No matter what Obama proposes, the GOP will reject it and Obama will be blamed for not 'leading'

[Cali_Democrat]

Krugman nails it:

<...>

After all, if whoever it is that Obama is trying to appeal to here — I guess it’s the Washington Post editorial page and various other self-proclaimed “centrist” pundits — were willing to admit the fundamental asymmetry in our political debate, willing to admit that if DC is broken, it’s because of GOP radicalism, they would have done it long ago. It’s not as if this reality was hard to see.

But the truth is that the “centrists” aren’t sincere. Calls for centrism and bipartisanship aren’t actual demands for specific policies — they’re an act, a posture these people take to make themselves seem noble and superior. And that posture requires blaming both parties equally, no matter what they do or propose. Obama’s budget will garner faint praise at best, quickly followed by denunciations of the president for not supplying the Leadership (TM) to make Republicans compromise — which means that he’s just as much at fault as they are, see?

So let’s nominate Michael Bloomberg, who will offer the exact same policies but, you know, really mean it (and supply Leadership (TM)).

No, seriously (but not Seriously): who do you think could possibly be persuaded by this budget who hasn’t already been persuaded?

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/imaginary-grownups/

Obama can't see this?

If Obama did see this, he would realize that putting out that budget was an exercise in futility.

[still_one]

1. True, but one still should not offer cuts in ss as a bargaining

chip

Nothing to gain, and in fact a lot to lose, because the party that wants to kill ss will take the opposite stand that it is the President not them

[bowens43]

2. I'm with the cons on this one, reject it , filibustrer it , what ever it takes to stop it

[frazzled]

3. All his budgets are an exercise in futility

Not a single one has been passed through Congress in the previous four years. This one most certainly won't be either. Yet he must submit a budget.

The best analysis I think I've read so far is this:

Over these last few months, the White House has been engaged in a systematic effort to call the GOP’s various bluffs. One bluff was that the problem in American politics was that President Obama didn’t spend enough time directly reaching out to congressional Republicans.

(snip)
Another bluff was that Obama would never actually agree to cut Medicare and Social Security — that he was as intransigent on spending as the GOP is on taxes. When the Wall Street Journal asked Mitch McConnell what he’d need to move on taxes, he said “higher Medicare premiums for the wealthy, an increase in the Medicare eligibility age and slowing cost-of-living increases for Social Security.” For the first time, two of those three are in the president’s budget.

So is McConnell celebrating? Not quite. “It’s quite similar, frankly, to his budget last year, and it’s two months late,” he said on Tuesday. “We’re not sure this is a serious exercise.”

(snip)

As the White House sees it, there are two possible outcomes to this budget. One is that it actually leads to a grand bargain, either now or in a couple of months. Another is that it proves to the press and the public that Republican intransigence is what’s standing in the way of a grand bargain.

To liberals, that looks like a pyrrhic victory at best. The Obama administration has put Medicare and Social Security cuts on the table in order to gain a bit of applause from the nation’s editorial pages. The White House sees it differently.

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that the sequester has been a bust.

(snip)

The (cuts) begin rolling out in earnest this month. Unemployment checks for people who’ve been without a job for more than 26 weeks are about to get cut by 11 percent. Military contracts are about to get canceled. Medicare patients are being turned away from cancer clinics. Schools will lay off teachers. Infrastructure projects will stop. There will be much more demand for a compromise than there is now. There will be much more political anger than there is now.

This budget sets up that debate. Republicans are, at this point, out of excuses. They can’t say the president isn’t reaching out to them. They can’t say he’s not willing to make painful concessions — or, to rephrase, they can say that, but given all the on-the-record quotes of Republican leaders demanding the White House accept means-testing Medicare and chained-CPI, no one will take them seriously. The White House is calling their bluff. The question is whether, as the pressure mounts, they double down against compromise, or they begin to fold.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/10/wonkbook-obamas-budget-calls-the-gops-bluffs/

Given that his budget will not pass, and certainly no better budget will pass, and given that this sequester is going to have very bad consequences right away, I think they really do want to see if they can't call the Republicans' bluff and get them to the negotiating table. I doubt it. And on we march.


It has nothing to do with being "centrist." It has to do with trying to get something done. Being "less centrist" would lead to nothing better either: these sequester cuts are going to start hurting soon, and mostly low-wage earners and people who depend on social programs.

[msongs]

4. people who stand for nothing will fall for anything...like bipartisanship no matter the cost nt

[apnu]

5. That's because the right believes "leading" means "beating down the opposition with a club"

And Obama is just too cool to do that sort of thing.


(OK, I'm kidding... kinda)

[forestpath]

6. Except Boehner PRAISED Obama and made it clear he wants to work with Obama further on cuts.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/10/john-boehner-obama-budget_n_3052888.html

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John Boehner says President Barack Obama deserves some credit for what Boehner calls incremental entitlement reforms in his budget proposal.

But Boehner says he hopes Obama will not "hold hostage" those reforms in his demand for higher taxes. He says Obama got a tax hike as part of the "fiscal cliff" negotiations at the end of last year and that further tax increases were not needed.

The Obama budget envisions reducing the federal deficit through a combination of higher taxes on the wealthy and trimming benefit programs such as Social Security.

Boehner said the two sides should concentrate on what they can agree on and held out hope that in the coming weeks that Republicans and the White House could find common ground on ways on deficit reduction.