Jeb Hensarling is a particularly bone-headed backbencher from suburban Dallas who has aspirations to join the Republican leadership. He was the last Republican congressperson to ask the president a question at the House Republican Retreat today in Baltimore. The president insisted on calling him ‘Jim’ even after he was corrected, but it hardly mattered because Obama just eviscerated his talking points and made him look like a fool. Below is the transcript of their exchange.
OBAMA: Jim’s (sic) going to wrap things up?
PENCE: Yes, sir.
OBAMA: All right.
HENSARLING: Jeb, Mr. President.
OBAMA: How are you?
HENSARLING: I’m doing well.
Mr. President, a year ago I had an opportunity to speak to you about the national debt. And something that you and I have in common is we both have small children. And I left that conversation really feeling you’re sincere commitment to ensuring that our children, our nation’s children do not inherit an unconscionable debt. We know that under current law that government — the cost of government is due to grow from 20 percent of our economy to 40 percent of our economy right about the time our children are leaving college and getting that first job.
Mr. President, shortly after that conversation a year ago, the Republicans proposed a budget that ensured that government did not grow beyond the historical standard of 20 percent of GDP. It was a budget that actually froze immediately non-defense discretionary spending. It spent $5 trillion less than ultimately what was enacted into law.
And unfortunately, I believe that budget was ignored.
And since that budget was ignored, what were the old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats. The national debt has increased 30 percent.
Now, Mr. President, I know you believe — and I understand the argument; I respect the view — that the spending is necessary due to the recession. Many of us believe, frankly, it’s part of the problem, not part of the solution, but I understand and I respect your view.
HENSARLING: But this is what I don’t understand, Mr. President. After that discussion, your administration proposed a budget that would triple the national debt over the next 10 years. Surely you don’t believe 10 years from now we will still be mired in this recession. It proposed new entitlement spending and moved the — the cost of government to almost 24.5 percent of the economy.
Now, very soon, Mr. President, you’re due to submit a new budget and my question…
OBAMA: Jim (sic), I know there’s a question in there somewhere, because you’re making a whole bunch of assertions, half of which I disagree with.
(LAUGHTER)
And I’m having to sit here listening to them. At some point, I know you’re going to let me answer.
HENSARLING: That’s…
OBAMA: All right.
HENSARLING: That’s the question.
You are soon to submit a new budget, Mr. President. Will that new budget, like your old budget, triple the national debt and continue to take us down the path of increasing the cost of government to almost 25 percent of our economy? That’s the question, Mr. President.
OBAMA: All right. Jim (sic), with all due respect, I’ve just got to take this last question as an example of how it’s very hard to have the kind of bipartisan work that we’re going to do, because the whole question was structured as a talking point for running — running a campaign.
Now, look, let’s talk about the budget, once again, because I’ll go through it with you line by line.
The fact of the matter is, is that when we came into office, the deficit was $1.3 trillion. $1.3 trillion. So — so when you say that suddenly I’ve got a monthly budget that is higher than the annual — or a monthly deficit that’s higher than the annual deficit left by Republicans, that’s factually just not true, and you know it’s not true. And what is true is that we came in already with a $1.3 trillion deficit before I had passed any law. What is true is, we came in with $8 trillion worth of debt over the next decade.
Had nothing to do with anything that we had done. It had to do with the fact that in 2000, when there was a budget surplus of $200 billion, you had a Republican administration and a Republican Congress, and we had two tax cuts that weren’t paid for, you had a prescription drug plan — the biggest entitlement plan, by the way, in several decades — that was passed, without it being paid for, you had two wars that were done through supplementals, and then you had $3 trillion projected because of the lost revenue of this recession.
OBAMA: That’s $8 trillion. Now, we increased it by $1 trillion because of the spending that we had to make on the stimulus.
I am happy to have any independent factchecker out there take a look at your presentation versus mine in terms of the accuracy of what I just said.
The video is even more humiliating than the transcript (although you’ll have to skip to end to see the exchange). I recommend that you send around the CSPAN video link to friends and relatives, or tell them to watch on the television tonight at 8pm when it will be rebroadcast.
Obama performed as well as any British prime minister during Question Time. The same cannot be said for the Republicans who, by and large, tried to use dishonest arguments and demonstrably inaccurate statistics only to have Obama tell them to get serious and stop trying to score cheap political points. I can honestly say that if as many Americans watched today’s Q & A with the Republicans as watched the State of the Union, our political problems would be over. If we had Question Time, we’d have a much easier time winning over public opinion and sustaining support for progressive policies.
The Republicans certainly will not want to repeat this extremely painful beat-down.
