Compared to those days, it just doesn't have any gravitas as an issue. |
I figured they'd get to about here and then find it difficult. These cuts aren't real until you see the details. |
In an election year, when the president's popularity is waning, I can't see Republicans walking the plank for him. |
It's a shadow of its former self, and it wasn't much to begin with. |
It's a way for the administration to get around its 'we'll never-raise-taxes' attitude. |
Katrina is to the domestic budget what Sputnik was to the space program, |
The numbers themselves are far less important than how much they changed the politics of the budget debate. In a classic only-Nixon-can-go-to-China situation, Reagan made deficits acceptable. |
The president's budget is not the agenda-setting development or event that it used to be. They use it to make a political statement. It should in no way be taken as what they would actually do or what they actually want or what they're ultimately going to accept. |
There is no consensus at all about what the budget debate is supposed to accomplish. |
This president is losing his capacity to get a major domestic accomplishment because he is unwilling to put any portion of the tax cuts for the highest-income Americans on the table. |
Whenever you talk about something 10 years from now, it's always basically going to be guesswork, something approaching science fiction and fantasy more than reality. |