Judd Gregg is on fire — warning about the president’s budget.
He’s got company: “Stung by popular anger over the AIG saga, several other Democratic senators have been quietly distancing themselves from the Obama team, suggesting it may have bitten off more than it can chew. Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, chairman of the appropriations committee, said: ‘ To maintain a schedule like the one we’ve got at this moment, throughout the year, I don’t know if it will be healthy.’ Even Peter Orszag, Obama’s budget director, was obliged to concede that the CBO-projected deficits, if accurate, were ‘ultimately not sustainable.'”
Meanwhile, the adults in the Senate have decided the House has gone too far in taxing the AIG bonuses, as Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) “both openly questioned the legality and effectiveness of the 90 percent surtax on bonuses approved by the House on Thursday. ‘I’ve got my doubts whether that’s the best way to do this,’ Conrad said. . . ‘I think there are certain constitutional problems about imposing a tax on a certain group of people.'”
Brit Hume on the AIG fallout: “I think Dodd’s in more trouble than Geithner. I mean, the Treasury encouraged him to do this. Dodd did it and then mounted this incredibly evasive explanation of it in which every single — in his initial explanation, Dodd’s initial explanation, everything he said was literally true and utterly misleading, and then he subsequently came out and said, ‘Yeah, yeah, I did it. The Treasury made me do it.’ Well, wait a minute. If he’d looked at it and thought it was a bad idea, he would have said, ‘I’m sorry, Treasury, I’m not doing it.’ I mean, Treasury doesn’t hold a whip hand over the chairman. He’s one of the barons of Capitol Hill, after all.”
This cogent analysis of the Virginia political scene makes the case that Independents are still key. Sen. Mark Warner has a tricky problem, trying to “reconcile what may prove irreconcilable: the demands of a liberal Senate Democratic leadership committed to dramatic new rules favoring organized labor — and the wishes of moderate-conservative voters back home who prize the job-producing benefits of Virginia’s Right to Work law.” In the gubernatorial race, Bob McDonnell is “seeking to give the GOP a more optimistic, inclusive, problem-solving image.” And meanwhile, Terry McAuliffe “renowned for bashing Republicans, seeks the party’s nod for governor.”
You say you want a revolution? Charlie Rangel does: ” The only way for us to get out of this is to change our way of living in this country, and that’s the direction in which the Obama budget is going. And I strongly support it.”
Politico reports: “The leading liberal voices of the New York Times editorial pages all criticized—and, in some cases, clobbered—President Obama on Sunday for his handling of the economy and national security.”
And he gets chewed out by Steve Kroft for laughing at the country’s economic woes. Yikes.
Compare the crowd size — Obama canvassers and tea party demonstrators. (Glenn Reynolds appears to be covering the latter so the MSM doesn’t have to. Hmm.)
TNR asks: “New Deficit Numbers Are Out. Time to Panic? ” Well, only if you are wedded to defending the budget and the president’s image of fiscal responsibility.
Obama’s teleprompter is on Facebook.
The GM bondholders fight back — why should they take a bigger hit than the UAW? Well, there is no real reason — aside from the fact that Big Labor and the Obama administration are joined at the hip, the administration’s chief car advisor worked for unions, and the administration thinks they can get away with beating up on bondholders who don’t represent a distinct political constituency.
