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Opportunity.
24-Sep-10Krugman does an excellent job giving it to the Republicans. They want to balance the budget by cutting spending, but not spending on seniors and the military, which is the entire problem with the federal budget. Krugman notes that we would have to eliminate the entire federal government, even including Congress, in order to simultaneously 1) keep the Bush tax cuts 2) maintain defense spending and spending on the elderly and 3) balance the budget.
I’ll give the Republicans credit for one thing: they are aware that their core constituencies are old people and servicemembers, and they are putting their constituents first.
But this points out the obvious, which is that deficit reduction is therefore naturally a Democratic issue, because the Democratic Party is the only party available to tackle military spending or government benefits for the wealthy. It’s an excellent issue for Democrats in general and Obama specifically.