Why do we always forget? Well, more to the point: why do I always forget? Here comes the road runner:
President Obama will lay out a long-term deficit reduction plan later this week that will take “a scalpel, not a machete,” to programs like Medicare and education services and try once again to extract more taxes from the wealthiest Americans, his senior adviser said Sunday.
Appearing on several Sunday morning television talk shows, David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser and former campaign manager, laid out few of the contours of the deficit-cutting plan but sought to distinguish it from a Republican congressional plan announced recently by Paul D. Ryan Jr. of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House budget committee. He said the Republican plan “would give the average millionaire $200,000 in tax cuts” but double the health care costs of senior citizens “$6,000 a year down the road” and trim “energy investment at a time of record gas prices.”
And so Obama starts off this critical part of his first term by appearing to be above the fray and yet committed to compromise. Via Biden, he calls the GOP's bluff, draws a line in spending cuts for 2011, and exposes the draconian spending reductions that the GOP's no tax increase pledge requires. He comes back with a bid to tax millionaires, offers spending cuts that would be far more sophisticated and targeted away from investment than the GOP, and pledges to put his own proposals forward as early as this week.
Of course, for a blogger like me, you face a choice. Simply trust the guy and spin for him, or voice skepticism, outrage and disappointment and get played along with the GOP. But, of course, I don't mind gettng played. Because I want this president to succeed – and such success requires root-and-branch spending and tax reform.
He seems to be getting there – in that highly unsatisfying but politically shrewd way of his. So now we will have the Ryan plan and the Obama plan. Guess which one independent voters will like more?
Meep meep!
The Dish 