E.J. Dionne: Deficit hawks and the games they play

[impik]

For 30 years, conservative ideologues have played moderate deficit hawks for suckers.

You'd think this might endow those middle-of-the-road deficit-busters with a touch of humility. Fat chance. They stick with their self-righteous moralism, pretending to be bipartisan and beyond ideology. In fact, they make the problem they want to solve worse by continuing to empower the tax-cuts-in-every-season conservatives.

It's thus satisfying to see President Obama ignore the willfully naive who are wailing over deficits. He knows that new revenue will have to play a big role in deficit reduction. He also knows that House Republicans are pretending we can cut our way out of this mess and would demagogue any general tax increases.

So he has proposed some serious spending cuts and some modest revenue increases to keep things stable as he embarks on a long struggle to move our dysfunctional budget politics to a better place. This annoys his deficit-obsessed critics, by which I mean just about everyone who says he should simply embrace the proposals of the Bowles-Simpson commission. Obama should smile, let them rage and go about his business.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/16/AR2011021605464.html

[louis-t]

1. Wow, EJ has changed his tune.

I 'member the days when he leaned seriously right.