Obama calls for compromise on debt
President Barack Obama said on Monday a temporary six-month extension of debt ceiling does not solve the problem and might not be enough to avoid credit downgrade.
Obama said he has told leaders of both parties they must come with a fair compromise in the news few days that can pass Congress.
The President wants to be able to pin the blame on big spending and higher borrowing, increasing the national debt, on Republicans. He doesn’t want it to still be on the table for the 2012 election cycle, which is the real reason he doesn’t want only a six month extension…. he knows that in six months, he’ll look even worse.
The truth, of course is that a six month extension that matches debt ceiling raises to REAL, RIGHT NOW CUTS, not future pie-in-the-sky maybe cuts, is ITSELF a compromise between the Republicans and the Democrats.
But compromising with Democrats is usually a one way street. You compromise. They don’t. Then they insist you compromise some more, taking your compromised position as the new bargaining starting point.
As Erick Ericson points out, we’ve had 17 debt commissions, and innumerable promises to study future cuts in the last decades. It’s ALWAYS a smokescreen to pretend something is being done while protecting the status quo, or taxing/spending/borrowing even more.
In Washington speak, a CUT is simply a reduction in spending INCREASES planned for the future. Get it? If you planned to increase your spending by 20% next year, and only increase it by 10%, you get to call THAT a CUT in the beltway…. when in fact it is an INCREASE, still.
Liar, liar, pants on fire, Mr. President.
