Third act kabuki

Third Act Kabuki

by digby

So it seems that Ben Nelson is reprising his role as the clownish villain in our farcical kabuki dance and just stepped in front of President Obama to absorb the liberal slings and arrows once again. (When Obama hosts a fundraiser for him, remember this moment.)

Sen. Ben Nelson, one of the more conservative Democrats in the chamber, has said that a deficit-reduction deal should focus on reducing spending, and not finding new revenues.
The Nebraska Democrat also said in a Wednesday statement that he thought a significant plan to roll back deficits would not necessarily have to take aim at entitlement programs.
“I want to see a broad and serious package of spending cuts,” Nelson said. “And we can cut trillions of dollars of spending without attacking Medicare and Social Security. But if we start with plans to raise taxes, pretty soon spending cuts will fall by the wayside.”

Well I suppose you can have a significant plan to roll back the deficit without cutting Medicare and Social Security or raising any taxes, but it would take pretty much eliminating all discretionary spending and downsizing the Pentagon to pre-WWII levels. That would be an interesting debate to have but since nobody anywhere is talking about anything like that, I'm guessing he's just blowing smoke.

This is just semantics. When he says "attacking" medicare and Social Security" it's a code word like "slashing" (which I would imagine is the talking point he was grabbing for.) They are all going to be saying that the "entitlement" cuts won't affect beneficiaries so they don't count. We can assume that all these cuts will be happily absorbed by the providers. Isn't that how medical insurance usually works?

More importantly, however, is that Nelson stepping up means that the President is now absolved of all responsibility for any of this because #thepresidencyisapowerlessofficecomparedtoasinglesenator.

Update: Nelson is an interesting case. He's going to have a very tough race because tea partiers see his seat as an excellent chance for a pick-up. If he finds himself trying to thread the needle between slashing Medicare and appeasing the Tea party, I can't see how that's my problem. He has spent his career giving aid and comfort to the Republicans while happily providing cover to Democrats who ostensibly would "prefer" a different outcome but can't do a thing, sorry, because Ben Nelson just won't let them. I'm for tearing off this band-aid and having the partisan argument.

Update II:

Dday writes:

You see in Nelson’s statement the shifting fault line in American politics. Republicans want to cut spending, slash entitlements, keep taxes low for the rich, and redistribute wealth upwards. Democrats want to cut spending and keep taxes low, and aren’t really that concerned about the redistributional effects. They want to maintain entitlements, but they believe that some cuts may have to be endured, as long as we’re not “balancing the budget on the backs of seniors.” And that’s the difference between the parties. It’s a long way from the Great Society.

Not much a fault line, I'd say. More like a superficial hairline crack.

Update III: About those defense cuts:

As it considers steep cuts to domestic programs in an effort to slash the deficit, the House is set to consider a defense spending bill on Wednesday that increases the Pentagon's budget by $17 billion.

The Defense Department appropriations bill includes $530 in base Pentagon spending, which is $8 billion less than President Obama's request for fiscal year 2012. There's an additional $118.6 billion for overseas contingency operations -- a $39 billion drop, reflecting the expected drawdown in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Republicans announced in May that they were going to try to cut $30 billion from federal agencies' operating budgets in order to deal with the growing deficit.

While the Pentagon isn't getting all the money the Obama administration would like it to receive, it's still in a significantly stronger position than many other government agencies. If the Pentagon gets its full $17 billion increase, that means that domestic agencies have to absorb $47 billion in cuts.