Best analysis (print) I'll go with Will Bunch.
Let's look at the strategy, starting with the 2011 budget battle that nearly resulted in a government shutdown last Friday night. It certainly looked like Obama and the Democrats were had in that deal by giving up $39 billion in short term cuts when it had seemed like House Speaker John Boehner had been willing to settle for just $33 billion. But as the details leaked out, it appeared that the cuts in the final deal were relatively inconsequential, even as Obama gained some political credit a) for his role in averting an unpopular shutdown and b) establishing some cred with moderate voters (who aren't going to sweat the details) as a Democrat willing to make spending cuts. Now, increasingly, it's the right-wing pundits -- joined by presidential hopefuls like Tim Pawlenty -- who say that they were the ones who got duped in the deal. You know what?...they're probably right, for once. (Note: To those angry that the cuts include dollars that might never have been spent anyway, I call that common sense. When you have to balance your household budget, do you drop the cable channels you don't watch anyway, or do you stop buying food?)
Now, on the long-term spending that Obama addressed in his speech today, it clearly was wise to let the Republicans go first. Undoubtedly, the path that the president proposed is the common sense way to balance the budget: By ending the historically over-the-top tax cuts for the rich and addressing related loopholes, by looking for cuts in our bloated and inefficient defense budget, and in seeking to reform Medicare by reducing the actual health care costs rather than just shifting the bill to the poor and the elderly and making a bunch of insurance CEOs even richer (at Ryan's low. low tax rate, of course.) It sounds good on paper -- but it sounds even better when you compare it to the unseriousness of the Paul Ryan proposal, which isn't even really a debt reduction proposal as much as yet another cost-shifting scheme away from the rich and onto the backs of the middle class.
That contrast is what really gave Obama's speech its energy.
I couldn't agree more with both men. O'Donnell is completely correct when he said the entire point of the Bush administration was dismantling the Clinton surplus in order to create a massive budget crisis. Bush succeeded more than any Republican's wildest dreams. He destroyed our economy, period. We went from a surplus to a complete budgetary disaster followed by a near financial collapse and a recession that continues today for a vast, vast majority of America. That was, as O'Donnell says, the plan all along.
The plan was simply to force a crisis that Republicans would say proved that the social safety net was unaffordable...unaffordable due to Republicans slashing taxes on the wealthy and corporations, robbing the country of the revenue needed to pay for the promises we made to the other 95% of us. They have succeeded completely in manufacturing this crisis and yes, they did it with the help of some Democrats. Not all, but a great many.
What matters now is how we choose to fix the problem. We've known the Republican answer for a generation: dismantle Medicare, dismantle Medicaid, and abandon our promise to America's elderly and the poor, to throw the least of us to the vagaries of "fend for yourself like the rest of us do." The other option, actually look at the fact the only growth in this country has been in the net worth accounts of the richest Americans and adjust their share of the burden, instead of the Republican plan to reward those who need the least at the expense of those who need the most.
Obama laid out a path to fix that. And yes, I understand the war between spending into a recession and making cuts in one has been lost by the Keynesian forces. I understand the debate has shifted to how much and who will bear the burden of the last ten years financially. I understand the Republicans have scored a huge victory in that alone. I understand that we are still owned wholly by the corporations. Obama's speech changed nothing on that regard.
But what we can change we'd better goddamn fight for, or even that will be taken from us.
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