All the talk about Obama outsmarting the Republicans ignores this simple fact: the President of the United States has put the cutting of Entitlements on the table. Period. Now he could have argued that there should be a "clean" raising of the debt ceiling, without pushing for cuts to our social safety net...essentially, under duress. The duress is the deadline to raise the debt ceiling. Essentially, Obama gave the okay to hold the American people hostage, and hand over our safety net for potential attacks.
This situation is simply unacceptable. For anyone to argue that this is somehow, great strategy, is lying to themselves. What this does is push the envelope in terms of creating an atmosphere in this country wherein the people of the U.S. will grow accustomed to accepting that cuts to entitlements are necessary to reign in the deficit. We all know this to be untrue. In fact, the recent downturn in our economy, the Great Recession, wherein vast transfers of wealth took place from our treasury to the criminally negligent banking industry, led to a tremendous increase in our debt. If you don't believe me, google it for yourself.
I like what Glen Ford with Black Agenda has to say about Obama's "strategy", "Wallowing with Pigs in Search of a Grand Center-Right Coalition":
“The reason to do Social Security” – by “do,” Obama means “cut” – “is to strengthen Social Security to make sure that those benefits are there for seniors in the out-years,” says Obama, an exact echo of the apocalypse-soon Social Security scare propaganda perfected over the years by the GOP. Obama has been promising to “do” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid since just before he was sworn into office in January, 2009, when he announced that these entitlements would be “on the table” in his administration. His deficit reduction commission last year did indeed put the programs on the operating table, with Obama’s corporate surgeons tracing dotted lines around the organs to be excised under the irresistible imperatives of austerity – the Republicans’ copyrighted anthem.
“Obama depends strategically on Republicans to push him inexorably rightward with their brinksmanship and constant threats of gridlock.”
It is the responsibility of every American to advocate to protect our social safety net, and indeed, strengthen it, in the face of an economic downturn whose responsibility lies squarely on the backs of the criminally negligent banking industry and their collusion with Washington D.C. We are fools to do otherwise.