Shhhh. Don't tell anyone
by digby
Discussing the fact that the GOP is sending a couple of political hacks to Obama's congressional deficit commission, Matt Yglesias makes a great observation:
You have a government set to steadily increase spending on autopilot as a result of demographic change and rising health care costs. And you have a Democratic President urging congress to enact spending cuts. But you have conservative politicians refusing to make a serious effort to reach an agreement out of some blend of taxophobia and fear of giving the President a win. The result, again, whether the right realizes it or not, is a gift to the wing of the Democratic Party that disagrees with Obama about the desirability of enacting spending cuts.
In my fantasies, not only would the Republicans block all these awful spending cuts, Obama would fix the medium term deficit entirely with one swipe of the pen in December of 2012 by vetoing the inevitable extension of all the Bush tax cuts and letting them expire. He would have already won his final election and could afford to take the heat.
Like I said, it's a fantasy: liberal governance. Sort of like unicorns.
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