GOP proposed budget cuts hit those behind a tree

Looking at the GOP's proposed budget cuts, Republicans carefully do not touch their base. Instead, they zero in on women and children services,education,  homeless vets, and neighborhood health centers for the  poor, as well as their long time bugaboos, the EPA and NPR.

The late Sen. Russell Long's oft repeated jingle, "Don't tax you; don't tax me;  tax that fellow behind the tree"...is cynical enough, but the GOP's current budget platform could also read:  I won't cut you (my esteemed voting base's interests); I won't cut me (or those who contribute to me); I'll cut those women, poor,and kids behind the tree (they either do not vote or they vote for the other party). The Democrats just cut less of anything, but were also sensitive to their respective base.

I watched C-Span last night to Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson present their bold plan to reduce the deficit to a Senate committee.  As they said, GOP's budget cuts and the Democrats'  proposals do not even begin to put a dent into the deficit problem.  It  is going to take reforming   entitlements. If so, both parties have to look behind their trees and get serious, or else put many through needless pain.

Now that both parties have their respective  proposals die for lack of votes, their campaign promises met, and postured their ideologies  ad nausea, it is time to get serious, deal and horse trade, and stop daring the other side to commit political suicide by being first to advocate the hard choices. Calling Pres. Obama's low keying the budget issue so far  a"failure of leadership" reminds me of the childrens'  bait tactic:  sticking out a tongue, flapping ears, and  sing songing na na na .

  If the choices are politically too painful, both parties  should take the fall together so that they either both get blame or get  credit simultaneously. That is the only way finger pointing in 2012 will be kept to a roar and the only way we will get even a fraction of the Simpson-Bowles plan enacted before or after the upcoming elections.

 Now is the time for the President to knock some heads and force a compromise which both parties could endorse.  That would be leadership indeed worthy of an adult and smart politics, too.