A post today by Greg Sargent actually put a positive slant on all the breaking scandals. Obama's Grand Bargain might now be dead in the water. And I for one could not be happier.
Liberals who are dreading the scandal-mania that is taking hold should note that it contains a potential upside: It could make a Grand Bargain that includes cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits even less likely than it already is. That’s because when scandal grips Washington, a president actually needs his core supporters more than ever to ward it off, making it harder to do anything that will alienate them. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
It's bad that Obama was willing to alienate his core supporters when all was going fairly well for him. Nevermind that cutting social security was bad politics and even worse policy. But hey, now he needs us. Needs us like he needed us during the 2012 election. So, we'll probably be his honey pies again while he rides out
his Clintonesque times. For me, the shine has long rubbed off Obama. But I'd still rather have him as the president than a republican. The state of politics today is just plain bad for The People (oops that should be people, with a little p). Most politicians just care about The People (as in Very Special).
But the economy had some good news today. The CBO came out with their new budget projections.
The CBO estimates that the federal deficit this year will ring in at $642 billion. That's the smallest deficit since 2008, and about $200 billion less than previously projected, mostly owing to higher tax revenue, and bigger-than-expected payments to the Treasury department from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. http://www.usnews.com/...
Yet, even a darn good report full of shrinking spending and falling deficits can't and won't silence the Very Special People of the Beltway:
The Campaign to Fix the Debt, which marshals corporate resources to lobby for deficit reduction, said that "the rosier-than-expected near-term projections do not change the fact that rising health care costs, an aging population, Social Security’s looming insolvency, and ever-increasing interest payments will greatly expand the national debt as a share of the economy starting at the end of the current decade."
"Implementing a deficit-reduction plan now, instead of waiting until the deficit begins to grow again, will allow us to deal with these long-term challenges through smart reforms that are phased in gradually," it said.
http://thehill.com/...
These People don't give a flying fig about the debt. They, like Paul Ryan, just can't stand the thought of "
310 million moochers sucking at the public tit." They want that public tit all to themselves. The issue isn't going away. It's just being delayed while all the scandals play out. The people got a reprieve. Temporarily.