Was Obama's speech too fiery? Why he was so harsh on GOP budget plan.

From: Christian Science Monitor

A day after President Obama savaged the Republicans’ 2012 budget proposal, while delivering his own framework for deficit reduction, Republicans are still smarting.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget Committee, told a forum Thursday that he and other House Republicans attended the president’s speech expecting an olive branch, and instead “we got front-row seats to President Obama’s reelection campaign speech.”

“I knew we were going to get a lot of partisan attacks,” Congressman Ryan, the author of the GOP budget plan, told an event organized by the conservative think tank e21. But, he added, he “didn’t expect it from the commander in chief,” saying that Obama had brought himself down to the level of a “partisan mosh pit.”

Mr. Obama usually prefers to stay above the fray. But in his speech Wednesday, he seemed to use as much verbiage pounding the Ryan plan as laying out his own. Some Republicans have said they felt the president was even calling the Ryan plan “un-American,” when he said that it “would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we've known – certainly in my lifetime.”

Ryan’s plan would transform Medicare from an entitlement to a system of “premium support,” in which the government helps seniors purchase private insurance, with consideration for income level and health needs.

Obama characterized it this way: “It says, instead of guaranteed health care, you will get a voucher. And if that voucher isn't worth enough to buy the insurance that's available in the open marketplace, well, tough luck – you're on your own."

Ryan rejects the use of the term “voucher,” and calls Obama’s description of his proposal a “dramatic distortion.”

At his daily briefing Thursday, White House press secretary Jay Carney called Obama’s address “a policy speech,” not “a campaign speech.” He also said that “the president believes that Chairman Ryan’s very sincere,” and that all Obama did was “describe one vision and then describe his own.”


Reaching a bipartisan agreement on deficit reduction by the end of June – as suggested by Obama – is probably a long shot in the best of circumstances. On Thursday, White House budget director Jack Lew called making the June deadline “a significant challenge.” Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R) of Wyoming, co-chairman of the president’s bipartisan fiscal commission, told reporters after a meeting in the Oval Office Thursday that setting dates in Washington is “the goofiest thing you could do.”

Still, after the 11th-hour budget agreement last Friday that averted a government shutdown, some strategists suggested the deal had set a template for further bipartisan negotiation on tough budget issues. Ryan himself said Thursday that he had expected to build on that experience going forward, but now he believes Obama’s speech “definitely damages” the prospects for a grand bargain on deficit reduction.

That Obama’s deficit reduction speech had political overtones is hardly shocking. Everything the president does has a political dimension, and Obama did, after all, just declare himself as a candidate for reelection. He has faced growing pressure from the left to take on the right’s budget-cutting efforts more energetically.

Increasingly, progressive groups are warning Obama that the ground troops who made his improbable 2008 campaign a success aren’t convinced he deserves their time and money again, even if they will still vote for him.

Obama’s lack of Democratic primary challenger, and the as-yet weak field of Republican challengers, has given him a fair amount of running room in his legislative deal-making. But if he can’t get his base of supporters – particularly young and minority voters – excited about four more years, he could face trouble come November 2012. That calculation may have played a part in his rhetorical choices Wednesday.

And, he may not see much potential for a major deal on deficit reduction anyway before the next election. After all, while voters say they are worried about the debt and deficits, they are squeamish about cuts to health-care entitlements – the biggest driver of the nation’s looming debt crisis. The real question, then, is how long the nation can keep racking up debt without reaching that crisis point. If you’re the president and you’re running for a second term, you can only hope it’s not before Election Day.