Obama Budget Gets Push-Back By Moderate Dems

Moderate Democrats in the House and Senate are pushing back against Barack Obama’s record $3.45 trillion proposed budget. Wincing at the proposed $1.4 trillion deficit that the budget would generate, they seek to reduce it to a $1.2 trillion deficit by proposing, among other things, cuts in Obama’s Treasury Department bailout program.

The thing you have to laugh at, is that $200 billion is still considered to be a significant amount of coin, but what they propose is a 5.8% reduction.

The fact is, these numbers are astronomical, but counter proposals are equally astronomical.

It’s just a whole new world where we actually get to see how much government costs us these days. It has been, remember, 8 years since we have had this. The previous administration preferred to hide government expenditures, keeping things, like wars, off the books.

Also in the news today is that there are plans afoot in the House to do unto the Republicans what they did unto the Democrats during the Bush Regime. The House proposes a “reconciliation process” that President Bush requested in order to pass his budgets during his terms. This tactic would be used “in the Senate as a way of preventing a Republican filibuster of major bills such as health-care reform.” See, including all of these things in a budget bill allows the House to pass the budget, and then meet with Senate members later in the spring to hash out a budget they can both get behind. That is, without having to worry about the 60 percent rule in the Senate.

This procedure was used to good (that is, bad) effect by Bush and the Republican majority to pass the Bush tax cuts in 2001and 2003 as well as two budget acts passed in 2005.

But New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg, who had no problem with Bush’s move to steamroller his budget through Congress back then is screaming bloody murder over this proposed move:

“That would be the Chicago approach to governing. Strong-arm it through. You’re talking about the exact opposite of bipartisan. You’re talking about running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River.”

Interesting thought . . .

Now whether Democrats finally resort to this tactic, and I am wildly enthusiastic about even the prospect that they could, no one yet knows. All I know is that this partisan move is just what Republicans have been asking for in their stonewalling tactics.

Maybe that is what the GOP in Congress need right now.

Pundits suggest that this could spell trouble for Democrats as Americans react to an overtly partisan move, something they did in reacting to the partisanship of Republicans during the Bush tribulations. They could be right.

But then again, what if things get better? What if Democrats get this shoved through over the objections of the Republican Party in a process that sidesteps them entirely, and things get better?

Is that a gamble I would be willing to take?

Geez, how can it get worse than it was?

Geez, what are they going to do, bring back Bush?