Catfood Dynamics
by digby
Lance Mannion sums it up nicely:
Those on the Right want to cut everything to the point that we’d pretty much be left with a federal government that does nothing but guard the borders and put out forest fires.
That’s horrifying, and a little nuts, but it’s serious and responsible in that we wouldn’t be enjoying services and benefits we weren’t paying for.
Those on the Left, liberal Democrats, want to sink the deficit by raising taxes back to Clinton era levels, reining in out of control Medicare costs, making meaningful defense cuts, and increasing revenue by creating more and higher paying jobs.
The people who aren’t serious are establishment Republicans and so-called moderate Democrats.
Establishment Republicans, which is to say the ones who will control the House and lead the minority in the Senate, only want to cut taxes on the rich, de-regulate Wall Street and Big Business, raise not lower defense spending, and screw the poor and the blue collar middle class in ways that don’t inconvenience their own white collar middle class voters. Their only “serious” plan to cut spending is to take nickels and dimes away from people for whom nickels and dimes are the difference between paying the rent and buying groceries this week.
“Moderate” Democrats are Democrats who think that their only hope for saving some liberal programs is to convince establishment Republicans to start acting like responsible conservative Republicans and then compromising on everything with them.
The result of this brilliant strategy is a Democratic President seeming to propose major cuts in Social Security!
Michael Scherer of Time Magazine assured me on TV today that the Republicans are going to move left over the next two years so this is going to work out perfectly.
.