In case you’re wondering how Fox News plans to spin the pending deal to end the government shutdown, we got a good glimpse earlier today on America’s News HQ. Not surprisingly, it casts the Republican-caused shutdown as a plus for the economy and blamed President Obama for lacking leadership on the budget (read: enact Republican spending cuts).
Martha MacCallum, often a Republican mouthpiece, gave us a clue that Fox and the GOP home team will blame President Obama for any economic fallout from the shutdown. Her first question to Republican guest Jonathan Collegio was, “To me the big question is here …We talk about ‘the full faith and credit of the United States of America’ right? Do we have that full faith and credit if we don’t fix our financial system going forward?” In other words, it's not the debt-ceiling/shutdown crisis that has threatened our standing, it's President Obama!
Collegio argued that while “the process itself” of the shutdown and debt crisis has been messy, it may well be a good thing going foward! Referring to the last debt-ceiling crisis, Collegio said, “When you zoom out… it ended up being very healthy for the economy and that we were able to achieve $2.5 trillion in spending cuts through sequestration that Senator Mitch McConnell was able to preserve this time around. That, I think, is the main accomplishment.” Yeah, just pay no attention to how Standard & Poor's lowered our credit rating in the process! Or how the shutdown itself has cost $160 million a day, according to USA Today.
Furthermore, sequestration has NOT been good for the economy, as I explained in a post on Addicting Info. But MacCallum let the hypocrisy and the lie stand, presumably so that she could interrupt her other guest, Democrat Chuck Rocha, in order to launch a gratuitous attack on President Obama.
Rocha began to explain that he thought the compromise to end the shutdown was the best arrangement possible at the moment. But MacCallum broke in to say:
Keep in mind we haven’t had a budget in five years (as Republican Collegio chuckled). You have to ask yourself, “Are we gonna have the first presidency in the United States of America with no budget?” Is that a possibility, Chuck?
Rocha replied that Republicans are obstructing the budget process. But rather than dwell on the unpopular behavior of such Republican obstructionists as Ted Cruz, MacCallum turned to Collegio and said: "That brings the question: Where is the president on this, Jonathan? We just heard from Jay Carney he’s moving on – to immigration!"
Believe it or not, Collegio accused President Obama of never trying to work across party lines, the way George W. Bush did!
Not even MacCallum wanted to go there. But she closed by saying, “Yeah, we gotta all ask ourselves at home: What happens now? Where does this president want to take on the budget process long term and all of these big issues?”