Budget deal leaves liberals disheartened

Politico ^ | April 9, 2011 | By ABBY PHILLIP

[Oldeconomybuyer]

The $38.5 billion deal brokered between Republicans and President Barack Obama on Friday night may have resolved the immediate threat of a government shutdown. But it didn’t take long for many liberal Democrats to begin to realize that there might be not much cause for celebration.

Princeton University professor Paul Krugman noted that by agreeing to this level of budget cuts, Obama had accepted the premise that the economy has recovered enough to withstand the withdrawal of federal spending. Despite the fragile economic recovery, the economy is still not strong enough, Krugman argued.

“It’s worth noting that this follows just a few months after another big concession, in which he gave in to Republican demands for tax cuts,” Krugman said in his New York Times column on Saturday. “The net effect of these two sets of concessions is, of course, a substantial increase in the deficit.”

But it seemed that the Obama administration had long ago abandoned that line of argument.

Washington Post pundit Ezra Klein ripped Obama and Reid’s celebratory statements following a deal that he said was anything but what a Democratic president should embrace.

“If you were just tuning in, you might’ve thought Boehner had been arguing for moderation, while both Obama and Reid sought to cut deeper,” Klein wrote. “You would never have known that Democrats had spent months resisting these “historic” cuts, warning that they’d cost jobs and slow the recovery.”

House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the founding chairman of that Caucus was not talking. Her office released a statement saying that she “looks forward” to reviewing the deal when she returns from Boston.

[Chode]

and the RATS, take another one in the.........HA ha!!!

[Marine_Uncle]

I have a strong feeling Krugman in his undergrad years spent to damn much time in his room with packets of LSD, and somehow never got away from that practice.

[Yardstick]

Yeah, this is like getting the tip of the wedge in the crack, which you have to do before you can start hammering away. I least I hope that’s what this is. They’re having a battle royale at National Review over whether this was a win or a loss.

[reformedliberal]

Well, maybe it was a warm-up.

The conversation has changed. zerO is out there saying _he_ wanted _larger cuts_. The Administration says the economy is stronger and stimulus can be withdrawn. If they want to keep calling it stronger, then, eventually, cuts can happen, or else they have to admit they are lying.

Spending cuts are polling well. I expect a bi-partisan bill that cuts spending. Cutting special interests, let alone Departments, has to wait until there is a conservative majority in control of more than one-half of one-third of the government.

[latina4dubya]

“The problem though is that there’s a time to cut the budget, which is when the economy is doing really well,” Greenwald said in an interview Saturday afternoon. “The difference between the Republicans and Democrats is that [Democrats believe] during economically difficult times you need government spending.

what a stupid philosophy... that's like saying when my husband loses his job, we spend more because times are difficult... when times are really good for us financially, we make cuts in our spending... does he hear himself?