I now officially resent the fact that I am going to have to vote for Obama in 2012. I have tried, out of respect for some that I love, to give him the benefit of the doubt, but this tears it:
President Obama announced his support Tuesday for a deficit-reduction plan drafted by a bipartisan Senate group known as the “Gang of Six.” The lawmakers’ proposal promises to reduce the deficit by $3.7 trillion.
The plan, once thought to be too ambitious and too vague to consider seriously, proposes cutting spending, overhauling entitlement programs such as Medicare, revising the tax code and revisiting Social Security.
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the lead authors of the plan, said they were surprised by the level of support they received from members of both parties. And with the debt-ceiling deadline looming just two weeks out, the plan may be Washington’s best opportunity for compromise.
As Dean Baker explains it in a post entitled Peter Peterson Promises to Give Up His Social Security in Exchange for Tens of Millions in Additional Tax Breaks:
Okay, that’s not true. Peter Peterson has not promised to give up anything, but he will stand to gain tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars in additional pocket change over the next decade thanks to the Senate Gang of Six’s new tax breaks.
In case you missed it, this is how leaders in the Senate reduce the deficit these days. Give more tax breaks to the Peter Peterson and other Wall Street types and then turn around and cut Social Security and Medicare for ordinary working people. For the Senate’s Gang of Six (Democrats Kent Conrad, Dick Durbin, and Mark Warner, and Republicans Tom Coburn, Saxby Chambliss, and Mike Crapo) the biggest problem facing the country was the rich did not have enough money and ordinary working people have too much. Their deficit reduction plan is a big step forward toward addressing this imbalance.
Bad politics and bad policy, all in one big steaming pile of ****.
Meanwhile, Mr. “Yes we can” is lecturing his former followers. It seems that, in reality, no we can’t, and we shouldn’t even try. Read Digby on that here.
The sad truth is that Obama is not playing 19 dimensional chess here. He is looking after his own interests, but in the process he’s taking down the middle class and his own party. It would be a kindness to believe that he’s as naive as Tom Tomorrow portrays him here:
Only a Republican could go to China, and only a Democrat can destroy Social Security and Medicare. Obama has taken aim at both. The Republicans will play along and take electoral advantage of the betrayal. It’s time for some serious pushback from the real Democrats in the House and Senate, but don’t hold your breath.
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