extended, back the the end of 2010. and then he acted like he extended it because the republicans were threatening them. people inside the white house were saying they had to extend them. because the economy was doing poorly. they were keynsian and the tax cuts are a keynsian device. now the president is acting shocked that the tax cuts have been extended? he extended them. it s an election year. the fact of the matter is at least the congress, at least the president is discharging his statutory responsibility to come up with a budget. it s dead on arrival. just like last year. it was dead on arrival. but at least he s laying out a framework. he wants to raise taxes on the rich. he s responsible to put it out, he s putting it out. first, i compliment him from the standpoint he put it out. secondly, he recognizes the difference between the short-term and the structural. we do need some targeted
done in the months before the election. and frankly, i don t think that sort of big picture, you know, feature rhetorically in the presidential campaign. but only rhetorically. as sort of a distant dream. that s my prediction at least. and then maybe when we get past the election, there will be a window of opportunity, lasting a year or so, to actually get a deal done. so it seems to me, though, and we can debate whether we agree with this, that lawmakers are not recognizing the moment that we live in. because we ve just come off generations of people who have lived off money they don t have. and who have gotten burned by it. and i think now more than ever, they want people to balance the books. not just in their own households, but running the country. having said that, president obama s new budget proposal will likely never see a vote on kplil capitol hill. but it sets the stage for an election-year battle that over the same issues that have
happen. the american voters aren t fools. they know that what needs to happen and they know it s become a hyperpartisan game between the parties, drawing lines in the sand. putting off all our problems. i think they re prepared for a little truth-telling. gene robinson, before we get to the details in the president s budget, i ask you the same thing, can a republican or a democrat or an independent grab the attention of americans like perot did in 92, by talking about deficits, by talking about debt. by talking about how we save this country? it s what matters to me the most. but a lot of people just don t seem to be focused. well, i don t think it s going to happen this cycle, to tell you the truth, joe. now granted, i didn t pay attention in accounting class, either. good for you. liberal arts guy all the way. but no, i mean we ve had the last few years, of the president and congress going back and forth and everybody says, well, it s obvious what we need to do. but it doesn
like people to look at the numbers, a flat line, 13.9% entitlements so-called or mandatory in 2011. 14.0 in, that s his proposal, in 2020. it s not increasing. all right. steve. but the fact that s the proposal. the fact that entitlement spending as a share is growing, growing. as a share of total discretionary going down. the discretion is going down because the other stuff is going up and squeezing out the other kinds of spending that some of us view as very important spending. infrastructure, r&d, education and the like and that is why whether it s before or after this election, we have to address the entitlement problem. we ll be right back. i think where we re going is we ve got to address entitlements, we ve got to address tax reform, we ve got to address the military budget and this is what washington is incapable of doing right now because democrats speak one language and republicans speak another and sometimes democrats
believe, deferred too much to congress. that far from being this dangerous idealogue. is that at times he s allowed his government to run in a sort of ad hoc nature, being able to be pulled in on, let s say cap and trade. in fact, it s a fight he didn t want to fight. or having nancy pelosi and the congress saying no, no, no, you re not writing the stimulus bill, we re writing the stimulus bill. do you find that in some of your reporting? yes. i think one of the points i tried to make here is we ve all seen enough administrations to know that every one of them comes in weak in some way and the comparative weakness of president obama was he had less sort of operating experience in government than a lot of other people. and he didn t have crucially, the network of contacts that bill clinton in particular had been developing for 20 years before he came to office. so there was a sort of inherited clinton crew that was his main support staff and one of the lessons they learned from the cl