Tea Party freshman House Republicans, emboldened by Democrats and the White House capitulating time again during the debt ceiling fight, have dug ever further into their deep delusion about immediately slashing the federal budget — which would necessarily mean big cuts to the entitlement programs Americans don’t want to see touched, and Barack Obama, touring the Midwest to talk jobs and the economy, is returning fire.
In an Op-Ed, the Tea Party crowd make their case for bills that already died in the Democratic Senate and have no path to passage before the deadline to avoid the across-the-board cuts to defense and domestic programs alike in the debt ceiling deal:
The House led by crafting solutions to our debt problem. Months ago, the House passed a budget that reduces short-term deficits by more than $4.4 trillion and addresses the unsustainable, long-term structural deficits that threaten this nation.
Just a few weeks ago, the House passed a bipartisan bill, Cut, Cap and Balance, that could have cut federal spending by $111 billion next year, capped future expenditures and required passage of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
It is against these very intransigent House Republicans — more interested in shrinking Social Security and Medicare than raising new revenue — that Obama is directing his attention this week.
“That’s just not common sense,” Obama said in Minnesota on Monday of Republicans refusing to consider new taxes of any kind on anyone to lower the long-term deficit.
“You’ve got to be willing to compromise to move the country forward,” he said later that day in Iowa.”
In addition to the Tea Party in the House, Obama is also addressing the more extreme Republican presidential candidates — Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry — who unlike the majority of even House freshmen opposed raising the debt ceiling and, in the case of Mr. Perry, questioned the very constitutionality of Social Security.
