As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal. The move marks a major shift for the White House and could present a direct challenge to Democratic lawmakers who have vowed to protect health and retirement benefits from the assault on government spending.
While I’m not entirely opposed to the idea of reductions in spending on programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security – so long as those reductions don’t result in decreased benefits – I think President Obama has once again shown that his negotiating style seems to leave a lot to be desired. Obviously I’m not privy to what goes on behind the scenes in negotiations between President Obama and Congressional Republicans, but it seems that all too often President Obama starts negotiations with Republicans from a position of weakness, signaling that he’s willing to give them what they want while alternately hoping that Republicans will meet him halfway, only to find that once Republicans have gotten what they wanted, they insist that President Obama give them more.
I anticipated this would happen. Our country is going to hell.
By the way…it’s spelled “ceiling”. I before E, except after C.
oh fer Pete’s sake.
That’s spelled f.e.r.
Decency before pedantry, even after C
Spelling correctly may not matter to graduates of Wingnut Tech like you and Notalib, but it does to everyone else. Moreover, it matters to Zach.
So, why not just chill, and leave such matters to the more erudite amongst us, like Palli, who was just letting Zach know about his spelling “faux pas”?
Also, who in the hell is Pete? (*wink*)
Annie’s not a wingnut. Thought we’d been over this before!
@ JCG
Long time ago, after Annie posted a wingnut-themed comment, and I responded to it, someone said, “Hey, Annie’s not a wingnut.” I responded by saying something like, “Well, she certainly writes like one.”
At some point thereafter, the person who informed me that Annie wasn’t a wingnut wrote, “My bad. I was thinking of someone else.”
I could have sworn that Annie K. posted something elsewhere recently that had a distinctly wingnuttish flavor. Maybe I’m wrong about that. If I am, my apologies to Annie.
“C” is improperly capitalized there.
‘once Republicans have gotten what they wanted, they insist that President Obama give them more.’
And then use it against him, don’t forget that. Not only is he handing this to them, he’s giving them a weapon to use against him in the next election. Yes indeed, the blame for damaging/destroying medicare and social security will go from Paul Ryan straight to the President, with a lot of help from Republicans and their excellent Message Machine.
I wish our President would remember he’s a Democrat.
If my home PC were up and running, I would have had a blog about this last night…
The solution to this whole issue is very simple…the President simply needs to lock the doors to the White House and fly to NYC with Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Geithner and ask the nabobs on Wall Street: what is your business recovery plan when the Republicans crash the world economy…cause there won’t be any stimulus funds available this time.
Zack,
This comment CSS is SO MUCH better!
Absolute worlds of improvement. My eyeballs are so grateful. Yeeha !
At the risk of getting an “oh, fer Pete’s sake” from you, Annie, it’s “Zach”, spelled with an “h”, rather than a “k”.
Yep, that was “fer”, spelled “f. . .”e”. . .”r”. The “q” is silent.
Posted this once already, but it got buried quickly. From conservative persona non grata these days, David Frum: Obama plays nice, GOP turns tough