Last Week Obama: "Obama tells leaders he'd veto short-term debt hike"

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/170313-obama-tells-congressional-leaders-he-will-not-sign-short-term-debt-extension

Obama tells leaders he'd veto short-term debt hike, lays out two other options

By Sam Youngman - 07/08/11 10:16 AM ET

President Obama made it clear he would veto a short-term hike to the debt ceiling, expressing as much at a Thursday meeting with congressional leaders where three options for the size and scope of a package were discussed, according to a source familiar with the talks.

The option preferred by the president and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is to go big and approve a deficit-reduction package as large as $4 trillion, the source said.

snip

The short-term option of a $1 trillion cut in spending and hike to the debt ceiling is unpopular with Obama and Boehner, whose conference would then have to vote more than once to raise the debt ceiling before the 2012 election.

Obama made it clear he would veto that option, which had been floated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republicans, according to the source familiar with the talks.

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You can bet that a George W Bush administration would respond with savage pleasure. It would use the situation like this to punish its political opponents. One would expect the same from any of the plausible Republican candidates for president in 2012. And Republicans in Congress would be frothing at the mouth to ensure that the company paid dearly for its transgressions.

Indeed, in this parallel universe, the executives of the media company might well have been hauled before courts, congressional committees and grand juries already. And Fox News would be leading the calls for termination of this imaginary company's broadcasting licenses, which surely would be in jeopardy.

The Obama administration doesn't seem terribly interested, despite news stories suggesting that an investigation has begun, and his party doesn't have anything like enough spine to force the issue. The Democrats stand for essentially nothing, as they've shown repeatedly in recent years. To be fair, moreover, Washington has other issues on its table – the debt ceiling, for example, which threatens to blow an even bigger hole in the struggling economy.

One partial caveat: if it turns out that News Corp employees hacked the voicemails of the families and/or victims of the 9/11 attacks, the company's American woes will surge. Even the Republicans who count Fox News as an essential ally in the war on liberalism would demand some kind of sanction.

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