–No chained CPI! No $100 billion more in NDD (non-discretionary spending) cuts!
These were both Obama offers to Rep Boehner in a grand bargainy sort of
deal during the fiscal cliff squabble in December. Neither should be
on the table in the budget. To put them there would be to meet the R’s
way too far on their side of the field for no good reason.
I think I understand the strategy that
says “don’t worry, progressives…we won’t enact either of these measures
unless we get significant revenues. And that’s unlikely.”
Tru dat. But my game theory says keep
your offers off the table until you’ve got their offers. The problem
doing it the other way is that you’re allowing the negotiations to start
where you want them to end. There’s the risk that the bargaining
starts with with the stuff you’ve put on the table and goes down from
there. So the R’s say, “OK, we’re willing to nudge on revenues, but
we’re going to need more cuts—beyond what you’ve already given us in the
budget.”
If, however, the political goal is to make it look like Obama is moving far further in Republicans' direction than he has actually moved -- in effect leveraging their caricature of him as someone unwilling to reform Medicare and Social Security -- then he is getting a lot of rhetorical bang for the buck. " “Now THIS is a real budget. … THAT’S a real budget … exciting … a place to start.”
A "real budget" indeed: Pretty much the same as Obama's last budget, with the exception of chained-CPI, which everyone knows Obama put on the table last December. More subtle than Scarborough's displayed ignorance is Jackie Calmes' rhetorical merger of old proposed entitlement cuts with new (formally) proposed entitlement cuts:
