Mother Jones: Why did Obama cave?

[Bluebear]

I've been trying to figure something out: what does President Obama really think about the deficit? Did he cave in to Republicans because he didn't have much choice, or does he really think that cutting the budget is a good idea? I'll get to that in a bit, but first, here's Ryan Avent making the case that the budget deal was, substantively speaking, a bad idea:

I think it's worth remembering a few important things. First, the federal government did not need to cut spending in this fiscal year. There is no immediate fiscal crisis; on the contrary, yields on American government debt remain extraordinarily low. Second, macroeconomically speaking, now is a bad time to be cutting spending. The economy remains very weak, state and local governments are already trimming back public spending and placing a big drag on economic activity, and there's plenty of contractionary developments in the pipeline already, from the impending end of QE2 to the impact of rising oil prices....Third, had America actually been facing a crisis or had it simply been an opportune moment to trim back state spending, this was just about the worst way to go about cutting. The cuts don't touch on the real sources of the long-term budget problem....

Now, I'd also guess that the last few months of economic data have persuaded Obama that the economy is rebounding, which makes the risk of cutting current-year spending even less. I'm not so sure about that, myself, but there's no question that economic signals are mixed right now. We're obviously headed for a slow recovery at best, but probably a recovery nonetheless.

So, anyway, that's it: my best shot at reading Obama's mind. I suspect Obama really is a long-term deficit hawk and figures that the current budget battle, though not really of his choosing, can be turned to his advantage. He's agreed to cuts but has also shown that he'll fight against crazy cuts, and he thinks that will help him take the high ground when he unveils his own long-term deficit program on Wednesday. This isn't how the events of the past week look to us liberals, of course, but I'll bet it's approximately what they look like to independents. And as we've all learned over the past couple of years, Obama doesn't really care much about how liberals view events.

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/04/why-did-obama-cave

[kenny blankenship]

1. Why did Hillary summit? It was there.

Sir Edmund Hillary that is.

[pa28]

2. Every cartoonist who reads DU is now hard at work stealing your idea. n/t

[Bluebear]

5. +

[dennis4868]

3. The facts show

that he did not cave...the details of the agreement are coming out and it was the repubs that caved in...

[notesdev]

4. Say what??

I suspect Obama really is a long-term deficit hawk

Are you kidding me? The same guy who provided six years of funding on a ten-year health plan and said it reduced the deficit is a deficit hawk?

Closer-to-reality speculation would include a phone call from China threatening to dump Ts unless we clean up our act. They do openly and publicly mock us about it on a daily basis, and they have real ability to come through on such a threat.