Nancy Pelosi Calls Out GOP Chutzpah on Obama's "Outreach"

     You may or may not think Obama's outreach will help. I think it can only be to the good, however, many liberals are spooked that he's about to give away the store on entitlments. Ezra Klein makes an interesting case that maybe at this point in time the Democrats already have their optimum policy: after all, there are significant military cuts and no entitlement cuts.

     From a lib Dem perspective maybe that's the best we can do. The trouble is that the cuts-even the military cuts-are too indiscriminate and will do significant harm to the economy. I am for cutting military spending however, this is not the best way and we saw how a one time cut in military spending in quarter 4 led to a small contraction to the economy.

   In answer to this Klein suggests that the discretion Republicans are looking at to give to the President could be also extended to time: he'd have more control not just what gets cut but when.

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/07/how-to-fix-sequestration-without-raising-taxes/

    I'm not wholly won over by that though it's an interesting question: if you can have only one of two what's preferable: tax hikes for the rich or entitlement cuts along the lines of chained CPI or raising the eligibility age on Medicare?

     What I am sure of is GOP chutzpah on the President's "outreach" is out of all bounds. As Greg Sargent says:

      "Imagine that Mitt Romney had decisively defeated Obama in the 2012 election on a platform of tax cuts for the rich and deep cuts to government as the only way to reduce the deficit, dramatically repudiating the President’s call for higher taxes on the wealthy, continued implementation of the biggest expansion of the safety net in 60 years, and more government spending to boost the economy."

      "Then imagine that Democrats in the Senate (the only part of government they controlled) responded to this by proposing to dramatically expand health care and stimulus spending and pay down the deficit only with 100 percent tax hikes — and not a single penny more in spending cuts — and on top of that, then suggested President Romney has failed to sincerely try to find common ground with them."

      "This is pretty much what Republicans did on the Sunday shows yesterday — in reverse. On Fox News Sunday, Paul Ryan confirmed that his budget will repeal Obamacare (even as he counts in his budget the $700 billion in Obamacare Medicare cuts that Republicans campaigned against in 2012). The Ryan budget will supposedly wipe out the deficit in 10 years. This likely will mean even deeper cuts than the ones in his previous budget, which represented the GOP’s fiscal agenda writ large and broadly speaking was rejected by voters last November."

       "At the same time, Republicans fanned out across the Sunday shows to claim that they’re glad Obama has tried to reach out to them, but only time will tell whether Obama will make real offers to them that prove his outreach is genuine. Paul Ryan — the same Paul Ryan who again called for repealing Obamacare yesterday — said this: “The proof will be in the coming weeks as to whether or not it is a real sincere outreach to find common ground.” Meanwhile, there were no signs GOP leaders are willing to give an inch on new revenues, even though they are being offered more in entitlement cuts in exchange for them."

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/11/the-morning-plum-didnt-we-just-have-an-election/

      Leave it to Nancy Pelosi to point out that the problem over the last four years with all the gridlock and lurching from crisis to cirsis hasn't been because Obama wasn't reaching out to Republicans. 

      "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Sunday that a lack of bipartisan agreement during President Obama's first term was not the result of a lack of dinners or meetings between the president and Republicans.

      "It is not why we haven't had progress before," Pelosi said on CNN's "State of the Union." "We haven't had progress before because the Republicans were committed to blocking the initiatives of President Barack Obama." 

       "Pelosi did say she believed the meetings between Obama and some congressional Republicans, which included a dinner and a lunch last week, are a "a good idea, because you understand each other better and you may get a measure of courage."

        http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/pelosi-gop-didnt-block-obama-due-to-lack

        It's certainly time someone pointed that out. No one ever wonders where the GOP outreach is. On the day of Obama's Inauguration in 2009 the GOP leaders in Congress were laying out a strategy of refusing to work with the President: even if they agreed with him on something. 

        Even now, it's not clear how the GOP is working with Obama. The one thing I did hear a lot on yesterday's morning shows is that Obama has to give the  GOP "cover" on Medicare. This means they want him to go first. We'll see what Ryan's budget to be released this week reveals.