Unless Mr. Obama is willing to make a serious deal on spending, he will spend
the next three years fighting the same budget wars over and over.
For months now, the GOP has been held hostage by a faction of its party that
deluded itself into believing President Obama might be rolled on his signature
health-care law. Witness now an equally grand delusion on the Democratic side,
one that President Obama nurtures at his peril.
According to Democrats, their steadfast refusal to negotiate on the
government shutdown or the debt ceiling is rooted in a belief that now is the
moment to "break" the GOP "fever." Democrats are furious that Republicans today
use every Washington deadline to extract a spending concession—and insist they
must be broken of that habit.
As New York Sen. Chuck Schumer put it on ABC's "This Week": If Democrats give
in now to GOP demands, "it will lead to a future negotiation like that and a
future one. If you go for this kind of hostage-taking once . . . it doesn't go
away, it comes back worse and worse and worse."
Fact: The only thing that will make this "come back worse and worse" is a
Democratic refusal to negotiate. Upon taking the House in 2010, Republicans made
clear their top priority was getting the nation's spending and debt under
control—a goal backed by the vast majority of the country—and they meant it.
Time and again, they have asked the White House to work with them to reform the
very entitlement programs that Mr. Obama has admitted are unsustainable and the
primary drivers of debt.
Time and again, a spend-happy White House and Democrats have dug in,
unwilling to buck liberal interest groups, refusing to touch Social Security or
Medicare, mulishly granting only small spending concessions. Those were given
only under duress, and only because the GOP threatened Armageddon in the 2011
debt-ceiling fight. Even then, the White House stubbornly refused to cede one
dollar more than what was necessary to push another debt-ceiling round past the
2012 election.
(Click link below to read more)
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- Judy Chaffee
- This site is the inspiration of a former reporter/photographer for one of New England's largest daily newspapers and for various magazines. The intent is to direct readers to interesting political articles, and we urge you to visit the source sites. Any comments may be noted on site or directed to KarisChaf at gmail.
Friday, October 11, 2013
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