"Schumer Calls GOP Bluff On Spending And Deficits"

[Clio the Leo]

Schumer Calls GOP Bluff On Spending And Deficits
Brian Beutler | March 9, 2011, 10:35AM

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the Republican Party's bluff on the need for deficit reduction Wednesday, outlining a fiscal framework that involves broader cuts and revenue raisers than the GOP has proposed -- and warning that there will be no agreement on funding the government unless the GOP broadens its approach.

"A bipartisan compromise simply will not be found in the domestic discretionary spending cuts alone," Schumer said in a half-hour presentation at the Center for American Progress. Without a broader scope, Schumer said, "we won't be able to come to a compromise on a seven month budget."

Schumer's entreaty changes the frame of the debate on Capitol Hill, which for weeks has been driven by Republican leaders, who have isolated their focus to domestic discretionary spending. Democratic leaders, who are unwilling to countenance major cuts to government services, had little luck playing on GOP turf, but will now have a coherent alternative to point to when negotiations over how to fund the government continue in coming days.

Schumer noted that the GOP's plan for spending cuts does almost nothing to reduce the deficit -- a fact that runs at cross-purposes to their insistence that the deficit must be reduced.

"Right now a very small, very intense ideological tail is wagging the dog over in the House of Representatives," Schumer said. "Their fervor for spending cuts is not grounded in deficit reduction at all. Instead the far right wing has deliberately confused two separate issues. They've conflated reducing the deficit -- which is not their true priority -- with cutting government -- which is."

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/schumer-calls-gop-bluff-on-spending-and-deficits.php

[Deep13]

1. Go get 'em, Chuck! nt