President Barack Obama is failing to lead the way to a real solution to the budget problems facing the United States, a hard-hitting Washington Post editorial claimed on Tuesday.
And he hasn’t taken advantage of the opportunities that the automatic budget cuts known as the sequester are giving him.
Calling the sequester battle “a stupid fight over a stupid budget issue,” the Post said that nobody seems to have the will to stop $85 billion in cuts going into effect on Friday — and that is where Obama, as president, should be taking the lead.
Republicans and Democrats need to come up with a deal that avoids its implementation, the Post asserts.
“But if that’s what’s needed, why is Mr. Obama not leading the way to a solution?”
the editorial asks. “From the start, and increasingly in his second term, Mr. Obama has presented entitlement reform as something he would do grudgingly, as a favor to the opposition, when he should be explaining to the American people — and to his party — why it is an urgent national need.”
The paper does not blame Obama entirely for the mess that Washington is finding itself in.
“Most Republicans in Congress have been utterly irresponsible in this debate,” it says. “They pretend that they could balance the budget without more revenue, an arithmetical impossibility, and they have failed to put forward realistic, near-term entitlement reforms.
“But we take little comfort in Mr. Obama’s being less irresponsible. He is the president; his party colleagues are increasingly intransigent on entitlement reform; and it will be his — and their — progressive goals that suffer most if the nation continues on its current path.”
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