The Republican frontrunner responds to the deal:
As president, my plan would have produced a budget that was cut, capped and balanced – not one that opens the door to higher taxes and puts defense cuts on the table. President Obama’s leadership failure has pushed the economy to the brink at the eleventh hour and 59th minute. While I appreciate the extraordinarily difficult situation President Obama’s lack of leadership has placed Republican Members of Congress in, I personally cannot support this deal.
He follows, by around 13 hours, Michele Bachmann. (She fired it off before the deal was put into writing. He didn’t.)
Mr. President, I’m not sure what voice you’re listening to, but I can assure you that the voice of the American people wasn’t the ‘voice that compelled Washington to act.’ It was you that got us into this mess, and it was you who wanted a $2.4 trillion dollar blank check to get you through the election. Everywhere I travel across the country, Americans want less spending, lower taxes to create jobs, and they don’t want us to raise the debt ceiling. The President continues to press for a ‘balanced approach,’ which everyone knows is code for increased spending and taxes. Throughout this process the President has failed to lead and failed to provide a plan. The ‘deal’ he announced spends too much and doesn’t cut enough. This isn’t the deal the American people ‘preferred’ either, Mr. President. Someone has to say no. I will.
So we’re in a situation where 90 percent of the GOP in Washington backed the Boehner plan, and at least 50 percent of them will probably back this plan, but perhaps only one of their presidential candidates – Jon Huntsman – backs this plan. How much does it matter? I’m going to say “not much,” because you’ve got a positive statement from Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and another huzzah from the Wall Street Journal. They will be joined, at some point, by a new CBO score,* and if that shows the FY2012 cuts to be as strong as the ones in Boehner 2.0, it’s just hard to intellectually justify opposition here.
*How do these people crank these out so fast? Is that what happened to the drug in Limitless?
