Well..one of the most striking things that I have taken away from the budget battles that have been going on for the last couple of years is the utter lack of vision that the dems have laid out to support their version of America….and I fault Obama for a large part of it…his tiptoeing around to not anger the repubs have gotten him what? Nothing but an emboldened opposition whose crazy ideas have gotten a huge voice without the counterpoint of rationality that the president could bring to the discussion, and his almost unfathomable reliance on bipartisanship, or the appearance of bipartisanship, is making him look so disengaged that those of us in the middle and on the left are sitting here shaking our heads. I hope that the budget plan that is coming out from the dem leadership later in the week will help to flesh out what they think America should look like and I think they have a golden opportunity to contrast with the Ryan proposal; one that gives more and more to the rich while taking the majority of the savings from programs that are designed to help the middle class and poor.

It was a good start when Obama said that the plan will include increased revenue from letting the bush tax cuts expire on the richest, and I think it is a reasonable request since those tax cuts never produced one new job or made America a better place to live; except for those super rich who benefited from the cuts. I also understand that there can be cuts and streamlining to major government programs to make them more efficient, but let’s make sure that the cuts are made to the inefficiencies, and maintain those few things that can help the American dream live on….