Erskine Bowles doesn't feel the love - Via Jennifer Rubin's blog at the WashPost, the former co-chair of the first debt commission all but accuses Obama of abandoning the commission's recommendations so he could play his "sensible guy" schtick.
You know who else abandoned the commission's recommendations? The commission.
The recommendations failed by 3 votes. Paul Ryan, Jeb Hensarling and Dave Camp snuffed the report by voting no. Those three Republican Congressmen must have been possessed by the bill-killing specter of Barack Obama, who is of course solely to blame.
And four Democrats voted against it, so they're 33% more culpable.
But so what if the commission didn't have a "formal" recommendation? Obama could have pushed forward with his filibuster-proof supermajority in Congress and done something to cut the deficit. But then I guess that superpower is reserved for popular mandates like Obamacare.
Why didn't Obama antagonize his supermajority to push through a non-binding package that he and his party opposed? Phew, that's a toughie.
Answer: Because the President didn't want to. And thanks to his friends the Republicans, he didn't have to.
Paul Ryan, the fast-rising fiscal seer of his party, killed the recommendations... but now Obama's being trashed by Republicans for not pushing through the plan that Ryan & Co. rejected. So here's a question for you: WTF?
Well, I'll ask this: after three years of far-and-away record deficits and increasing the national debt by 40%, what happened to that guy who stood on the Senate floor voted against raising the debt ceiling because it represented a "failure of leadership."
But how much of that debt is Obama-generated? And how much did he inherit? Most important of all, how do we stop the majority of Americans who continue to recognize the difference from voting in 2012?
Yeah, that's rough on Erskine "Irritated" Bowles.
ReplyDeleteYou know who else abandoned the commission's recommendations? The commission.
The recommendations failed by 3 votes. Paul Ryan, Jeb Hensarling and Dave Camp snuffed the report by voting no. Those three Republican Congressmen must have been possessed by the bill-killing specter of Barack Obama, who is of course solely to blame.
And four Democrats voted against it, so they're 33% more culpable.
ReplyDeleteBut so what if the commission didn't have a "formal" recommendation? Obama could have pushed forward with his filibuster-proof supermajority in Congress and done something to cut the deficit. But then I guess that superpower is reserved for popular mandates like Obamacare.
Why didn't Obama antagonize his supermajority to push through a non-binding package that he and his party opposed? Phew, that's a toughie.
ReplyDeleteAnswer: Because the President didn't want to. And thanks to his friends the Republicans, he didn't have to.
Paul Ryan, the fast-rising fiscal seer of his party, killed the recommendations... but now Obama's being trashed by Republicans for not pushing through the plan that Ryan & Co. rejected. So here's a question for you: WTF?
Well, I'll ask this: after three years of far-and-away record deficits and increasing the national debt by 40%, what happened to that guy who stood on the Senate floor voted against raising the debt ceiling because it represented a "failure of leadership."
ReplyDeleteWTF indeed.
But how much of that debt is Obama-generated? And how much did he inherit? Most important of all, how do we stop the majority of Americans who continue to recognize the difference from voting in 2012?
ReplyDelete