It’s simple and obvious. The Democrats are the ones playing games with the budget.

MSNBCs Lawrence O’Donnell explains the strategy on ‘Morning Joe’. From a liberal point of view attacking the Ryan budget isn’t demagoguery, it’s a gift falling in Democrat laps to win Obama a second term. That’s what is more important to the Democrats who evidently share O’Donnell’s opinion there’s plenty of time to fix the budget in 2014.

The president will not be able to say anything positive about Ryan’s proposal, not a thing. It’s much too radical from a Democratic perspective for them to say anything positive about it. It will be the new target.

Asked if the President will come forward with his own ideas about fixing the budget, O’Donnell replies…

No. you don’t run for president saying this is how i will achieve Social Security solvency. That’s second term activity. You have plenty of time to get to this in the second term.

O’Donnell concedes Social Security and Medicare require fixing but what’s the hurry.

The question whether you do it right now or 2014 is not a terribly significant question. These are gigantic long term programs. You are trying to figure out how to fund Social Security for 75 years, you don’t have to do it today.

Of course Obamacare was so urgent it had to be forced through in the President’s first year using bribery, coercion and ignoring the opinions of the American people.

Fellow ‘Morning Joe’ panelist Ken Auletta and host Joe Scarborough were stunned by O’Donnell’s frankness. We shouldn’t be.


It is the Democrats who are not serious about solving the debt crisis, at least not by reducing spending. O’Donnell no doubt spoke for every liberal when he said he would actually like to see more spending as well as higher taxes.

The Democrats will be on the attack and expect the GOP to be on the defensive. That’s has been the political status quo. If we can’t make a case for fiscal responsibilty now, we are doomed.

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2 Comments | Leave a comment
  1. Charles_TX says:

    Pat_S – Your picture says it all. I’m not sure whose head is in the sand: the Dems who want to ignore the debt problem, or the Repubs who are hoping the MSM and Dems will speak kindly of them.

  2. makeshifty says:

    The thing I don’t like about Ryan’s plan, and this was noted in a recent post from the old blog that didn’t make it over, is that it cuts $600 billion from current spending, which is currently projected to create a $1.6 trillion deficit, and then maintains that level for the next 10 years. Ryan probably projects that the economy will grow enough to cut the deficit by itself after that, with no help from budget cutters, but I think this is being too optimistic. At the very least the budget needs to get back to at least the level of deficits that existed when Bush was president, within the next few years. These deficits were still pretty high, by pre-Obama standards, but I think they were at least sustainable, and understandable, given that we had two wars going on at the same time (now we have, what? Two-and-a-half?). If, as the optimists project, the economy grows and ends up putting the budget into surplus, then great. We should be so lucky!

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