And we need to extend high-speed internet to our ignorant red state rural residents. There are folks out there in Nebraska who will never know the pleasure of watching high-definition porn in real-time as long as they are stuck with dial-up at the end of the phone line. Have some high-tech compassion for our backwards brothers and sisters at the low end of the digital totem pole.
We need to change our tax laws too. If you have accountants or lawyers, you don't have to pay taxes. So I want to work with all of you on both sides of the aisle to make sure every American can afford a good accountant or lawyer schooled in finding that perfect Caribbean tax shelter, don't you? It just makes good sense. And I think we all can agree that we need to eliminate tax loopholes and replace them with buttonholes so we can lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years without adding to the deficit. (Applause, laughter.) No, really! You can stop laughing now.
Now I heard a scurrilous rumor that some of you out there in the cheap seats still have a few compunctions about our brand new health care law. (Audience laughter.) Well, it's easy to criticize, but I guess it's true that anything can be improved. Well, maybe not Amanda Seyfried--that babe is just about perfect the way the Good Lord made her. But sure, we might have some room for improvement in health care, like say a single-payer system that the health care industries and pharmaceutical companies bribed you guys to kill last go-round.
And to create jobs--the most important thing we will do before the next big election--I'm proposing that we freeze domestic spending by more than $400-billion over the next decade. Hmmm"that figure sounds suspiciously like the same amount we could save by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. But I digress. Where was I? Oh yeah--freezing domestic spending on things I actually care about, like community action programs. Secretary Gates over here says we can even eliminate some of those pork-gun-barrel defense projects like that bomber that Speaker Boehner keeps funding back in his home district, so what the hell--let's cut those too, and see if weepy John still gets re-elected in two years, whaddaya say?
"We just can't keep spending more than we take in." That's what y'all told us last November, and trust me, I'm a-listenin'. It's just not sustainable. We just don't want to remove the heart from the patient--that would be like saying: Hey! We've got an airplane that's just too heavy so we start throwing out the engine and the passengers. Pretty soon, who's flying the plane, right?
But we will have to cut Medicare and Medicaid. And you know what? I think you conservatives have a good idea about medical malpractice reform to put a stop to frivolous lawsuits. Oh, I know, I wasn't saying that last Halloween, but I heard the oracle and I done seen the light ever since you conservatives took 60 seats in the House and six more in the Senate.
So I make you this promise--if I get a bill with earmarks inside, I will veto it. You're going to have to come up with a more clever metaphor for pork spending for the folks back home to slip it past this reformed President.
And as for America being the shining moral beacon to the rest of the world--we're back, baby. We have restored our reputation as the moral example for all the rest of those countries out there. We have retained extraordinary renditions, we're bombing more wedding parties in Waziristan than ever before, and we have refused to prosecute the war criminals from the previous administration. So we can hold our heads high.
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