9/19/2011

To Obama "Right Now" Apparently means don't start for two months

Remember how President Obama kept on repeating over and over again that Congress should "pass this bill" and "pass this bill right now"? That there was such an urgency? Well, even the LA Times is having too much of this since Obama still hasn't sent the new Stimulus bill yet to Congress. In many ways this reminds one of Obama attacking Congress for not passing the trade bills when he hasn't even sent them yet to Congress. Presumably Obama will attack Congress for not being fast enough in passing the new Stimulus bill.

Everybody remembers the urgency of President Obama's attitude toward the awful jobs situation.

Back in early August, Obama said the jobs situation was so urgent that he was going to give another speech about it -- in a month or so, in September after his vacation on Martha's Vineyard.

And then in September the president announced he would give his major jobs speech to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 7. But he neglected to check with congressional leaders first. And they suggested the 8th. So, since it was their House, the 8th it was.

"Tonight," the president said in the first 34 of his 4,021 words to a national television audience that night, "we meet at an urgent time for our country. We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless, and a political crisis that has made things worse."

The speech got panned as another political campaign one with Obama announcing, in effect, that....

...since the first stimulus spending plan of $787 billion hadn't really worked, maybe another $447 billion stimulus spending plan would. . . .

The president was in such a hurry to get this new spending going, everyone remembers, that during that address he said the phrase "right now" seven times. He didn't actually mean right now that night because the NFL season was opening a few minutes after his remarks. . . .

So, given the president's professed urgency, the next day, Sept. 9, everyone asked where was his jobs legislation? . . .

Here's the revealing exchange with a persistent host Candy Crowley on CNN's "State of the Union:"

CROWLEY: When is the bill going to get on the floor?

DURBIN: The bill is on the calendar. Majority leader Reid moved it to the calendar. It is ready and poised. There are a couple other items we may get into this week not on the bill and some related issues that may create jobs. But we're going to move forward on the president's bill. There will be a healthy debate. I hope the Republicans will come to...

CROWLEY: After the recess, so next month? Or when will it actually begin to act on?

DURBIN: I think that's more realistic it would be next month.

So, as of right now, "right now" uttered on Sept. 8 really means sometime at least one month later. . . .

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