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Politico…
Has Obama set GOP
entitlement trap?
By Glenn Thrush
2/16/11
Senior congressional Democrats were plenty nervous on the eve of
President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget presentation, fretting that Obama
would suddenly gain his nerve and decide to take on the issue that
editorial pages ceaselessly debate but elected officials are wary to
touch — entitlement reform.
They needn’t have worried. White House officials assured their friends
on the Hill that Obama wouldn’t broach the subject, Democrats told
POLITICO, and on Monday when he presented his budget the president
conspicuously avoided addressing entitlements, despite citing them as
the country’s major fiscal problem.
Obama’s decision to avoid entitlements was instantly deemed as
irresponsible. Progressive blogger Andrew Sullivan interpreted the
message as “screw you, suckers” to future generations. The usually
Obama-friendly Washington Post editorial page pithily described him as
“Punter-in-Chief.” Republicans expressed outrage.
But for Hill Democrats — so often at odds with Obama for the past two
years — this omission was no sin. It was a gift, in their view, the
setting of a political trap for a Republican Party divided between
conservatives pushing for major changes to Medicare, Medicaid and
Social Security and a GOP leadership wary of the political peril of
tinkering with Americans’ retirement security.
With Obama refusing to offer his own plan for entitlements,
congressional Republicans — as the president noted — rushed in to fill
the vacuum.
“I was glad to see yesterday Republican leaders say, ‘How come you
didn’t talk about entitlements?’” said Obama at his news conference
Tuesday, repeatedly rebuffing reporters’ attempts to get him to offer
his own entitlement reforms. “I think that’s progress.”
And, in fact, Republican leaders have ruefully agreed to unveil their
own list of “significant, not around-the-edges” reforms, according to a
GOP aide.
“They are suckers,” said one senior Democratic congressional aide of
the House GOP plans to release the first detailed proposals to reduce
entitlement spending. “They have painted themselves into a corner.”
Read the full story at Politico
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