So President Obama has submitted a budget with cuts to Social Security and Medicare that are painful, and are beyond what any senior ought to have to put up with, but that don't leave the programs bleeding to death in an alley. So how did the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee respond on CNN today? Like this:
... Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) -- who also happens to be chairman of the House GOP's re-election committee -- [said] Obama's budget "lays out a shocking attack on seniors."That would be the guy whose Facebook wall looks like this:
"I'll tell you when you’re going after seniors the way he's already done on Obamacare, taken $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare and now coming back at seniors again, I think you're crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine certainly and around the country," he said on CNN Wednesday afternoon.
I know, I know: Obama exposed himself and the rest of his party to this utterly predictable hypocritical attack. I don't think it matters because everyone's going to forget this budget existed relatively soon, largely because Republicans would never, ever take the stick of tax increases to get a carrot of entitlement cuts. So I'm not sure how Republicans are going to use this budget against Democrats if they're attacking it and thus giving Democrats even more cover to attack it. Negotiations are going to break down, a grand bargain won't happen, and cans will continue to be kicked down the road.
But in the meantime, after Walden spoke, we got this from one of our favorite idiot centrists in the media:
Head of NRCC's signal he's comfortable hitting POTUS from left on CPI is reminder that demagoguing Medicare-SocSec is bipartisan addiction
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) April 10, 2013
Right -- that's the lesson to be learned here: Both sides do it! There's no difference between Bernie Sanders insisting on no cuts to Medicare ands Social Security and this guy saying the same thing -- it's all phony demagoguery! They're all equally insincere and obstructionist! "Washington" is the problem. Also, austerity cures everything!
