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Barack Obama’s Career Bedeviled by Financial Struggles
WASHINGTON — For years, President Barack Obama struggled under the weight of national debt, unsustainable entitlements, and a trillion-dollar stimulus borrowed against the value of his country totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. But in 2012, financial salvation seemed to have arrived: A large Asian government offered him another series of loans.
In that year’s campaign speeches, Mr. Obama, a Chicago Democrat, spoke of his prudent plan for using the cash to reduce deficits, expressing relief that the nation was on a “path to recovery.”
But at the same time, he splurged on an extravagant purchase: Trillions for a “luxury” health care plan, records show. At the time, Mr. Obama confided to a friend that it was a potentially inadvisable outlay that he could not resist. The cradle-to-grave control of taxpayers, he said, fulfilled a dream.
Among the serious contenders for the presidency, Mr. Obama stands out for his youth, for his meteoric political rise — and for the persistent doubts about his financial management, to the point that Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign flagged the issue when vetting Mr. Obama as an opponent in 2012, interviews show.
Many of those troubles have played out in an unusually public way, leading even some of his supporters to worry. As he rose in politics, he sometimes intermingled personal and political money — using a shady fundraiser to pay for a pricy house and for travel to political functions, and putting his spouse on a hospital payroll.
Other moves seemed simply unwise: A few years ago, he disclosed that he spent $1.65 billion to “liberate” Libya, a move that was widely discouraged by experts and that is still costing that nation in subjugation by ISIS. Obama still claims he has “no complete strategy” to dislodge the terror group.
In the past week, he sustained a new loss after spending $3.7 billion on the TSA only to have that agency hire 73 aviation workers with possible links to terrorism, and fail to discover dummy weapons 67 out of 70 times.
These were not isolated incidents. A review of Obama’s financial record — including many new documents — reveals a series of decisions over the past six years that experts called imprudent: significant debts; a penchant to spend heavily on luxury items like private jets, renting entire floors of hotels, and extravagant vacations; a strikingly low savings rate, even when Mr. Obama was taking in increased revenue; and inattentive accounting that led to years of unsustainable federal expenses.
Mr. Obama has not acknowledged missteps: In his two autobiographies, he confessed neither a “lack of bookkeeping skills” nor an “imperfect accounting system.” On his watch, the national debt has jumped from $10.6 trillion to $18.2 trillion, a 72 percent increase. It is expected to top $20 trillion before he leaves office.
In a statement to Ricochet, Mr. Obama said, “Unlike most Americans, I don’t know what it’s like for money to be a limited resource and to have to manage it accordingly.”
He added: “Our primary financial motivation over the last six years has not been to improve the economy. It has been to provide for my political friends a healthy salary and the chance at a socialist future.”
(All similarities to yesterday’s New York Times story on Marco Rubio completely intentional.)
Published in Humor, Politics
The worst part is that Obama is loose with OUR money!!!
(You are a genius, Jon.)
What do you mean, “He has not acknowledged his missteps”? He is the great Barack, dude; he don’t have no stinking missteps!
Obama thinks that is the best part of it.
Seawriter
Great stuff. But the parenthetical at the end ruined it for me. If you have to explain the joke, it’s no longer funny.
Aprovechado just doesn’t translate quite right.
I disagree that the parenthetical ruins the joke. In fact, it is necessary because not everyone is aware of the Rubio article.
So you didn’t get the joke until you read the parenthetical? When The Onion starts instructing its readers about what its writers are mocking, then I’ll alter my opinion of how to do effective satire.
When will we be able to read about the help that his friend Khalid gave him in owning certain properties? Sweetheart real estate deals, it was all the rage back then. I would love to hear elsewhere the congratulatory speech given for other Khalid(s).
Unfortunately, this did force me to read the NYT article. Apparently that newspaper has ripped the definition of “irony” from its dictionaries, considering the house purchased in Chicago by a guy named Barry with connections to a felon in jail named Rezko, the idiotic salaries he and his wife were paid for jobs when they both had little to no experience, etc.
But good thing we have the Times to crack open the finances of Marco Rubio, instead of cracking open the finances of Obamacare or a national debt that has doubled in 8 years and will likely be topping 20 trillion by the time Barry shuffles off to Buffalo. Or wherever it is hucksters go to spend the money they haven’t earned on whatever floats their boat.
I’m guessing Barry’s boat will cost more than $80K. Just guessing.
Don’t forget that the Clintons were dead-broke a few years ago. That’s true financial struggle.
Excellent. Jon, you are my new hero, up there with Steyn, Cooke and Williamson.
Well done sir. Well done.
Basil, I got the joke right away. Yay, me.
These are the two most likely possibilities:
1) The reader is familiar with the Rubio story, gets the joke, enjoys the joke, then after savoring the joke, sees the parenthetical, which is (or should be) utterly irrelevant to his enjoyment of the joke.
2) The reader reads the piece, not quite understanding what the point is, until seeing the parenthetical, at which time he seeks out the Rubio article and reads it, then saying, “Ah! Haha! I get it!”
Delight ensues in either case.
Ricochet is not The Onion.
De gustibus, Johnny. I just found the parenthetical somewhat patronizing. But if one were considered necessary (for purpose #2) then it probably should have appeared at the beginning rather than at the end of the piece.
Let’s not forget that a hospital in Chicago created a $350 yr position just for Moochelle when Barack was in the senate, which they eliminated when she left.
Nothing to see here, folks.