Senator Friskies Spills The Beans
by digby
BLITZER: Well, why — why didn’t you insist? You’ve been working on this for a year — and I’ll let Senator Simpson respond. Why didn’t you insist that you were going to work until you could get 14 members on board and have that in the — in the bag?
SIMPSON: Wolf, I guess you don’t understand. We didn’t care if we got two votes.
Atrios quips: “I suppose this is the bluster of a failed fool, but the purpose of the commission, however misguided, wasn’t to release an unpopular report entitled “How Alan Simpson Wants to Destroy America,” it was to…come up with something that could attract broad support.”
That was the stated reason. But I think Simpson may just be blurting out his own distorted version of the truth. They may have cared about getting more than two votes, but it’s also true that the president and the other Grand Bargainers knew they couldn’t come up with something in one report that could pass the congress. They just wanted a vehicle with which to give some of their schemes a bipartisan sheen so they could put them on the agenda.
I’m guessing that “entitlement” cuts would be the top item they wanted, out of the deluded belief that Obama’s legacy would be that he saved Social Security. It’s not like they didn’t say it out loud. But who knows? Maybe the Republicans in American bizarroworld might even meet him halfway with some minor and negligible cuts to defense. (Not likely here, however.)
Anyway, the point was to prove that the Democrats are responsible economic stewards. Like Clinton did. Before the Republicans put his genitalia all over television, impeached him and stole the election from his successor.
It worked so well before, why not do it again?
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