Gang of Six’ in the Senate Seeking a Plan on Debt

[FreeStateDemocrat]

Source: NY Times

By JACKIE CALMES
Published: April 16, 2011

WASHINGTON — Days after President Obama called for forming a bipartisan group in Congress to begin negotiating a $4 trillion debt-reduction package, the parties have not even agreed to its membership. Yet six senators — three Democrats, three Republicans — say they are nearing consensus on just such a plan.

Whether the so-called Gang of Six can actually deliver something when Congress returns from a recess in May could determine whether Democrats and Republicans can come together to resolve the nation’s fiscal problems before the 2012 elections.

As Mr. Obama and Republican leaders have warred publicly over the budget, this small group of senators has spent four months in dozens of secretive meetings in offices at the Capitol and over dinner at the suburban Virginia home of Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat. The senators have weathered criticism from bloggers and even colleagues, including the leaders of their own parties, who oppose tampering with Social Security or taxes. The gang nearly collapsed several times, including two weeks ago.

The group’s oldest members — Senator Richard J. Durbin, 66, a progressive from Illinois who counts the Senate’s only socialist as a friend and ally, and Senator Saxby Chambliss, 67, a genial Georgia conservative whose nasty first campaign left lingering bad feelings among Democrats, and who is a confidant of Speaker John A. Boehner — illustrate that even with the mounting federal debt intensifying the partisan divide over spending and taxes, the severity of the fiscal threat is forging unlikely alliances.





Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/us/politics/17fiscal.html?_r=1&hp

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With Durbin in on it, BO is engineering the big SELL-OUT. The last senate gang compromised into accepting Roberts and Alito and who among us believes this will turn out any better. BO has done his posturing for the left this week and now he collapses like a cheap suit but unemployment benefits will continue so the fucking republic is safe. Political theater turns into a tragedy for the working American's future. We can now hear that distant rumble of the WH BULLSHIT machine winding up to a full-tilt boogie load dump into the fan. Gold bricks and the Brooklyn Bridge are on the table and corporate America is so happy they could shit themselves. I am so proud to be a Roosevelt Democrat not associated in any manner with the current DINO party.

[Cirque du So-What]

1. 'BO?'

I haven't heard that execrable euphemism for the President since it was deployed by some racist RW hosebag.

[MineralMan]

2. Well, the quoted material presented some facts.

The commentary was a anti-Obama screed. Unrecced for the screed.

[jerseyjack]

3. O.K. Replace BO with President Obama and

is the message wrong? The outcome will be the same. Obama will fold. To use my father's favorite phrase, Obama is a useless as my left nut.

[Cirque du So-What]

4. I've a-used my left nut occasionally

It's the one with which I sired my three children, judging from their political ideology.

I'll bookmark this thread and see whether your prognostications are any better than the Nostradumbasses who said - just last week - that the president would fold on his stance against cuts to social programs. It's still so fresh it reeks.

[MineralMan]

5. Yes, it is wrong. It's the same anti-Obama screed that has been

presented over and over again.

[Coyote_Bandit]

6. Ummmm......

I'll give this Gang of Six credit for being proactive and putting together a bipartisian budget plan. Each of these guys is likely to find something he wants incorporated into the final budget.

Meanwhile the President apparently hasn't put forth his own budget plan or proposal. He wants to be the bipartisian leader - and I guess that does make it a hell of a lot easier to blame Congress for the failures of the government.

IMHO, this bipartisian leadership is not leadership at all. Leaders are proactive. They show the way. They set the direction and the course of action. They are not fucking mediators or bipartisian traffic cops.

Once again, you can color me unimpressed.