(From TWD)
You simply cannot focus on bring significant jobs growth while showing analogous intensity (and maybe more) for the deficit (unless you want to cut our absurd military spending, which is getting some attention thankfully, but not like it should still though).
You just can't:
President Obama yesterday tapped veteran adviser Jacob “Jack’’ Lew, former staffer to Bay State lawmakers, to head the Office of Management and Budget.
If he goes back to his old job, Lew will have to wrangle with the biggest budget deficit in history, forcing him to look for more cuts and revenues to reach the president’s ultimate goal of a reduced deficit.
“Jack’s challenge over the next few years is to use his extraordinary skill and experience to cut down that deficit and put our nation back on a fiscally responsible path. And I have the utmost faith in his ability to achieve this goal as a central member of our economic team,’’ Obama said.
Of course, Mr. Co-Op sure was going to be in full glee with this move:
Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, called Lew “a superb choice’’ and a person of “the highest integrity.’’
“He knows how to make the tough choices. And he knows how to reach across the aisle to find bipartisan solutions,’’ Conrad said.
Those tough choices made in a bipartisan fashion, how lovely.
I wonder how much of those heavy cuts will arise from the defense spending, and whether that will be Lew's first concern before even thinking about cutting anywhere else.
Because if it isn't, then this is another case where we are just willing to avoid the obvious solution and instead prefer to harm the middle class again at the preferred benefit of not making the plutocracy abominate government like they already do.
It could be window dressing to counter the nutcases on the right "#106 absurd claim of many absurd claims" that Obama doesn't care about the deficit. But truth going into conservative ears produces blood to flow out of them, so that makes that move quite moot.
Nevertheless, jobs are the main priority, and cutting the deficit over providing additional stimulus spending first does not indicate full desire to provide needed employment avenues that this country needs now.
The White House simply can't say that jobs are a top priority, yet spend just as much, if not more thoughts, on that suppose evil deficit that Republicans never seriously cared about.
(From TWD, have a good rest of your day folks.)
Update: Superpole tells me in the comments that Lew works for CitiBank....how wonderful.