VIDEO: “Stimulus czar” Biden falls asleep during Obama’s deficit speech

Via ABC’s The Note blog:

Michael Muskal at the LA Times Top of the Ticket blog writes in response:

Vice President Joe Biden was given another big job by President Obama on Wednesday and the burden may have driven Obama’s go-to guy into a moment of sleep or, at least, contemplation.

Biden, who has more than a nodding acquaintance with deficits, debts and federal budget woes, was caught apparently deep in thought or catching a few winks while Obama outlined his plan for dealing with the deficit. […]

In his speech, the president explained that Biden would begin meeting with lawmakers from both parties next month with a goal of trying to work out a bipartisan deficit reduction plan.

Methinks our “stimulus czar” is suffereing from a deficit in things needed to stimulate him to keep him awake during his bosses speeches … ;)

On a more serious note, Ed Morrissey sums up the speech nicely in the headline to his post on the topic: Obama’s solution to deficit: spending, ObamaCare, and tax hikes. In other words, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) who, along with fellow colleagues, unveiled the House Republicans’ proposed FY2012 budget last week, blasted President Obama’s remarks as nothing more than partisan rhetoric filled with inaccuracies. Prepared remarks:

β€œWhen the President reached out to ask us to attend his speech, we were expecting an olive branch. Instead, his speech was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our fiscal crisis. What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief; we heard a political broadside from our campaigner-in-chief.

β€œLast year, in the absence of a serious budget, the President created a Fiscal Commission. He then ignored its recommendations and omitted any of its major proposals from his budget, and now he wants to delegate leadership to yet another commission to solve a problem he refuses to confront.

β€œWe need leadership, not a doubling down on the politics of the past. By failing to seriously confront the most predictable economic crisis in our history, this President’s policies are committing our children to a diminished future. We are looking for bipartisan solutions, not partisan rhetoric. When the President is ready to get serious about confronting this challenge, we’ll be here.”

Extended remarks from Rep. Ryan in which he talks about the demagoguery coming from the President and how we need leadership:

As to the demagoguery, Jake Tapper made a nice catch on the President’s anti-demagoguery rhetoric from January 2010 vs today’s speech. It pretty much denotes an epic flip flop from Obama. No surprise there.

You can read the full text version of the speech here.

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