House Speaker John Boehner’s new budget proposal would require deep cuts in the years immediately ahead in Social Security and Medicare benefits for current retirees, the repeal of health reform’s coverage expansions, or wholesale evisceration of basic assistance programs for vulnerable Americans.

The plan is, thus, tantamount to a form of “class warfare.” If enacted, it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.

This may sound hyperbolic, but it is not. The mathematics are inexorable.
– Robert Greenstein / the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities / 2011.07.25

There’s just no arguing with the fact that what we all just witnessed outlined in no uncertain terms the dynamic that’s been going on in Washington for the past several months in regard to the debt ceiling fight. Obama was not only reasonable, measured and — I can’t believe I even have to say this — mature, but he made it clear that he was a man so willing to compromise for the good of the country that he’s consistently fending off fire from many in his own party who feel like he’s somehow selling them out. Boehner, meanwhile, was a petulant, haughty adolescent, someone not the least bit interested in genuine compromise and who’s more than willing to forgo honest dialog in the name of cheap theatrics, bad jokes and brutish partisan intransigence because he knows it’s what his party demands at this point.

I tweeted this a little earlier but it can pretty much be broken down like this: Obama: “We need to compromise and stop being petty children for the sake of everyone.” Boehner: “Fck you.”
– Chez Pazienza / Deus Ex Malcontent / 2011.07.25

– Teresa Tritch / How the Deficit Got This Big / New York Times / 2011.07.24