The “Obama the Frugal” reinvention probably won’t go over successfully with anybody who has spent the last few years, you know, conscious — but he’s trying:

At a fundraiser for his re-election campaign in Denver tonight, President Obama set out to upend conventional Republican wisdom that his administration has been defined by excessive government spending.

“I’m running to pay down our debt in a way that’s balanced and responsible. After inheriting a $1 trillion deficit, I signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law,” he told a crowd of donors at the Hyatt Regency. “My opponent won’t admit it, but it’s starting to appear in places, like real liberal outlets, like the Wall Street Journal: Since I’ve been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years. Think about that.”

Obama was referring to an analysis released this week by Rex Nutting, a reporter for CBS MarketWatch who is also affiliated with the Wall Street Journal. Nutting concluded that Obama has presided over the slowest growth in federal spending in decades.
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The Romney campaign noted that more than $5 trillion has been added to the debt during Obama’s first term, though in 2008 Obama called the $4 trillion added under Bush ”unpatriotic.”

The Republican National Committee pointed out that while growth of spending and debt may have slowed, Obama has overseen the three largest deficits in U.S. history. (They also pass along fact-checker Politifact’s 2011 designation of Obama as the “undisputed debt king” of the last five presidents.)

Every White House suggestion I’ve seen to pay down the debt involves increasing the debt massively and then flinging it off the charts within a decade, along with the rest of the country. Somehow that saves money in the long run.

Political Math has a good tutorial about the Rex Nutting analysis to which Obama is now referencing as evidence of his administration’s spend-thrift nature. Click the graphic to give it a read:

And since we’re talking actual deficits, we have this from the USA Today: Applying accounting practices the government insists we use in the real world but won’t apply to themselves, last year’s federal deficit wasn’t $1.3 trillion, but rather… $5 trillion (h/t Ed Morrissey):

The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household — nearly four times the official number reported under unique rules set by Congress.

A U.S. household’s median income is $49,445, the Census reports.

The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government’s books.

The White House, and much of Congress for that matter, should save any laughable braggadocio about frugality for “Inside the Beltway night” at the Improv.

**Written by Doug Powers

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Fox News’ Wendell Goler asked White House Spokesman Jay Carney if the behavior of Occupy Wall Street at the NATO protests in Chicago has soured President Obama’s understanding for the movement.

There were pauses in Carney’s awkward dodge that were vacant for so long I’m surprised some Occupiers didn’t actually try to set up an encampment in them during the press conference. Carney answered like a 15 years old whose mom just asked what he’d been doing in the bathroom for so long. For my money, one of the finer moments in the recent history of WH Press Sec hem-haws:

**Written by Doug Powers

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Just for kicks let’s assume we’re in an alternate universe and Biden is correct. Exactly how high would the debt be if the Tea Party didn’t stop them from growing the economy?

Vice President Joe Biden admitted to a group of supporters in New Hampshire this afternoon that the President would have been able help the economy “much, more” if the Tea Party hadn’t taken the House.

Biden showed the audience the Obama campaigns chart of job growth during the President’s first term in office and accused the Tea Party for stalling the recovery, because of the debt limit fight.

“Imagine where we’d be if the Tea Party hadn’t taken control of the House of Representatives,” Biden said adding that they were “a group set on obstructionism.”

Wake up, Joe. Too many people don’t have the strength to imagine where they’d be because they’re too horrified by where they are.

Fortunately for the Stimulus Sheriff and the administration, there were plenty of economic measures the Tea Party couldn’t stop. Keep your chin up, Mr. Vice President… you still have these to campaign on — good luck:

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As for charges of obstructionism, it doesn’t seem there’s been a problem working around that:

As for Obama’s budget proposal, the Tea Party has indeed been obstructing its passage. Well, the Tea Party members along with everybody else.

**Written by Doug Powers

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Yesterday, 43 Catholic institutions, including the Archdiocese of New York and Notre Dame University, filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over the contraception mandate’s infringement upon on religious freedom. The plaintiffs have two liberals unexpectedly working on their behalf to win the lawsuit against the Obama administration:

The biggest legal threat to the White House’s birth control mandate could come from a decades-old law that was championed by liberal Democrats, according to legal experts.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) has been mentioned in nearly all of the more than 30 lawsuits pending against President Obama’s administration over the mandate. One, filed by the University of Notre Dame on Monday, cited RFRA’s protections in the first paragraph.

Legal scholars see the merit in challenging the mandate with RFRA, which then-Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) introduced in 1993 to protect religious exercise from laws that might unintentionally restrict it.

According to the article, the law was introduced nearly 20 years ago after two Native American Church members in Oregon were denied unemployment benefits because they had been fired for using peyote in a religious ceremony (Elizabeth Warren was only allowed a 1/32nd mescaline dose but it still culminated in some pretty good recipes), but now the Kennedy and Schumer’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act might cause this particular provision in Obamacare take a trip and get overturned.

Related Media Bias Fun Fact: On last night’s ABC, NBC and CBS nightly newscasts, one of the largest (if not the largest) religious lawsuits in American history warranted a grand total of 19 seconds of air time between the three networks.

**Written by Doug Powers

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Jimmy Fallon spoke with Matt Lauer about President Obama’s “slow-jam” appearance on his show last month, and Fallon revealed something that is hardly surprising: it was the White House, not Fallon’s staff, who booked President Obama on his show. Why wait for an invitation that you know will be coming shortly anyway?

From Real Clear Politics:

“It’s the craziest thing ever to have happened to me,” Jimmy Fallon, the host of “Late Night” said about President Obama appearing on his show.

“We keep going to each other on the set, ‘Hey, it did happen right? We did Slow Jamming with the President of the United States?’ What happened is they called us, the White House called us because we did a piece with Michelle on,” Fallon said.

“He booked himself on your show?” Matt Lauer of the “Today” show asked Fallon.

“The President booked himself,” Fallon said. “He didn’t call, the White House called us.”

While recalling a visit to the White House where he was throwing dodgeballs around historical paintings with First Lady Michelle Obama, Fallon revealed more about the request from the White House.

To lighten President Obama’s travel load this summer, his staff should turn the Oval Office into a talk show set and invite all the other hosts (as well as network news anchors) on as guests at the White House instead wasting time doing it the other way around. That would free up more of the President’s time to invite himself to deliver commencement addresses and such.

Click below to roll tape at RCP:

**Written by Doug Powers

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The “Photo of the Day” on the White House website features President Obama at Soldier Field in Chicago throwing a football following a NATO event. This could be some sort of “Hail Mary” campaign metaphor:

The photo is of course more carefully staged than a U2 concert, because Obama is clearly looking upward as he throws.

However, it’s possible there was somebody on the receiving end who is very tall. Where was John Kerry over the weekend?

More than likely Obama was looking up because he was mesmerized by an awesome sight on the Soldier Field Jumbotron:

**Written by Doug Powers

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I’m not sure how thrilled Obama will be when he finds out his Veep is going around saying he doesn’t blame so many people for voting for a convicted felon over the President, but Plugs is at least toeing the company line by blaming Bush for it:

Here’s a clip from Vice President Joe Biden’s interview with WTOV-TV in West Virginia yesterday, the latest stop he’s made this week, where he was asked about what he made of out-of-state incarcerated felon Keith Judd getting roughly 40 percent of the vote against President Obama in the recent Democratic primary:

“Look, I come from a household where whenever there’s a recession, somebody around my grand-pop or my dad’s table lost a job.

“A brother, a sister a friend, a neighbor. When you’re out of work, man, it’s a depression. And a lot of people are still hurting because of this god-awful recession we inherited that cost 8.4 million jobs before we could really get going. And so I don’t blame people, they’re frustrated, they’re angry.”

I hear ya, Joe. If I had a dime for every time I was experiencing a financial hardship and said to myself “If only there was an incarcerated felon I could vote for to fix all this,” I’d be… still in financial hardship.

Maybe so many people in the West Virginia primary voted for someone in jail because they figured he’d be able to find a running-mate in the yard who is more hinged than this guy:

Did you detect a hint of Fredo in that Biden rant?

Compare/contrast:

**Written by Doug Powers

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Did I say narrowly? I meant massively, but you probably guessed that:

President Obama’s budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it.

Coupled with the House’s rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama’s budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year.

Republicans forced the vote by offering the president’s plan on the Senate floor.

Democrats disputed that it was actually the president’s plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn’t actually match Mr. Obama’s budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president’s numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan.

Former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett is working on a project for NBC entitled 1600 Penn (it’s about time a network tried a show about DC politics written from the perspective of the left for a change). I’m thinking about working on a competing program called Everybody Hates Obama’s Budget.

Update: #MorePopularThatTheObamaBudget

**Written by Doug Powers

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Why wouldn’t the Obama campaign want everybody far and wide to know what he’s telling those rich people attending his high-dollar fundraisers? You’d think Obama would welcome the use of cell phones as he lectures the greedy one-percenters about how they should be sharing the wealth, demanding a tax increase and stop being eco-hypocrites by getting rid of their planet-destroying private jets in favor of algae-powered go-karts so the video could hit the web just as fast as possible.

Or maybe that’s not what happens behind those closed doors. We may never know:

In the latest attempt to crack down on potentially embarrassing digital leaks from presidential fundraisers, President Barack Obama’s campaign has begun asking donors attending small fundraisers with the president to turn over their cell phones before entering.

Pool reporter David Nakamura of the Washington Post reported that at a $35,800 a head fundraiser at the home of Blackstone COO Hamilton “Tony” James in New York City Monday night, the 60 attendees were asked to place their phones in plastic bags by the door.

An Obama aide called the move it “standard operating procedure,” but veterans of a range of other campaigns said they’d never heard of the practice, which is common in secure White House spaces where there are concerns of espionage, but unknown in contexts in which only political secrets are discussed. The new prevalence of sophisticated audio and recording capacities in mobile devices owned by virtually anyone wealthy enough to write a check to a political campaign, however, has put a new pressure on campaigns concerned with staying on a public message.
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Former aides to presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman all expressed surprise at the practice, and they’ve never seen an instance where a campaign asked donors to surrender their cell phones.

The former Clinton aide called the Obama policy “absurd,” suggesting that the Obama policy is almost certainly a response to the infamous 2008 fundraiser where Obama described voters in rural Pennsylvania as “bitter.”

Another possible reason for the “check your phones at the door” policy, via Atlantic Wire:

The potential for awkward moments particularly high last night, as Obama spent the morning calling for more Wall Street regulation, released an ad calling Mitt Romney’s private equity firm a “vampire,” then entertained Wall Street guests at the home of the man who runs one of the most successful private equity firm in the business. Now we’ll never know just how awkward it got.

(h/t Ed Morrissey at Hot Air)

**Written by Doug Powers

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Get in the know at Twitchy.

Does the Obama campaign really want to go there?

Yes they do:

The Obama campaign has launched a new round of negative TV attack ads against Mitt Romney, casting him as a heartless “job destroyer” during his days at Bain Capital.

A two-minute spot, set to begin airing today in five battleground states, tells the story of a Kansas City steel company — GST Steel — which was purchased by Bain in 1993 and went bankrupt in 2001. More than 750 workers lost their jobs when the mill where they worked was closed.

“They made as much money off of it as they could. And they closed it down,” says Joe Soptic, a steelworker for 30 years.

Jack Cobb, who also worked in the industry for three decades, says, “It was like a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us.”

Team Obama accuses Romney of loading the company with debt and reaping “quick profits for himself and his investors” at the expense of middle class workers.

A couple of points are conveniently unmentioned in this vampirish ad that will apparently have a very limited engagement. The company in the ad collapsed in 2001. Mitt Romney left Bain in 1999. However, Team Obama’s still blaming Bush for the economy, so it should come as no surprise they feel justified in blaming Romney for the 2001 bankruptcy of GS Technologies even though he left Bain a couple years prior.

Also not mentioned in the Obama ad is Jonathan Lavine, who is a six-figure Obama bundler who was at Bain in 2001, and remains there.

Katrina Trinko at NRO relayed an anecdote about the union situation at GST, another possible contributing factor left on the cutting room floor:

Don’t feel bad for those guys, though — Obama later got them all jobs at Solyndra.

Jim Geraghty in regards to the scary “Romney Economics” website:

President $5-Trillion-In-New-Debt-in-Less-Than-Four-Years wants us to fear #RomneyEconomics.

— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) May 14, 2012

Update: The Romney campaign responds:

**Written by Doug Powers

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That super-expensive health care law is paying out already. With the election less than six months away, the Obama administration wants you to know that they passed it, and now we’re finding out what’s in it: cash money!

The Department of Health and Human Services is now instructing insurers to make something clear in the first paragraph of customer premium rebates explanations: “This letter is to inform you that you will receive a rebate of a portion of your health insurance premiums. This rebate is required by the Affordable Care Act — the health reform law”:

The move is the latest sign the Obama administration is trying to draw attention to the law’s benefits before the fall elections, even though the law faces an uncertain future. The Supreme Court is expected to decide in June whether its central plank-a mandate that everyone carry insurance-violates the Constitution. Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, has pledged to wipe out the law if elected.

Under the 2010 legislation, insurers that don’t spend a specified amount of revenue on actual medical care — as opposed to administrative costs — must refund the difference to customers. The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation has projected refunds would total about $1.3 billion and go to roughly 16 million people who buy their own policies or get them through an employer.

Kaiser estimates checks would range from an average of $72 for those with insurance through a large employer to an average of $127 for those who bought individual policies.

Too bad they’re not quite as gung ho to assign credit when they’re extracting money from us:

–“This huge tax bill is brought to you in part by the stimulus, proud parent program of Solyndra.”

–“Your children and great-grandchildren are hereby presented with the tab for their share of the $16 trillion debt courtesy of government entitlement programs.”

–“Additional sales tax on this item due to extreme cost over-runs on construction of the ‘Train to Nowhere.’”

–“This $695 fine brought to you by Obamacare™.”

Some things we’ll never see…

**Written by Doug Powers

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President Obama, in Nevada on an official and definitely not campaign-related trip, stopped at the Reno home of Paul and Valerie Keller to promote a program to lower mortgage interest rates. While there, Obama delivered a speech in front of the couple’s garage.

A brief setup:

As leader of the free world President Obama will be used to making speeches to millions of people around the globe.

So he might have felt the occasion was a little beneath him yesterday when he stopped off in Reno, Nevada, to deliver an address outside a couple’s garage.

In what could be a disastrous photo opportunity for the President’s campaign, Mr Obama spoke to a handful of people in the crucial swing state.

This visit gave us our presidential photo op of the week. Click the picture for full size:

Notice something? No teleprompters. The Prez was working without a net last week. Gutsy Call!™ And I can’t believe somebody didn’t think to put a Volt in the garage before the cameras rolled.

In spite of the personal visit, Valerie Keller remains uncertain if she’ll vote for Obama in November due to the economy.

The crowd from the neighborhood appeared to be roughly the same size as the one that showed up for Obama’s first official campaign rally on Tuesday.

In front of the couple’s garage, Obama once again ran down his “to do” list for Congress, and it still doesn’t include “pass a budget”:

**Written by Doug Powers

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Being a US president on the primary ballot in a coal producing state and losing ten counties and 40 percent of the overall vote to a challenger who’s in a federal prison 1,200 miles away will prompt you to make some messaging tweaks.

From The Hill:

The Obama campaign added a section on “clean coal” to its website this week after House Republicans alleged that the president’s “all-of-the-above” energy plan neglected the fossil fuel.

“President Obama has set a 10-year goal to develop and deploy cost-effective clean coal technology,” the website now says.

“The Recovery Act invested substantially in carbon capture and sequestration research, including 22 projects across four different areas of carbon capture-and-storage research and development.”

As of Wednesday, the website did not include “clean coal” in a graphic outlining the president’s much-touted “all-of-the-above” energy plan. The graphic mentions oil, natural gas, biofuels, wind, solar and nuclear.

Asked about the change, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said “clean coal” has “been an essential part of the president’s all-of-the-above energy strategy.”

Environmentalists and others say there’s no such thing as “clean coal.” Drudge has a link to Joe Biden in 2007 saying that coal power and corn syrup are greater threats to humanity than terrorism. First the same sex marriage conflict, and now this? Who will be the one to evolve this time?

**Written by Doug Powers

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Just for a challenge, before watching the latest ad from the Obama campaign, I decided to use deductive reasoning to figure out the identity of the person in the ad who has a job because of Obama.

I knew it couldn’t be these people.

Or these people.

Or these people.

Or these people.

Or these people.

Or these people.

Or these people.

Or these people.

Or these people.

Or these people.

So that left me with one option: Brian in Ohio. And sure enough, I was right:

Update: About the facts in that ad…

Maybe Brian is a “composite” of many workers.

(h/t Washington Examiner)

**Written by Doug Powers

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