Glenn Thrush
Politico.com
2/16/2011
Senior congressional Democrats were plenty nervous on the eve of President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget presentation, fretting that Obama would suddenly gain his nerve and decide to take on the issue that editorial pages ceaselessly debate but elected officials are wary to touch — entitlement reform.
They needn’t have worried. White House officials assured their friends on the Hill that Obama wouldn’t broach the subject, Democrats told POLITICO, and on Monday when he presented his budget the president conspicuously avoided addressing entitlements, despite citing them as the country’s major fiscal problem.
Obama’s decision to avoid entitlements was instantly deemed as irresponsible. Progressive blogger Andrew Sullivan interpreted the message as “screw you, suckers” to future generations. The usually Obama-friendly Washington Post editorial page pithily described him as “Punter-in-Chief.” Republicans expressed outrage.
But for Hill Democrats — so often at odds with Obama for the past two years — this omission was no sin. It was a gift, in their view, the setting of a political trap for a Republican Party divided between conservatives pushing for major changes to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and a GOP leadership wary of the political peril of tinkering with Americans’ retirement security.
With Obama refusing to offer his own plan for entitlements, congressional Republicans — as the president noted — rushed in to fill the vacuum…
…“They are suckers,” said one senior Democratic congressional aide of the House GOP plans to release the first detailed proposals to reduce entitlement spending. “They have painted themselves into a corner.”…
The complete article is at Politico.com
