The AP’s top whoppers from last night’s State of the Union

Where was Representative Joe Wilson when we needed him?

Now that the fact checking has begun, even the MSM can’t ignore the whoppers that President Obama told last night during the State of the Union.

The Associated Press lists Obama’s top whoppers from last night’s State of the Union address.  Here’s a couple of them:

OBAMA: “Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t.”

THE FACTS: The anticipated savings from this proposal would amount to less than 1 percent of the deficit — and that’s if the president can persuade Congress to go along.

Obama is a convert to the cause of broad spending freezes. In the presidential campaign, he criticized Republican opponent John McCain for suggesting one. “The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel,” he said a month before the election. Now, Obama wants domestic spending held steady in most areas where the government can control year-to-year costs. The proposal is similar to McCain’s.

…

OBAMA: The president issued a populist broadside against lobbyists, saying they have “outsized influence” over the government. He said his administration has “excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs.” He also said it’s time to “require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress” and “to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office.”

THE FACTS: Obama has limited the hiring of lobbyists for administration jobs, but the ban isn’t absolute; seven waivers from the ban have been granted to White House officials alone. Getting lobbyists to report every contact they make with the federal government would be difficult at best; Congress would have to change the law, and that’s unlikely to happen. And lobbyists already are subject to strict limits on political giving. Just like every other American, they’re limited to giving $2,400 per election to federal candidates, with an overall ceiling of $115,500 every two years.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air expands on one of Obama’s Whoppers:

Let me add at least one other whopper that the AP doesn’t mention.  Obama repeatedly insisted that he inherited massive budgetary problems from George Bush, but the Con Law professor may want to retake his high-school civics class.  Congress passes budgets, not the President, and the last three budgets came from Democrats.  In three years, they increased annual federal spending by $900 billion, while the admittedly profligate and irresponsible Republican Congresses under George Bush increased annual federal spending by $800 billion — in six years.  And during the last three years before taking office as President, Obama served in the Senate that passed those bills, and he voted for every Democratic budget put in front of him.

It was clear to anyone that watched the State of the Union speech last night that President Obama has yet to start ‘listening’ to the American people and has learned nothing from Scott Browns victory in Massachusetts.  He is still focused on blaming the previous administration; using moral equivalency as a defense for his back room deals and broken promises; and, continues to try and convince America that his ONLY mistake was not taking time from the grueling task of creating and passing policy to actually explain it to the American public, because he thought we would ‘get it’ without him having to explain it to us.

This from the prime-time president who is rumored to have been offered Leno’s 9 PM time slot, and a slot on ABC after Lost, so they can give him the air time he craves without continuing to juggle their schedule to accommodate the President of the United States.

The absurdly high number of national addresses, speeches, town hall meetings and press conferences have been documented ad nausea, so I won’t regurgitate those totals.  However, the point is that it is ludicrous for the prime-time President to attempt to make the case that he failed to take the time to ‘explain’ his policies to America.

Newsflash:  No matter how many times you explain them, Mr. President, America simply doesn’t like your policies…