Chuck Schumer earlier Monday on Morning Joe
Brian Beutler:
Senate Democrats’ top messaging strategist predicted Monday that the deficit Super Committee will fail to meet its required minimum target of $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction.
“I don’t think the Super Committee is going to succeed because our Republican colleagues have said ‘no net revenues,’” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on MSNBC. “When Democrats move too far left, we lose. We’re now — the basic mainstream of Democrats…we’re willing to move to the middle,” Schumer said. “They are not willing to do any revenues.”
Schumer’s the highest ranking member of either party to publicly predict the panel will fail. And his argument is perfectly well founded. Democrats have been explicit for weeks that they’ll entertain some of the unpopular cuts to programs like Medicare and Social Security that Republicans want — but only if the GOP ponies up significant new revenue from high-income tax payers. Republicans so far have refused.
This all makes perfect sense, and unless Republicans offer up a huge concession (bigger than even Democrats are asking for) on taxes, I hope he's right. Unfortunately there's still plenty of time for him to be wrong, and if I had $1 for every time a prediction like this turned out to be wrong (for example, "make no mistake ... there will be a public option"), I'd have Sean Hannity begging for the opportunity to lick my boots.