Not for lack of trying — President gets no credit for offering to slash spending

Not for lack of trying

by digby

You have to love this from Jake Tapper:

Obama’s Broken Deficit Promise

“This is big,” wrote White House director of new media Macon Phillips in a February 23, 2009 blog post, ”the President today promised that by the end of his first term, he will cut in half the massive federal deficit we’ve inherited. And we’ll do it in a new way: honestly and candidly.”

Indeed, President Obama did make that promise that day, saying, “today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office. This will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay — and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.”

The 2013 budget the president submitted today does not come close to meeting this promise of being reduced to $650 billion for fiscal year 2013.

If you read the whole article you’ll find no mention of the fact that the GOP has refused to take yes for an answer despite the president practically begging them to brutally slash all the programs they purport to hate. You cannot tell this story properly without that context.

One only hopes the President’s political advisers have noted that he is getting zero credit from the usual suspects for his repeated attempts at a Grand Bargain (or even just a small deal.) Perhaps the American people will see it differently than the villagers, but I’m guessing they’ll have to see through a barrage of misinformation and disinformation by the time the votes are held. Hopefully, they’ve begun to be deprogrammed from this deficit propaganda and it won’t get the traction it usually does.