QOTD: President Obama
by digby
On MTP:
One of the fallacies I think that has been promoted is this notion that deficit reduction is only a matter of cutting programs that are really important to seniors, students and so forth.
That has to be part of the mix, but what I ran on and what the American people elected me to do was to put forward a balanced approach.
I don't recall him saying explicitly that we need to cut programs that are "really important to seniors and students and so forth," but it certainly was implied, so that's more or less true. And yes, it's also true that Mitt Romney was promising even worse. But let's be clear about what he's really saying and has been saying all along:
We need to cut programs that are "really important to seniors, student and so forth," but we also need to get some chump change from millionaires who won't even miss the money.
That's what "balanced" really means. But you knew that.
*Keeping in mind that the upper income rates are scheduled to return to the onerous levels of ... 2001. The sacrifice is truly noble.
Update: Ezra Klein says:
Today’s Republican Party thinks the key problem America faces is out-of-control entitlement spending. But cutting entitlement spending is unpopular and the GOP’s coalition relies heavily on seniors. And so they don’t want to propose entitlement cuts. If possible, they’d even like to attack President Obama for proposing entitlement cuts. But they also want to see entitlements cut and will refuse to solve the fiscal cliff or raise the debt ceiling unless there are entitlement cuts.
You can see why these negotiations aren’t going well.
I have a sneaking suspicion that they'd be quite happy to see the Democrats make these cuts for them. That's the very definition of win/win --- and a very good reason for the Democrats to just say no, regardless of what the president calls "balanced." He doesn't have to run again.
h/t to JS
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