I'm no longer looking for a compromise coming from the Sunday talk shows or from tomorrow night's State of the Union address(SOTU); I'm just looking for the rephrasing of the same-old message. The Republicans want to cut spending, and the Democrats want to include revenue with every budget deal.
The big topic Sunday was the upcoming $85 billion in across –the- board sequestered cuts. The Tea Party freshmen are delighted because they think it’s the only to get the massive cuts they want. They only need to look at the U.K. to see what will happen if you make drastic cuts during a financial downturn. The U. K. is entering a triple- dip recession.
The president suggested the sequester cuts as a measure to make Congress hammer out a budget deal thinking that the massive cuts would never be a reality. Key Republicans supported the Budget Control Act and the consequences of doing nothing since then leaves us with the sequester cuts.
This morning Joe Scarborough said that Eric Cantor’s “[The president] just got his tax hike on the wealthy. And you can't in this town every three months raise taxes. Again, every time, that's his response" is a reasonable approach and democrats ought to get behind it or else the moderates will align themselves with the GOP. That’s ridiculous because for one,it’s the first time in 20 years that the GOP has voted to raise taxes and they think it’s a one time thing. The president ran on a balance approach for every budget deal and the American people agreed with him.
Republicans like to say that we have a spending problem not a revenue problem.I’m not going to say that the government doesn’t spend too much because it obviously does;I’m saying now that we are in this predicament; we need to take a balanced approach, so we don’t hurt our weak economy. After all we are mostly borrowing from ourselves, and interest rates are really low right now.
Joe Scarborough had a problem with Nancy Pelosi saying that we don’t have a spending problem. She keeps saying that we a have a jobs and growth problem. It’s all about the messaging because we know that we need to make some cuts but cutting tax loopholes to oil companies means we won’t have to make drastic gashes to nutrition programs for poor children. Joe Scarborough was very angry because Pelosi is not in favor of raising the eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security. Joe doesn’t buy the Democrat approach of waiting to see how much Obamacare does to bring down the cost of healthcare before making unnecessary moves that might not be needed. The full implementation of Obamacare will take place next year.Social Security does not increase the deficit and it will only take a few steps to make it solvent for another 75 years.
Senator Lindsey Graham has an obsession with hanging the administration for the failure of our Benghazi response that led to the death of four Americans. He’s insisting on more details like the timeline of events and the president’s curiosity throughout the seven-hour event. He’s threatening to hold up the nominations of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary and John Brennan to head up the CIA until he satisfied. Last time the GOP tried this, Hillary Clinton made them look like fools. Representative Tom Cotton, Bill Kristol and Lindsey Graham are trying to say the president was derelict in his duty in handling the Benghazi tragedy, Chris Wallace kept opening the door for Rep. Cotton and Bill Kristol to say the president is not fit to be the commander- in- chief.
I understand that in tomorrow’s SOTU address the president will not hold out another olive branch to republicans but instead challenge them to come to table as an opposition party not as a hostage taking party. Immediately after the SOTU,Senator Marco Rubio will give the GOP’s response and for those interested, Rand Paul will deliver the Tea Party response.