From the Nation --- Stuck in the Middle With Obama: The President Who Still Won't Take a Side

[Better Believe It]

Stuck in the Middle With Obama: The President Who Still Won't Take a Side
By John Nichols
April 13, 2011

The key part of the president’s plan is a “debt fail-safe” trigger that would initiate “across-the-board spending reductions” if by 2014 the projected ratio of debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) “is not stabilized and declining toward the end of the decade,” according to a fact sheet released by the White House in advance of the president’s speech.

And here is the bottom line: Obama speech embraces the basic premise of the Republicans that the United States is in a fiscal crisis that can only be addressed with austerity and threats. So it is that he proposes to reduce budget deficits by $4 trillion over the next 12 years not by dramatically scaling back the military-industrial complex about which Dwight Eisenhower warned (and against which Senator Rand Paul, R-Kentucky rails) or by returning to the Eisenhower-era tax rates that fueled America's boom times but by imposing a “debt fail-safe” trigger that would initiate “across-the-board spending reductions” if by 2014 the projected ratio of debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) “is not stabilized and declining toward the end of the decade."

Obama proposes to put just about everything on the table by asking Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, to pick four members from their caucuses to participate in negotiations on a final budget deal led by Vice President Biden. These negotiations are set to begin in early May and finish by the end of June.

That is a frightening prospect, indeed. The last time president put Biden in charge of negotiating with Congress, the result was a plan to extend the Bush-era tax cits for the wealthy that Obama had campaigned to eliminate. So we find ourselves ending a day of drama regarding the president's speech at precisely the point of beginning. Obama has not broken faith entirely with his party's New Deal commitments, which is good. But he has not provided a clear vision of how he will maintain them, or a clear sense that balancing the budget on the backs of working Americans and the poor is unacceptable.

Read the full article at:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/159916/stuck-middle-obama-president-who-still-wont-take-side


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Politicians, Activists React To Obama Deficit Plan, Progressive Caucus Releases Its Own Plan
posted by: Robin Marty
April 13, 2011

Progressive Change Campaign Committee has been highly active prior to Obama's speech, rallying supporters of the president to promise to refuse him donations if he agrees to any cuts that would affect the social safety net that keeps so many Americans afloat. Did the President come through? The group released the following statement after the speech:

"Americans will be very glad to hear that the President supports raising taxes on the rich. But he needs to take Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare benefit cuts completely off the table. The overwhelming majority of Americans oppose cuts to these programs, but support taxing the rich, ending corporate welfare, and reducing military spending. That, plus investment in jobs, should be the Democratic plan."

So where is the real progressive agenda? The Congressional Progressive Caucus has put out their own plan that would balance the budget by 2014, and even create a surplus by 2021. Primary plan specifics are to let all Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2012, although marriage, children, education reliefs and credits would still be continued, immediately end the tax cuts for millionaires, add top tax rates of between 45 and 49 percent for the absolute highest of earners, tax capital gains and create a progressive estate tax. Social Security would be buffered by a allowing 90 percent of all earnings to be taxed, and Medicaid and Medicare would be made stronger with a public option health care plan for all Americans. Also helping to balance the budget would be a drastic reduction to defense spending. You can read all of the deficit reduction details here. http://grijalva.house.gov/uploads/The%20CPC%20FY2012%20Budget.pdf

http://www.care2.com/causes/politics/blog/politicians-react-to-obama-deficit-plan/

[lonestarnot]

1. Ok but he's still not McInsane.

[pscot]

2. As Krugman warned

if the speech represents the extreme left and Obama is already sidling to the right, we are screwn.

[LoZoccolo]

3. I bought a mosquito fence for my backyard.

[midnight]

4. I'm watching the beginning of Capitalism: A Love Story....

I'm not sure how much I will be able to tolerate based on the fact that Paul Ryan is beating his drum for more draconian/ capitalistic measures.... Bottom feeders... who collect data.... This bottom feeder compares himself to a drone in Afganistan....


Free enterprise...Capitalism....


1980 Wall Street and corporate America elected Reagan as their spokesman... A line item veto gave Reagan the power to speed things up and run America like a corporation.... This destroyed many unions.. and thrown out of work....and told to live on credit...