Shirk your responsibilities. Please
by digby
Never say the White House isn’t persistent when it really wants something:
President Obama called the Democratic and Republican chairmen of Congress’s special deficit reduction supercommittee Friday and urged them to reach a deal, as the panel’s deadline for agreeing on a strategy to slash the nation’s debt rapidly approaches…
But he also carried another message: Congress should not undo the painful consequences for failing to reach a deal that were agreed to when the supercommittee was created in the August debt deal.
“The sequester was agreed to by both parties to ensure there was a meaningful enforcement mechanism to force a result from the Committee,” the White House said in a statement. “Congress must not shirk its responsibilities. The American people deserve to have their leaders come together and make the tough choices necessary to live within our means, just as American families do every day in these tough economic times.”
In a statement, the White House indicated that Obama was seeking an update on the process as a Nov. 23 deadline for cutting at least $1.2 trillion from the nation’s deficit over the next 10 years looms.
He urged them to strike a deal that would cut both entitlements and raise revenues.
The article says that the congress can’t undo the triggers without the president signing off, but that’s a smoke screen. There is no constitutional or statutory obligation in that agreement. They can pass or not pass whatever they want and all the president can do about it is veto or not veto.
At this point gridlock and election season are our friends. They don’t have to pass this piece of garbage, either through the supercommittee or the triggers if they fail to do that. And they shouldn’t.
*Also, too, that “family budget” analogy is still facile, insulting and wrong. It’s easily the most destructive thing the President has said in this whole debate.
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