Negotiatin’
by digby
Here are the talking points fthe Andrea Mitchell Reports (with Norah O’Donnell guest hosting) this morning.
John Boehner: Democrats want a free pass to continue to spend more. We’re in a hole and Democrats won’t give up the shovel. Doing nothing is not an option, the American people won’t tolerate it and neither will we.
DebbieWasserman-Shultz: He has some nerve not sitting around the table with Democrats, hammering out some compromise and striking a balance. What President Obama called for a few weeks ago was that we needed to strike a balance. We need to make sure that we engaged in shared sacrifice. So Democrats aren’t just calling for revenue increases and tax increases. What we are calling for is that the wealthiest among us and the middle class and even people who can’t bear any more pain all share the sacrifice to fix our deficit and make sure that we can continue to create jobs and turn this economy around.
I’m sure people are very impressed with the Democrats’ maturity and sobriety with all that talk about “balance.” But it is really a good idea to characterize a tax hike on the wealthiest people in this country a “sacrifice?” What exactly are they sacrificing, an extra couple of days in St Barts? A new Bentley every two years instead of one? Is that really the same thing as asking a family member to quit work because someone needs to stay home to take care of grandma when Medicaid’s been cut off and there’s no money for skilled nurrsing care? Is it really “shared sacrifice” when wealthy hedge fund managers are asked to pay the same tax rates as your average office worker while teachers, firefighters, cops and state workers lose their jobs and homes? Really?
I’m sure there are plenty of people who think this is a terrific way to show that the Democrats are “serious” about deficit reduction and God knows there’s nothing more important than that. But I will just remind them that actual human beings’ lives are at stake in this and that the last time a president proved that Democrats were responsible fiscal stewards they impeached him for his trouble and gave the money to their rich friends the first chance they got.
You can see by the two comments that the parties are approaching these negotiations in completely different ways. The Republicans are standing their ground and pushing to the limit and the Democrats are appealing to swing voters by promoting themselves as the party willing to compromise just about anything in the hopes that they will sour on the GOP for its intransigence. Maybe that will even work. But the cost is going to be high for the Party in the long run as they willingly help the Republicans systematically destroy their institutional base. And in the short run, millions of those “people who really can’t bear any more pain” as Wasserman Shultz calls them, will be sacrificed on the alter of the Democratic image of rectitude.
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