Senate Moderates Chart Their Own Course?

Interesting how the moderate center of the Senate has been energized enough by the Bush plan to begin working amongst themselves on alternate approaches.

I have to give Kay Bailey Hutchinson some credit for coming out right away to work with a moderate Democrat to split off the easiest-to-sell part of the package. And with Chafee out in front with Feinstein on a scheme to tie any further rate reductions to existing deficits, it begs the question of how many moderate-to-liberal members of Frist's caucus will also stray from the White House script. It also very neatly forces politicians to make a choice between additional tax cuts for the rich or a balanced budget, and we know what the voters have said about that choice.

Obviously Tom DeLay is not keeping anyone up at night in the Senate.

Why is it again that when this happens on the Democratic side, the media says the Dems have no party discipline, but when the GOP does it.....?

Update:

If you want a good analysis of the true costs of the Bush plan and the misleading claim about “average cuts”, take a look at the just-released work from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In short, the Bush plan does not count the increased interest costs resulting from the deficit spending caused by this plan, which is inconsistent with the Bush OMB recent practices. The CBPP also shows how the average cut figure of $1083 touted by the Administration is flat out misleading.

Soto

Posted January 09, 2003 12:57 PM | Comments (44)