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(116,464 posts)
Thu Apr 11, 2013, 11:30 AM Apr 2013

Fiscal frauds

Fiscal frauds

Posted by Greg Sargent

This afternoon on CNN, GOP Rep. Greg Walden, the chairman of the NRCC, opened fire on Obama’s budget by claiming it is an assault on seniors:

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For one thing, it directly contradicts what GOP leaders themselves said earlier today. Remember, John Boehner and Eric Cantor effectively endorsed Chained CPI by claiming we should proceed with those cuts while not raising taxes. Boehner said Obama “deserves some credit” for embracing it. But now the NRCC chair is calling it an assault on seniors?

You could not illustrate the farcical nature of the GOP position on all this more perfectly.

Let’s step back a bit. Late last year, Boehner and Mitch McConnell explicitly called on Obama to agree to Chained CPI, with McConnell even claiming that Chained CPI and Medicare means testing “would get Republicans interested in new revenue.”

But now that Obama has included those things in his budget, Republicans are not only still unwilling to contemplate new revenue; the chair of the NRCC is signaling that Republicans will us it to attack Democrats for “coming back at seniors,” just as they did in 2012 and 2010. In other words, even as Republican Congressional leaders continue to claim we need to cut entitlements, the chair of the committee charged with electing Republicans to the House is simultaneously making it all the harder for this to actually get done by signaling that Dems will pay a heavy political price if they agree to actually do anything along those lines.

Folks should acknowledge and call out how truly farcical and deeply unserious this really is.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/04/10/fiscal-frauds/


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