Reply #32: Obama Deficit Plan Delivers Bold Clash Of Visions

[ProSense]

Obama Deficit Plan Delivers Bold Clash Of Visions

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For a while now, I’ve been saying that the simplest approach to the medium-term deficit would simply be for the president to say, “I will veto any bills that increase the deficit relative to the current law baseline.” There’s a virtue to simplicity. This proposal is considerably more complicated than my idea, but the complications overwhelmingly result from making the policy more leftwing than my proposal would have been. This would give us a much more progressive rate structure of the tax code, and trim federal health care programs in a thoughtful way. By the same token, there’s no real chance of implementing this idea. Yet as a statement of vision it sets up the contrast with the opposition quite clearly. House Republicans want to repeal Medicare in order to make tax cuts for the rich affordable, President Obama wants to tax the rich in order to make Medicare affordable. Some critics will focus on the relatively small changes to federal health care programs here, but the President is essentially doing what progressives have been urging him to do for months — abandoning the strategy of pre-compromising, and planting his flag in a way that draws strong contrasts.

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Yup, they will!