Obama Spokesman: No, Obama Is Not Proposing A Plan. And You're Welcome

Once again Jake Tapper gets the goods from Jay Carney.

CARNEY: Leadership is not proposing a plan for the sake of having it voted up or down, and likely voted down because it is — look, you know how this town works and how Congress works. If an individual, whether Democrat or Republican leader, steps forward and says, this is my plan and solely my plan, it makes it a lot harder for that plan to be the basis for a bipartisan compromise. The way to reach a bipartisan compromise is in bipartisan negotiations where a plan emerges that is the product of that negotiation and is supported by Republicans and Democrats and then presented. Otherwise, your chances of actually achieving something diminish greatly.

I guess this just happens magically or something.

Personally I'd describe Obama's leadership style as "Bitch about people actually doing something and then take credit for it later".

Keep in mind the Gang of 6 "plan" Obama was talking about today, isn't so much a plan as a plan to have a plan. And some of that is of questionable valuable to say the least.

The plan claims just $500 billion in “immediate deficit savings,” but even these don’t seem all that immediate. Here’s what’s included as “immediate”:

-- Statutory spending caps through 2015. But that still leaves the actual cuts to be determined.

-- “(N)umerous budget process reforms.” Again, that’s not an actual cut.

-- “Shift to the chained-CPI (a more accurate measure of inflation) government-wide starting in 2012, along with the following specifications for Social Security: (1) exempt SSI from the shift for five years, and then phase in the shift over the next five years; and (2) provide a minimum benefit equal to 125% of the poverty line for five years.”

In other words, let some future Congress can fight it out with AARP in 2017 when it comes times to actually implement this change.

So for all of the complaining, there's sill only one party in this whole mess who actually has proposed a plan that can be voted on. And that's the one President Leading by Not Leading is attacking.

posted by DrewM. at 06:25 PM

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