Hit Me Baby One More Time
by digby
It’s quite a morning. The gasbags are excited and joyful that the president is finally going to make all the little people finally sacrifice something for the good of the country. Or the markets. Oh what’s the difference?
On Andrea Mitchell, Chuck Todd drilled Obama’s conundrum down to this simple calculation:
The question is is the pain that this is causing him on the left going to get him anything in congress the right?
Gosh, I don’t know, do you? The right has been so cooperative so far, that I’m sure they’ll jump on another opportunity to help him. That’s just the kind of people they are. So, I’m sure it will be well worth it politically to sacrifice everything his own party cares about.
Steve Liesman CNBC anchor added that the markets were fine with the spending freeze as a first step, but they were looking to the president’s deficit commission to go after social security and medicare. (The Senate had just voted down the congressional deficit commission.)
And then Ron Brownstein explained what this was really all about:
Andrea Mitchell: The president in his speech is trying to look like a smaller government guy precisely because of the voter anger at all the bail outs, all the spending that he was kind of roped into but has left a very bitter aftertaste…
Brownstein: As you suggested before that any serious economist, really anyone over 12 with a calculator can tell you that the only way to truly address this deficit and debt problem, we’re going to have to do all of the above. We’re going to have to tackle the entitlements, we’re going to have to tackle the discretionary spending and ultimately we’ll have to look at raising more revenues. Senator Pete Domenici, the former Republican chair of the Senate finance committee made that point yesterday when announcing an independent commission, everything has to be on the table.
What the president has done, the importance of it is political as much as economic. You give yourself a stronger hand to argue for putting everything on the table by starting with the aspect of the budget that is most important to Democrats, congressional Democrats. These domestic discretionary programs, the spending on education, on energy, on health that is key to Democrats. He’s saying look, I am willing to take the hits from my own party to put a hold on this for a few years. And I think that gives him more credibility to kind of ask everybody to come to the table with their own sacred cows whether it is the entitlement spending or for that matter, the revenue side. So, no this is not the solution, but it may be a step toward a comprehensive solution and for that matter many other problems that we face.
Brownstein is a nice little Peter Pan living in a Never-Never land where Republicans will see that Democrats are sacrificing all their priorities and feel compelled to meet them halfway and raise taxes on their rich patrons. Chuck Todd did point out that Grover Norquist was putting the squeeze on Republicans not to ever vote to raise taxes for anything under any circumstances, but the whole panel just looked on dumbly.
Then CNBC’s Leisman solved the issue for us all by reminding us who really runs this country:
There’s two ways this will be solved: either before markets make Washington do it, or after markets make Washington do it.
There you have it. Now go out and buy something you useless parasites!
Update: The deficit commission yes votes were as follows:
YEAs —53
Alexander (R-TN)
Bayh (D-IN)
Begich (D-AK)
Bennet (D-CO)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Bond (R-MO)
Boxer (D-CA)
Carper (D-DE)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Franken (D-MN)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagan (D-NC)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kaufman (D-DE)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
LeMieux (R-FL)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR) Lugar (R-IN)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reid (D-NV)
Schumer (D-NY)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Tester (D-MT)
Udall (D-CO)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (D-VA)
Webb (D-VA)
Wicker (R-MS)
Wyden (D-OR)
It appears that both sides wanted a bipartisan vote on this. But why? If deficit reduction is such a proven vote getter, why are all factions in the congress refusing to get on board with it?
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