While Bill Daley's walkback of his previous opposition to the Affordable Care Act made the most news from his Face the Nation appearance yesterday, David Dayen caught the important part.
The White House acknowledges that more cuts are needed beyond the spending freeze President Obama proposed, chief of staff William Daley said Sunday.
Daley, in his first Sunday show appearance since taking office, said that the Obama administration understands that, if it wants to balance the budget, more cutbacks will be necessary beyond the five-year freeze in domestic discretionary spending the president laid out in his State of the Union address.
“It will take a tremendous amount more than that,” Daley said on “Face the Nation” when asked if more cuts would be needed beyond the freeze.... "We all agree there must be cuts to this government. And again, you're going to see this president lay out a very substantial cut already."
The Chamber of Commerce will like that response, but one has to ask who is "we all" and what the context of that agreement is. Dday:
There were a lot of ways Daley could have gone here which would have been in step with the Administration perspective. He could have said that the Republicans walled off 84% of the budget, so you can ask them how they’ll squeeze a 40% reduction in spending necessary to balance the budget out of that other 16%. He could have said that if the American people want to see jobs, they cannot see threats to areas of spending that will lead to mass firings. He could have said all sorts of things. Instead he sat there and tried to bargain with crazy.
Reinforcing the Republican narrative that government is the problem doesn't do much to put the White House in a good negotiating position for getting this country back on track in job creation. Or in saving Social Security. On this, E.J. Dionne makes a great deal of sense today: Obama and the White House need to be making the case that government works.