Pres. Obama’s answer to a follow-up question from CNN’s Ed Henry about why it took Obama two days to respond to the AIG bonus controversy was my favorite line of the night.
What a refreshing novelty, to have a president who wants to know what he’s talking about before he speaks.
I also liked his response to Mike Allen of Politico, who asked him whether he regretted his decision to lower the tax deduction for charitable donations (because it might discourage wealthy Americans from giving, or might give them an incentive to give less). He said that the well-to-do would still have lots of money, and that if giving to charity was actually the motive, then a smaller tax deduction presumably would not affect the decision to give. He said that as things stood now, someone in his own income bracket making a charitable donation got a 39% tax deduction, whereas a bus driver making $50,000 or $40,000 a year only got 28%. “I don’t think that’s fair,” he said — and the starkness of the contrast to what we just left behind made my heart soar.
Frank James liveblogged the news conference, and has a good roundup of questions and answers — although I don’t agree with his assessment of Kevin Chappelle’s question asking for Obama’s response to the fact that thousands of American children and families are homeless right now, living in tent cities and on the street and under bridges. He wanted to know what Obama could say to those Americans. James called it a “softball” question. Not for those families, it isn’t.
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