Robert Kuttner: Winning the Present (Dems must stand for more than "making nice" & bipartisanship)

Robert Kuttner
Posted: March 6, 2011 09:12 PM
Winning the Present


How lunatic-fringe do the House Republicans have to be on budget cuts before President Obama starts calling them out on their plans? Evidently, they still have a ways to go, because the administration has been mostly silent on the sheer perversity of the Republican cuts.

-snip-

On paper, the Republicans would cut discretionary spending by "only" 14.3 percent, but since the fiscal year will be more than half over by the time the cuts become official, the actual cuts would be fully one-fourth -- a staggering cut for any program to bear and an insane economic idea during a severe downturn. These cuts have nothing to do with reasonable fiscal policy; they are pure ideological retribution against government.

You would think that at some point, President Obama would be pointing to the recklessness of these proposals in a still soft economy. But instead, the president has doubled down on his bipartisanship.

-snipping paragraphs about Jeb Bush and Bill Daley-

The president was more candid than his new chief of staff, when Obama admitted that the Democrats had taken a shellacking. And that will continue if the Republicans stand for something and Democrats just stand for making nice. The rude awakening in the next election will be that making nice doesn't impress the voters.

-snip-