Via Progressive Alliance/Children's Hope: Progressives Complain Obama's Debt Deal 'Trades People's Livelihoods for the Votes of a Few Unappeasable Right-Wing Radicals'
WASHINGTON - “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time,” said Harry Truman.
"The very wealthy will continue to receive taxpayer handouts, and corporations will keep their expensive federal giveaways," Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), a co-chairman of the Progressive Congress, said Sunday in a statement. "Meanwhile, millions of families unfairly lose more in this deal than they have already lost. If the thirty-third president was right, then Barack Obama just did himself and his party a world of hurt.
Faced with the threat that Tea Party–pressured Republicans in the House really would steer the United States toward default, and in so doing steer the US economy over the cliff, Obama had to do something. But instead of bold action—borrowing a page from Ronald Reagan to demand a straight up-or-down vote on raising the debt ceiling; borrowing a page from Franklin Roosevelt to pledge to use the authority afforded him by the Constitution to defend the full faith and credit of the United States—the president engaged in inside-the-Beltway bargaining of the most dysfunctional sort.
In cutting a deal with Congressional Republicans that places Democratic legacy programs—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—at risk while cutting essential programs for working families and the poor, Obama has positioned himself and his administration to the right of where mainstream Republicans such as Howard Baker, Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush used to stand in fights with the fringe elements of their party.
Now, the fringe is in charge of the GOP. And Obama is cutting deals to satisfy Republicans that Britain’s banking minister describes as “right-wing nutters.’”
Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders are claiming that they have done everything in their power to avert deep cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And it is true that they have given the Republicans (and their paymasters) less than House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan was demanding with a budget proposal that turned Medicare into a voucher program and began the process of privatizing Social Security.
But a compromise with total destruction can still do a lot of damage.
"The very wealthy will continue to receive taxpayer handouts, and corporations will keep their expensive federal giveaways," Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), a co-chairman of the Progressive Congress, said Sunday in a statement. "Meanwhile, millions of families unfairly lose more in this deal than they have already lost. If the thirty-third president was right, then Barack Obama just did himself and his party a world of hurt.
Faced with the threat that Tea Party–pressured Republicans in the House really would steer the United States toward default, and in so doing steer the US economy over the cliff, Obama had to do something. But instead of bold action—borrowing a page from Ronald Reagan to demand a straight up-or-down vote on raising the debt ceiling; borrowing a page from Franklin Roosevelt to pledge to use the authority afforded him by the Constitution to defend the full faith and credit of the United States—the president engaged in inside-the-Beltway bargaining of the most dysfunctional sort.
In cutting a deal with Congressional Republicans that places Democratic legacy programs—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—at risk while cutting essential programs for working families and the poor, Obama has positioned himself and his administration to the right of where mainstream Republicans such as Howard Baker, Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush used to stand in fights with the fringe elements of their party.
Now, the fringe is in charge of the GOP. And Obama is cutting deals to satisfy Republicans that Britain’s banking minister describes as “right-wing nutters.’”
Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders are claiming that they have done everything in their power to avert deep cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And it is true that they have given the Republicans (and their paymasters) less than House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan was demanding with a budget proposal that turned Medicare into a voucher program and began the process of privatizing Social Security.
But a compromise with total destruction can still do a lot of damage.
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