The White House published this video within the last hour or so:
302 views at posting
Here are the White House bullet points on the deal:
What the Debt Deal Does
- Removes economic uncertainty surrounding the debt limit at a critical time and prevents either party from using a failure to meet our obligations for political gain.
- Makes a significant down payment to reduce the deficit — finding savings in defense and domestic spending while protecting critical investments in education and job creation.
- Creates a bipartisan commission to find a balanced approach to continue this progress on deficit reduction.
- Establishes an incentive for both sides to compromise on historic deficit reduction while protecting Social Security, Medicare beneficiaries, and programs that help low-income families.
- Follows through on President Obama’s commitment to shared sacrifice by making sure that the middle class, seniors, and those who are most vulnerable do not shoulder the burden of reducing the deficit. As the process moves forward, the President will continue to insist that the wealthiest Americans share the burden.
- For a closer look at the mechanics of the debt agreement, take a look at this infographic.
More from Obama here.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Good evening, Dorid!
I completely agree with you. If Bill Clinton’s big sellout was his so-called “welfare reform”, then this is surely Obama’s latest…if you can keep track of them as they go by. The man is a lover, not a hater…a peacemaker, not a fighter. I applaud the impulse and enthusiastically welcome the different spirit and tone that has marked his rhetoric and praxis over against what passed for “being Presidential” in the era of The Decider. But still, perhaps there is something to be said for being an arrogant bastard. Assuming one’s timing is apt.
Here, and elsewhere, I have chided Obama (and his predecessors) for being corporatists and plutocrats. It has always been a matter of degrees. You have Reagan, the consummate oligarch (who at least had the decency to champion the Earned Income Tax Credit — something today’s teabagger and anarcho-conservative firmly opposes) and you have Bill Clinton, the “I feel your pain but doggonit, we gotta do something big to help the corporate sector” compromiser.
It’s about degrees, isn’t it? Has there ever been a liberal — a true, Wellstonian liberal — in the White House in my lifetime? I was born in 1965, so I suppose a good case can be made for LBJ. His “Great Society” and firm, demonstrable passion for Civil Rights sure make him a prime candidate for the label. And if we just limited the discusion to matters of domesticity, then yes — in my lifetime, I have known a truly liberal President. Thanks be to God and may his tribe increase. But taken as a whole, the man betrayed liberal principles in Southeast Asia and turned his back on his immediate predecessor’s decision to get the hell out while the getting was good. He may never have actually said, “You give me the White House and I’ll give you your war”. And I am not wont to buy conspiracy theories. But actions speak louder than words — actual or rumored. So LBJ was, at best, a bifurcated liberal.
We’ve had our longshot wet dreams (Gene McCarthy, George McGovern, even Barbara Jordan, if ever so briefly); our close calls (John Kerry) and our humiliating defeats (Mondale, Dukakis and the aforementioned McGovern). But when we have won the whole magilla, it’s been with compromisers, appeasers and center-right Democrats like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. (Al Gore would fit here, too,) Oh, I know they might have very strong liberal inclinations in this area or that. Think Carter on foreign policy, Gore on stewardship of creation and Obama on social issues. But at the end of the day, they’ve all been center-right on what matters most: money. Mind you, it may not matter most to God or to basic human decency, but it matters most to US. As a society and a collective, we have decided that “in this we trust”. The bottom line is ever the bottom line, isn’t it?
So we opt for the safe choice…the candidate who is just progressive enough on a few isolated issues to make us feel as though we are not mindless fundamentalist drones or hateful idealogues.But a President Paul Wellstone? A President Dennis Kucinich? A President Bernie Sanders? It’s never going to happen no matter how morally right it may be.
And here’s the thing, Dorid. It may well be that Carter and Clinton and Obama were — on Inauguration Day — the liberals they told us they were in Iowa and New Hampshire. I think this is probably most true of our current President, given what is a mostly prescient and socially just voting record in the Senate. But something happens once that oath of office is taken. And it magnifies exponentially when the other party gains control of at least one chamber of the legislature. And it’s certainly not helped by a high court that is bought and paid for by corporate money. (Clarence Thomas can fill you in on that.)
So here we are…with a center-right President who campaigned as a liberal but never met a compromise with conservatives he wasn’t willing to embrace. What’s the answer?
The easy answer — the one I get especially from young liberals whose morality and passion for justice I so deeply admire — is that we should stick to our guns and vote next time for the REAL liberal. I know John Kerry has a liberal voting record but he’s a little soft on the environment or whatever…so I’m voting for Nader. I know Al Gore is solidly liberal on the environment but I remember when he was an anti-choice southern Senator. So I am voting Nader or writing in the Socialist or Green candidate.
Believe me, I understand the impulse.
But where does it get us? It gets us Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004.
At the end of the day, as big a cluster*** as this budget deal probably is for the poor and disenfranchised of America…it may really and truly have been the best the President could get. With the bought and paid for mentality of the SCOTUS, one can hardly blame him for not opting for 14th Amendment “remedies”. The current tribe of corporate shills on the bench will do as they are told. There are no Brennans or Marshalls or Warrens in the majority. Hell, I am not sure there is a Taft or a Holmes in the bunch. That’s how far we have sunk.
So…I’ll soldier on for Obama. Not because I am any longer persuaded that he is liberal. But because kissing your sister is still preferable to being forced to kiss your sweaty, smelly, disgusting uncle.
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… eliminates federally subsidized student loans for graduate students… while putting no cuts on “medicare and medicaid recipients” it does cut to providers, which has in the past caused fewer and fewer doctors to accept these insurances. Right now there’s a shortage of doctors in certain areas, especially areas that can effect seniors. It takes 6-9 months for me to get a neurology appointment, and about a year to see a rheumatologist.
There’s just no way this represents “shared sacrifice”. Once again, the sacrifice is education, social support for the elderly and disabled, and health care for the poor.
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