Via Greg Sargent, we've got bipartisanship!
Indeed, in a statement just now, Eric Cantor, the number two in the House GOP leadership, seized on the news as proof that Republicans, not Obama, are setting the governing agenda. Cantor said he was "encouraged" by Obama's proposal, noting that House Republicans had already "offered the very same spending-cut proposal on the floor of the House." Cantor continued:
"We are pleased that President Obama appears ready to join our efforts. As the recent election made clear, Americans are fed up with a government that spends too much, borrows too much and grows too much."
In other words, Republicans are simply pointing to this as proof that Obama agrees with their interpretation of the elections and in response is now willing to follow their script.
But of course, bipartisanship didn't last long. John Boehner is already saying that while it's good as far as it goes, it's not enough:
"I welcome President Obama's announcement, and hope he will build on it by embracing much-needed steps to reduce both the size and the cost of government, including the net federal hiring freeze Republicans propose in our Pledge to America," said soon-to-be House Speaker John Boehner in a statement. "Without a hiring freeze, a pay freeze won't do much to rein in a federal bureaucracy that added hundreds of thousands of employees to its payroll over the last two years while the private sector shed millions of jobs. Today's action is a clear indication that the Pledge to America, which lays out concrete steps to cut spending and reduce the size of government, is the right plan to address the people's priorities."
Of course, on a substantive level, neither Boehner nor Cantor can be taken seriously when it comes to fiscal policy. Not only are their policies, enacted during the Bush administration, directly responsible for our current fiscal situation, but their top two priorities -- extending tax cuts for the wealthy and repealing health care reform -- would add nearly $1 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. Given those facts, going to them hat in hand with a pay freeze proposal that they are already calling insufficient is an amazingly weak political strategy. You can't win an argument by conceding the point.
A debate over whether we should add $700 billion to the national debt by giving an extra tax cut to the wealthy? That's a debate you can win. This one? Not so much.