QOTD: President Obama
by digby
From his remarks earlier today:
[N]ow that the government has reopened and this threat to our economy is removed, all of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists, and the bloggers, and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists who profit from conflict, and focus on what the majority of Americans sent us here to do, and that's grow this economy, create good jobs, strengthen the middle class, educate our kids, lay the foundation for broad-based prosperity and get our fiscal house in order for the long haul. That's why we're here. That should be our focus"
Now, that won't be easy. We all know that we have divided government right now. There's a lot of noise out there, and the pressure from the extremes affect how lot of members of Congress see the day-to-day work that's supposed to be done here.
So, I guess that old trope about the president wanting his base to "make him do it" is no longer operative?
One little point: unlike the billionaire funded right wing, most of the bloggers, "talking heads on radio"(??) and professional activists on the left don't make much of a profit*. In fact, most of us are broke. But other than that, he's exactly right.
But there is "good news":
[I]n the coming days and weeks, we should sit down and pursue a balanced approach to a responsible budget, a budget that grows our economy faster and shrinks our long-term deficits further...
[T]he good news is the legislation I signed yesterday now requires Congress to do exactly that, what it could have been doing all along. And we shouldn't approach this process of creating a budget as an ideological exercise, just cutting for the sake of cutting. The issue's not growth versus fiscal responsibility. We need both. We need a budget that deals with the issues that most Americans are focused on, creating more good jobs that pay better wages.
And remember, the deficit is getting smaller, not bigger. It's going down faster than it has in the last 50 years. The challenge that we have right now are not short-term deficits; it's the long-term obligations that we have around things like Medicare and Social Security.
Right. What better time than now to deal with "deficits" that might or might not take place decades down the road? Let's get 'er done.
He also wants to do immigration reform and a farm bill before the end of the year. So, we are looking at some serious horse trading in the congress over the next couple of months. Good times.
*And yes, I'm sure people are going to say that he was mostly complaining about the right. And he probably was. But we may be going into a period of intense wrangling over "entitlements" in which the left is likely to be characterized as the "extreme". Consider this a pre-emptive strike...
Update: Richard Eskow has a good piece up at Huffington Post about the state of play. He gives the Democrats deserved plaudits and then offers this as the outline of a progressive agenda going into these new budget talks:
Democrats win when they fight for Medicare, Social Security, and the middle class. That leads to economic victories. But Dems will face powerful inducements in coming months to compromise with the austerity economics crowd by agreeing to a menu of further spending cuts, destructive entitlement "reform," and tax code tinkering that starves the government of needed revenue while protecting corporations and the wealthy.
Elected officials will need to hear from a mobilized public if we are to escape the grim and destructive debate they've planned for us...
Yes, I think they will. Even if it means being called "extreme."
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