"Trust me." (Source: Jim Young/REUTERS)
As Jed noted earlier, Republican leaders have
presented their budget ceiling demands, which includes slashing entitlements. Yeah, they're bluffing, because they know full well the enormity of blamed they would get for being the responsible party for the ensuing economic crisis.
But, in an interview with Dave Weigel, McConnell goes for the full bipartisan pony, essentially declaring a truce if Democrats will just follow them down the magical path of "entitlement reform."
The main argument: If the president met Republicans and agreed to entitlement reform—with no tax increases—then both parties would be inured from political damage.
"I view this as a major opportunity for us to do something important for the country," said McConnell. "Think of Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan in 1983, when they fixed Social Security for a generation. Think of Bill Clinton and the Republicans on welfare reform in 1996. Think of Bill Clinton and the Republicans actually balancing the budget in the 1990s. Look, divided government, when neither party controls the government is the best time, the best time, and some would argue the only time, when you can do really big stuff. And if you do it on a bipartisan basis... I was running for the Senate the first time in 1984. This was the year after the bipartisan agreement between Reagan and O'Neill raised the retirement age for Social Security. I do not exaggerate when I say I was not asked about it a single solitary time. Not once in the course of a whole race. And the reason was that they did it together. When you do something together, the result is that it's not usable in the election. I think there's an understanding that if there's a grand bargain, none of it will be usable in next year's election."
The irony of McConnell using this example is that the 1983 deal raised taxes, and he's now ruling that out. Republicans choked down a rise in the payroll tax; Democrats settled for a raise in the retirement age.
Right, Republicans won't be running wall-to-wall the equivalent of death panel ads, saying the Democratic President and Senate took away your Social Security. No, not a chance the Republicans would use a "grand bargain" for political purposes.
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