Pirate's Cove

Shocked? When both National Review and The Politico hate it……… Starting with National Review

But now, along comes the Gang of Six plan, and some Republicans are apparently intrigued by it. They shouldn’t be. It’s a terrible, terrible plan. It will hand the president a huge strategic victory and deliver nothing that the GOP should be seeking in this fight. It’s far, far worse than anything we have seen thus far, and certainly much worse than the McConnell plan.

In a nutshell, the Gang of Six plan would have three parts. Let’s look at each part in turn.

First, there’s a relatively small bill to supposedly save $500 billion immediately with a combination of discretionary spending caps through 2015, a move toward the chained CPI for indexing Social Security and the tax brackets, repeal of the CLASS Act, and other unspecified process provisions. Although unstated, presumably it is this bill that would carry a temporary debt-limit increase to get past August 2, and probably provide about six months of room before another debt-limit increase became necessary.

Republicans must understand thateven in this small, initial part of the package, the Democrats are insisting on a tax hike. The chained-CPI proposal will increase taxes along with slowing inflation increases in Social Security.

And it gets worse after that. As the saying goes, read the whole thing.

Next, The Politico

The backroom Senate Gang of Five or Six (its membership keeps changing) released a plan yesterday that swept through Washington. It got the support or opposition of all the right people — President Barack Obama carefully called it “broadly consistent with the approach that I’ve urged”; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called it “wonderful”; House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) scorned it as a tax hike.

But this isn’t a New Deal or a Fair Deal. It’s a Raw Deal — one that every citizen concerned about rebuilding the middle class should oppose. It would add to unemployment in the short term, increase Gilded Age inequality, leave seniors more vulnerable and shackle any possibility of rebuilding America. It puts the burden of deficit reduction on the elderly, the poor and the vulnerable; endangers jobs and growth; and lards even more tax breaks on the rich.

Robert L Borosage, the Politico writer, is upset that those evil rich would actually get a reduction of taxes, and that the Alternative Minimum Tax would be eliminated. He does a superb job of playing the class warfare card. And then the “this should be a jobs bill (yawn) instead of a put government (unionized) workers out of a job bill.” Then the “don’t touch Social Security” card. Then we get

4. Sensible deficit reduction would focus on getting our broken health care system under control — since it is the real source of the horrifying long-term debt projections. This would, as the president’s health care reform has started to do, take on the entrenched interests that drive up costs — the insurance companies, drug companies, private hospital complexes.

Um, wait, what? Wasn’t Obamacare supposed to do that? So, Robert is admitting that Obamacare is a failure?

Of course, Robert also wants the Pentagon and security agencies cut, and cut big, so that domestic Mommy programs can be expanded. Wants all sorts of “investments”. And is livid that any surplus revenue (sure, that’ll happen in Washington) be used to lower taxes or pay off the debt.

So, there you have it: both sides think this deal sucks. And Senator Coburn and the other Republicans in the Gang of Six…heck, all GOP senators….should think back to the time when a Gang of X put together Obamacare, the Stimulus, the Financial Reform bill, and so many other pieces of destructive legislation during Obama’s first two years.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.