Obama's Deficit Plan

Yesterday, President Obama unveiled his deficit plan  -- which would lower the deficit by a total of $3.1 trillion over 10 years (according to the CBO) through a variety of spending cuts and around $1 trillion in tax increases.  But the big news was the new tone he took in the speech.  For most of his term Obama has tried to present himself as the centrist or the reasonable adult when proposing new ideas (which, he would emphasize, are compromises between the desires of the two parties).  With his approval rating at an all-time low, frustration growing about the Democratic base, and still smarting from what the administration perceived as three slaps to the face by House Speaker John Boehner, his tone turned more strident and he promised to veto any plan that did not include tax increases.

“I will not support — I will not support — any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans. And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share,” Mr. Obama said. “We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable.”

David Brooks writes that this signals a return to politics as usual, headlining his op-ed "Obama Rejects Obamaism".  In a news analysis, the NY Times writes that

This time, rather than trying to identify common ground, the administration is entering the negotiations in the same kind of tough position that Republicans adopted during the debt-ceiling debate, emphasizing the traditional financial priorities of the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans focused on the fact that much of the spending cuts included in the plan would already happen anyway (e.g. savings from reducing troops in Afghanistan and Iraq) and criticized the plan as "class warfare."