SF Chronicle Hails ‘Obama’s Centrist Approach’ to Budget
“Obama aims for the middle on taxes and spending.” That's the headline the San Francisco Chronicle gave Washington bureau staffer Carolyn Lochhead's write-up this afternoon following President Obama's “belated embrace of his commission's recommendation to cut $4 trillion in deficits over the next 12 years.” “Even as he reached back to his 2008 campaign lodestar with a reference to Abraham Lincoln, Obama pivoted sharply to a new mantra of 'balance' and 'shared sacrifice,' citing his Democratic predecessor and budget-balancer, former President Bill Clinton,” Lochhead gushed. Two paragraphs later Lochhead noted that “Obama threw down the gauntlet to Republicans, vowing, 'I refuse to renew them again.'” How exactly is that centrist rhetoric? Lochhead contrasted the president's vision for taxes and spending with critics from his left in his own party: Before his speech, Bay Area liberal Democrats Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma, Barbara Lee of Oakland and Mike Honda of San Jose laid out a competing deficit plan that would slash defense spending and sharply raise taxes, while significantly increasing domestic spending. Woolsey and Lee have fasted for a day as part of a protest against GOP budget cuts agreed to by Obama.
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on April 13, 2011. Filed under