[Charles]

Originally Posted by whell

I love it. There were plenty of posts on this forum chiding the right for having expectations of Obama that were too high after he was in office for 2 years, while he had majorities in the house and the senate. The Republicans have had control of a single house for 5 weeks, and its time to pronounce failure?

Let's see. The new Repubs weren't even seated in the House yet, but they got the Prez to blink on extending the Bush era tax cuts, while also dopping SS taxes 2% for a year. They got the Prez to come off of the stupid idea that we could somehow repatriate the inmates at Gitmo so they could be processed through their home countries legal system, since their own governments either don't want them, or release them so they can return to the jihadist battlefield. The Dems were still clinging to the idiotic 1099 provisions in Health Care Reform, but by election time they were starting to change their tune on that because of pressure from the right. Finally the Prez reversed field on that issue in the State of the Union address because the Dems wanted to throw a bone to the Repubs to forestall Boehner and company from sending up bills that will attempt to dismantle Health Care Reform one brick at a time.

If that's "Zip Zero Nada", I'm wondering what your definition of progress is?

Regarding the budget, its funny that in prior sessions of Congress where the left's objective was to push back against budget reductions, if a government budget line item were slated to grow at 10%, and was then reduced to 5%, the Dems referred to this as a "budget cut". The article linked above suggests that budgeted dollars slated to be spent were left unfunded, and will remain so in the new Congress, but in this Congress, that's not a budget cut. Do the rules on the left change based on spin requirements?

I'm certainly glad the 1099 provision is gone. While I'm not positive that the Repulicans can take 100% credit for this, I suspect that if the Democrats had maintained their status during the last election it would still be policy.

Chas