swishnicholson wrote:TenuredVulture wrote:How hard would it be for Obama to come up with 85 billion dollars of cuts and send them to Congress and say something like--you may not like these, but the alternatives are worse for everyone. But you know, it's up to you.
I expected this to happen back in December, and would like to see it now. The only reasons i can think of that it hasn't are either a) cynically political-it's the Republicans that are making themselves look bad and losing favor with the public, so why help them out of this mess? or B) wearily strategic-any offer to produce cuts before the 11th hour will simply be a giveaway to no purpose, derided yet cemented in place, without inducing any movement on the revenue side. The whole thing is just depressing.
We need a balanced approach that increases revenue by reducing tax expenditures, reduces defense spending, reduces entitlements, and reduces non-defense discretionary spending, although of these 4 categories, non-defense discretionary spending is the one area that has already been cut rather brutally. So, what possible reason would Obama have to volunteer a program that substituted further reductions in non-defense discretionary spending or entitlements, in order to avoid the very necessary reductions in defense spending? He isn't going to get the defense reductions through the HOuse any other way. If the Repubs want to reduce the defense spending cuts, they need to volunteer revenue raisers.
