Oklahoma Republican, Senator Tom Coburn will hold a press conference scheduled for 2:30pm, today, in the Senate where he will reveal details of his new proposal which would reduce the deficit by $9 trillion using methods such as adjusting the tax code and lowering it and spending cuts in a variety of places.No doubt there will be much that both party loyalists will like and dislike and it is doubtful the proposal will garner the votes from either party needed for it to pass through the Senate or the House of Representatives.
The Ryan budget proposal, McConnell's fall back plan, and now Coburn's, does highlight one simple fact though.
Republicans, so far, are the only ones actually putting plans out there. They are offering up hard choices and going out on the limb to do so. Democrats continue to trash every plan Republicans offer up but they have refused to proposal any plans of their own.
Yet as American Thinker points out, the MSM has already started sounding their drums and fixed their coordinated messaging.
In case you haven't noticed, the drumbeat has begun in earnest to blame Republicans for the failure of talks on the debt limit and any bad reaction to it from the markets.
Today's hysteria is being generated because the GOP wants to include the unreasonable, the radical, the extreme notion that the government - eventually - should have to live within its means.
The Democrat-controlled US Senate hasn't even proposed a budget in 810 days.
It should be noted though that Barack Obama did offer one plan, a $3.7 trillion budget plan which the senate rejected to take up with a vote of 97 to 0. Not even one Democrat was willing to vote for Obama's plan.
Some people think Obama offered up another plan which would lower the deficit by $4 trillion but while Obama did mention that number to the media, he never produced any proposal, bill or details, it was only a soundbite in a speech.
Related:
Discussions to raise the debt ceiling continue as the August 2, 2011 deadline to do so looms closer and closer.
Keith Hennessey has a decent breakdown of where things stand up to this point.
Cartoon at the top by Gary Varvel, via Townhall.
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