Obama turns up the heat
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| Fri, 02-06-2009 - 10:15am |
During his campaign President Obama chastised us about keeping our homes warm ("We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times,").
Should President Obama lead by example?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/03/obama-getting-heat-for-turning-up-thermostat/
Obama Getting Heat for Turning Up the Oval Office Thermostat
President Obama is facing criticism for keeping his office warm enough to "grow orchids" in -- after he called on Americans to protect the environment and turn down their thermostats.
President Obama lectured voters during the campaign about the need to make sacrifices for the environment. But now it's warm and toasty in the White House -- so much so that aides have likened it to a tropical hot house -- and Obama is under fire for turning up the heat.
Obama made climate change a staple of his stump speech last year, calling on Americans to lower their energy use and set a model for the rest of the world in combating climate change.
During a campaign event in Oregon in May, Obama said we have to "lead by example." "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times," he said.
"That's not leadership. That's not going to happen."
But for the first few weeks of his presidency, that's precisely what has happened in the White House.
On the first day of his presidency, Obama allowed staffers to venture into the Oval Office without wearing coat and tie, which had been obligatory under President Bush. Fashion observers called it a new age of business casual at the White House.
Obama's aides had a simpler explanation. Though he's spent more than 20 years in Chicago, the president was born in Hawaii. And so he "likes it warm" in the Oval Office, said Chief of Staff David Axelrod. "You could grow orchids in there," he told the New York Times.
But while it's perpetual summer in the Oval Office, the rest of the country has been trudging through a tough winter. Ice storms have cut power to millions in the Midwest and South.
With few orchids growing in the heartland, critics are saying that Obama -- who urged individual sacrifice in an inaugural address that called for a "new era of responsibility" -- hasn't been willing to bear the cold with the rest of the country.
"It's stunning hypocrisy," said Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of two books critical of global warming activists. "Obama spins the dial up, takes off his coat and seeks to mandate that we turn the dial down," he said.
Obama could take a lesson from one of his predecessors, critics say.
During the gasoline shortage of the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter famously donned a cardigan and turned down the thermostat in the White House. He urged the nation to do the same during a notably chilly fireside chat he gave from his cooled-off home -- a symbolic gesture intended to move other Americans to go easy on the country's depleted stores of energy.
Charles Ebinger, director of the Energy Security Initiative at the Brookings Institute, said that presidential roles and security measures will necessarily prevent Obama from being completely green.
"No one can justify from an energy-efficiency standpoint riding in a bulletproof car, but as president of the United States I think we need to protect his security," he said. "Symbolically it's important, but I wouldn't read too much into it."
The 800-square-foot Oval Office accounts for only a small part of the White House's overall area: at 55,000 square feet, the Georgian mansion is a public institution, and taxpayers cover the cost of powering a building that is part dwelling, part museum and the nerve center of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government.
The White House began going green during the 1990s, and reports from the Department of Energy show that innovations and changes have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in energy costs each year for the buildings that house White House staff.
Obama's White House declined to comment on the president's personal energy use, but did note that his stimulus package will continue the greening trend, paving the way for 75 percent of federal buildings to be modernized to increase their energy efficiency.
Yet in the sanctum sanctorum of executive power, Obama has kept it steamy -- literally. The entire White House complex is heated by steam radiators, part of an old energy system that continues to undergo renovations.
Critics say it's time for the president to put his coat -- or his cardigan -- back on.
Horner said the president should follow the demands he's made of the rest of the country and start "turning down the dial and putting on a sweater instead of sacrifice he talks about for other people."
But some energy experts say Obama, who made energy efficiency a cornerstone of his campaign, needs to stay on message.
"He's got to make every American make a personal commitment" to decrease their own energy use and educate the country about the threat of climate change, he said. "The earlier the president can convey that message the better."

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Carter set it low, as did Nixon, during the oil shortages. President Obama has announced we must all sacrifice and that 72 24x7 is no longer acceptable. It appears he is exempt from the sacrifice imposed on the peasant masses.
I know other Presidents set an example of lowering Whitehouse temperatures as they told us on national television and it was covered in the news at the time. I've lived with Presidents who walked the walk. This is the first President I can recall who wanted everyone else to sacrifice.
Okay.... I will ask again.
"This is the first President I can recall who wanted everyone else to sacrifice."
While I agree that Obama could turn down the thermostat, or at least get himself at little space heater for under his desk, it's minimal compared to the previous administration who were not big on sacrifice, voting themselves a huge tax cut while troops were sent to Iraq without proper gear. I think this speech of John McCain's was a powerful one, and if he had kept with that type of speech and line of thinking, he might have been the one keeping the heat high in the Oval Office right now.
http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=d6273080-ee6a-4fe6-8a88-543ed0bd4833&Region_id=&Issue_id=1172f761-a830-4020-ae1b-7ec3db088fc9
"HOW TO PUT AMERICA ON THE ROAD TO FISCAL SANITY WHILE WE STILL CAN"
May 19, 2004
Remarks by Senator John McCain for the Progressive Policy Institute Forum:
Thank you Bill, and I would like to thank everyone at PPI for hosting this forum. It is vitally important that we engage in a serious dialogue about our fiscal future. We need to do exactly what is being done here today–having a thorough, no-holds-barred discussion between a large group of policy experts from the right and the left. It doesn’t happen often enough in this town. But once we stop talking, we need to start acting, and I hope by the end of this forum you will agree to join in helping lead the charge to action.
In the interest of straight talk, let me be blunt. I expect that by the time I leave this room today, I will have offended each and everyone of you in some way. I’m going to say things that aren’t popular in Washington, but that people in this room need to hear. You may get angry at me, and I hope you get angry at yourselves as well. It’s true that we need comprehensive reform of the budget process. Later this morning, Sen. Lieberman will outline a very worthy proposal. Such reforms are long overdue. We can talk about every budget reform measure imaginable, but the bottom line is that, until both Democrats and Republicans control their appetite for spending, we’re going to continue to spiral out of control.
As everyone in this room knows, our fiscal future can only be described as bleak. We have a projected deficit of over $521 billion and we continue to spend, and spend, and spend. Lately more and more comment about how Republicans and Democrats can’t find any common ground and I myself have lamented on how nasty and partisan Washington has become. Well, I stand corrected, because there is one thing which unites Republicans and Democrats: Fiscal irresponsibility has become the great unifier of late, and for that we should all be ashamed.
I am a proud Republican. I’m a Barry Goldwater Republican. I revere Ronald Reagan and his party of limited government. Sadly, that party is no longer. The current version of the Republican party is engaged in an outrageous spending binge and they’re being steadied and encouraged by the Democrats. It used to be understood that no one ever voted for a Democrat to be a champion of fiscal responsibility. But at this point, is there a party to take up that worthy cause?
From pork barrel spending to expanding entitlements to tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens, both parties have proven who they represent and who they are working for and it’s not the American taxpayer. Republicans and Democrats alike represent no one but the special interests. Whether it be catfish farmers in the south or blueberry farmers in the north or big Pharmaceutical companies with high-paid lobbyists here in Washington–big-monied special interests have a stranglehold on this town.
My friends, we are at war. Throughout our history, wartime has been a time of sacrifice. At the beginning of the war I said it would be long and difficult, and would require a great deal of sacrifice on everyone’s part. But about the only sacrifice taking place is that by the brave men and women fighting to defend and protect the liberties we hold so dear, and that of their families. It is time for others to step up and start sacrificing. What have we sacrificed? Just in the last year we have approved legislation containing billions and billions of dollars in unrequested and unauthorized pork barrel projects, huge tax breaks for the wealthy and, just last week, a corporate tax bill estimated to cost $180 billion, chock full of billions of dollars in tax breaks for wealthy oil and gas companies and other special interests. One Washington Post article quoted a tax lobbyist involved in its drafting to concede the bill “has risen to a new level of sleaze.” That is far and away from sacrifice.
Additionally, late last year we expanded Medicare, an already ailing entitlement program, by adding a costly prescription drug benefit. To make matters worse, that law’s price tag grew from an estimated $400 billion when it was passed by Congress, to $534 billion just three months later. It pains me to acknowledge that the biggest expansion of Medicare since its inception happened under a Republican administration and under the Republican leadership of both Houses of Congress. The party that was long known to be the guardian of the treasury is now its routine raider.
Not long ago, we used to talk about the “lock box.” But let’s get a little more basic. Let’s consider the “alarm clock.” We need one big wake up call in Washington. According to the General Accounting Office, the unfunded Federal financial burden (such as public debt, future Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid payments) totals more than $40 trillion or $140,000 per man, woman and child. To put this in perspective, the average mortgage (which is often a family's largest liability) is only $124,000 -- and that is often borne by the family breadwinners, not the children too. Instead of fixing the problem, and fixing it will not come easy, we only succeeded in making it bigger, more unstable, more complicated and much, much more expensive.
I agree.
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