Klobuchar Joins the Top Tier & Trump Lies His Way Through the SOTU Address
Trump SOTU: It was painful watching Donald Trump take credit for not screwing up the Obama expansion which began back in 2009, when Trump was still just a woefully bad reality show host, and even before he began his "birther" nonsense. Trump just can't force himself to credit Obama so he has to make things up to create the impression that his policies jump-started the economy. His claims simply aren't true. The economy was humming along quite nicely when President Obama left office and didn't need Trump's corporate tax cuts and spending increases which have ballooned the federal budget deficit.
For instance, his claims about record economic growth just aren't true. Forbes recently documented that growth in the last three years of the Obama administration outpaced economic growth during Trump's White House tenure. And, the same is true about job growth. Back in September, Chuck Jones at Forbes compared the number of jobs created by the two administrations and found that over the first 31 months of the Trump administration 1.5 million fewer jobs were added than during a comparable period of the Obama administration. Moreover, Trump's corporate tax cuts and spending increases are on track to double the annual federal budget deficit.
Worse than all his nonsense about the economy, however, is listening to the President take credit for protecting the preexisting condition provisions of Obamacare. Trump and Republicans in Congress did everything they could to undermine the Affordable Care Acts, its preexisting condition protections, and Medicaid expansion when they had a majority in both the House and Senate. And, the administration continues to support a lawsuit in the federal courts which seeks to have Obamacare declared unconstitutional. Make no mistake about it, if Trump wins reelection and Republicans retake the House of Representatives, they will again attempt to destroy the Affordable Care Act and its protections for those who have preexisting conditions.
The Washington Post and NPR have wonderful fact checks of the President's State of the Union speech.
Klobuchar Joins the Top Tier: Lord knows who will finally "win" the Iowa caucuses, but, perhaps, the most intriguing result is Sen. Amy Klobuchar's strong fifth place finish, right behind Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren. She beat all expectations and recent Iowa polling. It will be interesting to see if it will give her some momentum going into New Hampshire. At the very least, it should get voters [and donors] to take a second look at the Senator from Minnesota.
It will also be interesting to see if Michael Bloomberg gets a bit of a bump as the result of Joe Biden's less than stellar showing in Iowa.
By: Don Lam & Curated Content
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