Talk about a thin skin. The president spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday and he explained how his Christian beliefs led him to ask for a fairer tax system that doesn’t weigh so heavily on people who are struggling, and a financial system that doesn’t rip off the little guy.
“And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe at a time when folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone,” Obama explained. “And I think to myself, if I am willing to give something up as someone who has been extraordinarily blessed, give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy — I actually think that’s going to make economic sense.”
“But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,” the president added.
He also said the Wall Street reform he championed both “makes the economy stronger for everyone” and abides by God’s command to “love thy neighbor as thyself” because it helped people who had been hurt or treated unfairly by financial institutions.
And Obama said he believed in a “biblical call” to care for the poor and to follow “the responsibility we’re given in Proverbs to ‘Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.’”
This so offended Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) that he accused the president of thinking he is Jesus Christ and can walk on water.
“Just this morning at the National Prayer Breakfast, the president took what has always been a non-partisan opportunity for national unity and used to promote his political agenda,” Hatch complained. “He suggested to the attendees that Jesus would have supported his latest tax-the-rich schemes. With due respect to the president, he ought to stick to public policy. I think most Americans would agree that the Gospels are concerned with weightier matters than effective tax rates.”
“In 2008, the president declared that his nomination was the world historical moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,” Hatch recalled.
“Someone needs to remind the president that there was only one person who walked on water, and he did not occupy the Oval Office.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) was so ticked off that he walked out of the prayer breakfast.
[Jen] Talaber, the spokeswoman for Gingrey, said the Georgia congressman – a devout Catholic — listened to “several minutes” of Obama’s remarks.
“[Gingrey] said he was disappointed, because he wanted to know what was in the president’s heart, and not just rhetoric,” the spokeswoman said. “So he said that he decided to quietly get up and leave because he felt that it wasn’t the time or the place, and that the president didn’t seem to be aware of the meaning of the breakfast or why so many people came to hear him speak. He was offended by the very tone of the speech.”
I can only imagine how offended Sen. Hatch and Rep. Gingrey would have been if they had attended the Sermon on the Mount.