Speaking of Vice Presidents
by digby
There’s a lot of talk about the differences between the Ryan Plan and the Romney Plan. But what about the differences between the Biden Plan and the Obama Plan?
Here’s Biden today:
“Hey, by the way, let’s talk about Social Security,” Biden said after a diner at The Coffee Break Cafe in Stuart, VA expressed his relief that the Obama campaign wasn’t talking about changing the popular entitlement program.
“Number one, I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security,” Biden said, per a pool report. “I flat guarantee you.”
That’s terrific, but it’s hard to forget about this:
Heading into a crucial negotiating session on a budget deal on Thursday, President Obama has raised his sights and wants to strike a far-reaching agreement on cutting the federal deficit as Speaker John A. Boehner has signaled new willingness to bargain on revenues.
Mr. Obama, who is to meet at the White House with the bipartisan leadership of Congress in an effort to work out an agreement to raise the federal debt limit, wants to move well beyond the $2 trillion in savings sought in earlier negotiations and seek perhaps twice as much over the next decade, Democratic officials briefed on the negotiations said Wednesday.
The president’s renewed efforts follow what knowledgeable officials said was an overture from Mr. Boehner, who met secretly with Mr. Obama last weekend, to consider as much as $1 trillion in unspecified new revenues as part of an overhaul of tax laws in exchange for an agreement that made substantial spending cuts, including in such social programs as Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security — programs that had been off the table.
The intensifying negotiations between the president and the speaker have Congressional Democrats growing anxious, worried they will be asked to accept a deal that is too heavily tilted toward Republican efforts and produces too little new revenue relative to the magnitude of the cuts.
Congressional Democrats said they were caught off guard by the weekend White House visit of Mr. Boehner — a meeting the administration still refused to acknowledge on Wednesday — and Senate Democrats raised concerns at a private party luncheon on Wednesday.
House Democrats have their own fears about the negotiations, which they expressed in an hourlong meeting Wednesday night with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.
“Depending on what they decide to recommend, they may not have Democrats,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, said in an interview. “I think it is a risky thing for the White House to basically take the bet that we can be presented with something at the last minute and we will go for it.”
Luckily the Republicans walked away. But that doesn’t mean that the President doesn’t still believe it was the right thing to do. Just last week he was reported to be upset that the Democrats get no credit for being willing to make cuts to those programs, so it wouldn’t seem that he’s changed his mind on that.
I like that Biden is making this “guarantee.” Wouldn’t it be nice if all the other Democrats, including the president, signed on to it?
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