Obama's Big "Compromise" Was The Exact Same Budget Outline He's Offered Before

Gotta give myself props and note I pointed this out last week. Much more detailed analysis here.

Now, think about how these two approaches relate to what we’re hearing about the debt-ceiling talks. Simply put, President Obama has offered what amounts to his own budget proposal from earlier this year (as amended by his April speech) and called it a big bipartisan deal. But what is bipartisan about it? What it is in the “big” deal outline that was in the Republican budget but not in Obama’s budget? Nothing.

In effect, Republicans are being asked to accept several of the policies their budget took to be counterproductive (like reinforcing the fee-for-service model of health-care entitlements and increasing the tax burden on a struggling economy), to abide the implementation of Obamacare (which would be taken for granted and untouched in what purports to be a major long-term budget deal), and to settle for the Democratic version of tax reform and discretionary cuts. The Democrats, meanwhile, are being asked to settle for Obama’s budget and would be made to accept none of what they take to be counterproductive Republican proposals. Sounds like a great bi-partisan deal, doesn’t it?

Yuval Levin's idea is that a genuine compromise would involve bits from both the Republican budget and Obama talking points, and be fairly small-scale (around $2 trillion in deficit reduction). And that would get us to the election, where we could demand the public resolve this dispute.

posted by Ace at 12:32 PM

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