 42 percent gave $1,000 or more. While Obama claims he won the presidency without much money from large donors, the evidence shows otherwise. Overall, said PolitiFact, Obama’s statement was “false.”19
CONVOKING COMMISSIONS
During the campaign, Obama attacked Senator McCain for proposing a commission to study the economic crisis, calling it an effort to “pass the buck.” “We know how we got into this mess,” Obama declared, asserting he could provide the “leadership” we need to get out of it. Obama had a point—except in 2010, President Obama formed, among other bodies, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform—the exact kind of board he’d blasted McCain for advocating. 20
ENDING NO-BID CONTRACTS
Candidate Obama said in Grand Rapids on October 2, 2008, “I will finally end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all. The days of sweetheart deals for Halliburton and the like will be over when I’m in the White House.” Early in his first term he signed a memo pledging to “dramatically reform the way we do business on contracts across the entire government.” He promised to “end unnecessary no-bid and cost-plus contracts.... In some cases, contracts are awarded without competition.... And that’s unacceptable.”
But less than a year later, his administration awarded a $25 million no-bid federal contract for work in Afghanistan to Checchi & Company, a firm owned by a major donor to Democratic campaigns. Unlike some of the no-bid scenarios for which Obama and other demagogic leftists condemned President Bush, Checchi & Company, according to FOX News’ sources, was “but one of a number of private firms capable of performing the work in Afghanistan for which USAID retained it.”21 In fact, Assistant Secretary of State P. J. Crowley, when questioned by FOX News about this no-bid award in light of Obama’s campaign pledge, admitted, “You make a valid point. If you want to say this violates the basis on which this administration came into office and campaigned, fair enough.” Amidst public criticism, the contract was eventually terminated .22
EARMARKS
In Green Bay, Wisconsin, candidate Obama declared, “The truth is our earmark system... is fraught with abuse. It badly needs reform—which is why I didn’t request a single earmark last year, why I’ve released all my previous requests for the public to see, why I’ve pledged to slash earmarks by more than half when I am president of the United States.” He said he would return earmarks to “less than $7.8 billion a year, the level they were before 1994.” Yet once in office, he quickly broke this promise—apart from his $800 billion “stimulus” bill, which could be said to be one gigantic package of earmarks.
Although the $410 billion omnibus spending bill had more than 8,500 earmarks, Obama didn’t blink before signing it. When questioned about his hypocrisy, Obama and his administration were typically disingenuous and dismissive. OMB Director Peter Orszag said, “We want to just move on. Let’s get this bill done. Get it into law and move forward.” In other words, We have more important things to focus on than keeping our silly campaign promises. There’s nothing to see here; move on. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, passed it off as a kept promise because Obama had already passed the “major economic recovery act” and the “children’s healthcare bill,” which he said were both “earmark free.” Both Emanuel and Orszag declared, “This is last year’s business.”23 That is, it’s Bush’s fault.
Taxpayers for Common Sense reported that for the fiscal year 2010, appropriations bills contained 9,499 congressional earmarks worth $15.9 billion, up from $15.6 billion the previous year. Thus, Obama has not only failed to slash earmarks in half or to the 1994 level of $7.8 billion, but on his watch they’ve actually increased.24
LOBBYISTS
President Obama said in January 2010, “We must take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; and to give our people the government they deserve. That’s what I came to Washington to do. That’s why—for the first time in history—my Administration posts our White House visitors online. And that’s why we’ve excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions.”
Yet his words had a remarkably short shelf life. Upon taking office, Obama signed the Executive Order on Ethics Commitments, which prohibited lobbyists from working in his administration for two years on issues for which they had lobbied. But he repeatedly exempted people from the rule. He granted a waiver for Defense Secretary Bill Lynn just two days after he signed the Executive Order, and later exempted Jocelyn Frye and Cecelia Muñoz as well. PolitiFact reported that in all, as of January 27, 2010, the White House had issued seven waivers to its ethics rules, which apply
to lobbyists and to people who served as officers and directors of a company or organization, while executive branch agencies have issued an additional fifteen waivers.25 Always ready with an excuse, the administration claimed Frye and Muñoz were appointed “because of the importance of their respective positions and because of each woman’s unequaled qualifications for her job.”26 Of course, that could be said of nearly every lobbyist-appointee; by definition they have expertise in the area in which they lobbied.
Obama’s broken pledge to curtail the influence of lobbyists is perhaps best exposed through a mere partial list of former lobbyists serving in his administration. The list includes: Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn (lobbyist for Defense Contractor Raytheon); Attorney General Eric Holder (clients included Global Crossing); Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (lobbied for the National Education Association); Deputy Health and Human Services Secretary William Corr (lobbied for Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids); Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes (clients included San Diego Gas & Electric); Mark Patterson, Timothy Geithner’s chief of staff (lobbied for Goldman Sachs); Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain (clients included the Coalition for Asbestos Resolution, U.S. Airways, and Airborne Express); Mona Sutphen, deputy White House chief of staff (clients included Angliss International in 2003); Melody Barnes, domestic policy council director (lobbied for liberal advocacy groups); Cecilia Muñoz, White House director of intergovernmental affairs (lobbied for Hispanic advocacy organization the National Council of La Raza); and Patrick Gaspard, White House political affairs director (lobbyist for the Service Employees International Union).27