Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) yesterday came down on president Obama for his failure to lead in the battle over the federal budget. Manchin spoke of the battles iin the senate over spending and said this:
“Why are we doing all this when the most powerful person in these negotiations — our president — has failed to lead this debate or offer a serious proposal for spending and cuts that he would be willing to fight for?”
Manchin is correct. So far Obama has been silent as to what cuts he would accept and which he would reject. Instead, Obama has talked in platitudes about the need to live within our means at the same time that he proposes more and more spending. The Obamacrats in the Senate have been left to try to figure it all out for themselves, no easy tak when your leader is Harry Reid. The truth is that Obama is playing a political game rather than doing what is best for the country. Obama wants the cuts to come from a source other than himself so that he will get no blame for them. Obama also wants to be sure that if there is a government shutdown, no one can lay the blame for it directly at his door. But the sad truth is that running away from responsibility in a debate as important as the current one is just an updated version of the old Obma strategy of voting "present".
I doubt that Manchin's statement will move Obama to take action. If Obama will not react to Gaddafi using bombers against protester in Libya, I doubt that Obama will react a statement from a freshman Democrat senator from a state Obama did not carry in 2008.
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