I note that the usual suspects in the progressive blogosphere are wailing and gnashing their teeth at the news that Obama will announce a deficit reduction plan on Wednesday, as if he could face reelection without having made an effort.
Pretending that we don’t have long-term fiscal difficulties is getting pretty boring. It’s how we address them that matters, not whether we choose to address them or not.
President Obama will lay out a long-term deficit reduction plan later this week that will take “a scalpel, not a machete,” to programs like Medicare and education services and try once again to extract more taxes from the wealthiest Americans, his senior adviser said Sunday…
…Mr. [David] Plouffe presented few details of the steps the president may outline in his deficit-reduction plan, one that would stretch over several years. But he indicated that Mr. Obama would try again to end tax cuts for those earning $250,000 a year that were enacted during the administration of George W. Bush.
I think it’s obvious that the Republicans won’t be too willing to consider raising taxes on themselves, but it would be nice if progressives put half as much effort into backing up the president’s efforts here as they are in ridiculing him for making any effort at all.
