WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — A fired-up Barack Obama ditched his TelePrompter to rally House Democrats and rip Republican opponents of his recovery package Thursday night – at one point openly mocking the GOP for failing to follow through on promises of bipartisanship.

In what was the most pointedly partisan speech of his young presidency, Obama rejected Republican arguments that massive spending in the $819 billion stimulus bill that passed the House should be replaced by a new round of massive tax cuts.

“I welcome this debate, but we are not going to get relief by turning back to the same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin,” said President Obama – sounding more like Candidate Obama than at any time since he took the oath of office less than a month ago.

Obama, speaking to about 200 House Democrats at their annual retreat at the Kingsmill Resort and Spa, dismissed Republican attacks against the massive spending in the stimulus.

"What do you think a stimulus is?" Obama asked incredulously. "It’s spending — that's the whole point! Seriously.”

Stabbing hard at Republicans who once aligned themselves with his predecessor, Obama made it clear that the problems he seeks to address with his recovery plan weren’t ones of his making.

“When you start hearing arguments, on the cable chatter, just understand a couple of things,” he said. “No. 1, when they say, ‘Well, why are we spending $800 billion [when] we’ve got this huge deficit?’ – first of all, I found this deficit when I showed up, No. 1.

“I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.”

After his remarks, Obama, clearly caught up in the moment, made the party get-together feel even more like a campaign rally with his signature call-and-response chant.

“Fired up?” he asked the Democratic lawmakers. “Ready to go!” a group of them shouted back.

In his speech, Obama went on to contrast the kind words of House and Senate Republican leaders with their increasingly strident opposition to the stimulus package.


“We were complimented by Republicans saying, ‘This is a balanced package . . . we’re pleasantly surprised,’” he said. “Suddenly, what was a ‘balanced package’ is suddenly out of balance.”



As the Senate deliberated in Washington – and packed it in for the night without finalizing a deal — Obama brushed pressed House Democrats to finalize the bill "without delay" when it emerged from the upper chamber.

"Let's think big right now," the president urged House Democrats. "Let's not think small."

Obama’s words bore only a vague resemblance to the prepared remarks the White House distributed to reporters as he began to speak. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Obama appeared to ditch his TelePrompter about a third of the way through the speech.

“He went to his heart, I think he spoke from his heart,” Clyburn said. “He went back to being the Barack Obama that Americans fell in love with when they went to the polls.”

Despite the hero's welcome Obama got in Williamsburg, there remain some skeptics of the plan within his own party. But if there was any tension between Obama and the House Democrats, it was hard to see it in the room. Before Obama spoke, House Democrats and their spouses posed for cell phone photos with the president – and even with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, gobbling berries and cream in white shirtsleeves, rushed out of the hall at one point, barking into his cell phone along the way as he wove between tables packed with his former House colleagues.

When Obama finally spoke, he called Pelosi “a rock” and “the great speaker of the House.” And he said that House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey and other House chairmen had acted with “discipline” in passing their version of the stimulus bill.

And while Obama said Americans are looking for the parties to work together on the stimulus, he said that it’s time to move past “the false theories of the past,” including the notion that tax cuts could cure all ills. In the process, he reminded the Democrats in the room – and the Republicans back in Washington – that he won the election in November.

“If you’re headed for a cliff, you’ve got to change direction,” Obama said. “That’s what the American people called for in November, and that’s what we intend to deliver.”

But Democrats have their work cut out for them if they are going to approve the package without any GOP votes. As Obama circled the room and posed for photos before he spoke, a person in the room spotted Phil Schiliro, the president’s top legislative liaison, huddled in a tense conversation with Obey, the principal author of the House — a reminder that the bill still has a ways to go.

Read the rest here;
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090206/pl_politico/18482

Obama's a Joke IMO...

Democrats have the majority in the House.. Let them pass this bill on their own..

why are they afraid of sole ownership of the bill?? why should House republicans abandon their values and their obligation to represent their constituents who voted them into office?

if this is such a great bill, why don't the democrats just let the train leave the republicans onthe platform??

could it be that when it FAILS to cure the ails it promises, that the Dems in DC want to be able to say, "The Republicans voted for it too" ??

I promise you that no Republicans are going to put themselves in the position of having to say they voted against it before they voted for it..

No
He's the President...

A mind reader???

Actually, he's YOUR president, not mine. I refuse to accept someone as being president who wasn't even born in the United States. Everyone knows he was born in Kenya, well at least everyone who isn't ignorant or refuses to believe all the proof that has been presented. One more thing you should know, Hitler gave great speeches too...

Why?

that's your answer???

Great post by the way Raider

He's not your president? Are you leaving the US or something?

"why should House republicans abandon their values and their obligation to represent their constituents who voted them into office?"

Why should we expect anything different! It cost you this election and put this economy in the basement. Where have those values been? Surely bought and paid for the last 8 years. Then all
you offer was more of the same with McCain!

Republicans cant blame no one but themselves.

fas·cism
Pronunciation: \ˈfa-ˌshi-zəm also ˈfa-ˌsi-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces fasces
Date: 1921
1often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism


Fascists aim to create a single-party state in which the government is led by a dictator who seeks unity by requiring individuals to subordinate self-interest to the collective interest of the nation or a race.[5][6][7] Fascist governments permanently forbid and suppress all criticism and opposition to the government and the fascist movement.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

No, it simply just means that I don't have to repspect him as MY President, It's one of my freedoms I choose to exercise.

No, that was a question.

You can discern the difference by the,"? mark," following the sentence.

There is no proof presented but hoaxes. Obama was born in Hawaii, and to to frankly put it, he was born out of an American citizen's vagina, which makes him an American citizen right away.
There is no other way to put it.

You must be a veteran...

I wrote to my representatives, senators and President Obama about this bill. I told them to cut the fat off of it and make sure that the stimulus in the bill will help the average citizen now not later.

But President Obama is doing what the expert told him to do to stave off depression and that is to flood the system with cash. So he is right, it is a spending bill. Obviously tax breaks to the rich did not work, that is where we just came from.

Aparently, you're missing the part where Hawaii allows you to be a legal citizen of Hawaii and still be born in another country. BUT and this is a big but, that doesn't make the person a Natural Born citizen of the US and you must be a natural born citizen of the US to be the POTUS. Oh and for it being a big hoax, Obama's grandmother coming out and saying that she was at his birth in Kenya was definitely a fake correct?

Obama is a citizen and the prejudice, hatemongers would like to say otherwise, but they are not correct.

McCain was actally born outside the US and noone screamed about that.

The hitler similarity is with Bush not Obama, Bush is the one who started an ethnic cleansing type war utilizing the 9/11 crisis to strike ANY Arabic peoples he wanted to strike, including those not associated with 9/11 at all.

Damn that Bush, fascist