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Politico...
Barack Obama leaves
GOP in no mood to deal
By Glenn Thrush & Manu Raju
4/14/11
President Barack Obama extended a fiscal olive branch to Republicans on
Wednesday. Then he beat them up with it.
Obama’s long-anticipated speech on the deficit at George Washington
University was one of the oddest rhetorical hybrids of his presidency —
a serious stab at reforming entitlements cloaked in a 2012 campaign
speech that was one of the most overtly partisan broadsides he’s ever
delivered from a podium with a presidential seal.
The centerpiece was a battle cry to his base, a call for $1 trillion in
new taxes on the rich — on top of billions saved by allowing Bush-era
tax cuts to lapse — in lieu of the deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid
proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and now identified with the GOP.
Liberals, for the most part, were assuaged. New York Times columnist
Paul Krugman said Obama’s call for $4 trillion in cuts over 12 years
was “much better than many of us feared.” His conclusion:“I can live
with this.”
But the combative tenor of Obama’s remarks, which included a swipe at
his potential 2012 GOP challengers, may have scuttled the stated
purpose of the entire enterprise — to start negotiations with
Republicans on a workable bipartisan approach to attacking the deficit.
And it didn’t build much goodwill ahead of upcoming fights, especially
the looming battle over raising the debt ceiling.
“This was not a speech designed for America to win the future; this was
a speech designed for the president to attempt to win reelection,”
snarled Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, No. 4 in House Republican leadership.
“More promises, hollow targets, and Washington commissions simply won’t
get the job done,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Obama’s
partner in the compromise deal on the 2011 budget that averted a
government shutdown over the weekend.
Despite GOP criticism, Obama has proposed a brisk schedule for
negotiations: Starting next month, he plans to convene a series of
meetings with congressional leaders — mediated by Vice President Joe
Biden — in hopes of drafting what aides described as a “framework” or
“down payment” on entitlement reform by the end of June.
White House officials maintain that some kind of deal is achievable, if
for no other reason than Republicans, who have attacked Obama for
punting on the issue, will be forced to negotiate in good faith or lose
credibility.
“They are in a box,” said an Obama ally.
“The president is optimistic we can get something done,” Gene Sperling,
director of the National Economic Council, told POLITICO.
The sense in the West Wing is that cooler heads in the Senate — eager
to forge a deal to attack the country’s debt ahead of next year’s
elections — will agree to some kind of revenue enhancements, forcing
House Republicans to follow suit.
Read the rest of the story at Politico
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