Brazen in Washington

While state legislators were behaving responsibly, the Arkansas congressional delegation eschewed such conduct, instead calling for greater sacrifice by the poor, the sick and the elderly. The four Republicans in the delegation — Boozman, Crawford, Griffin and Womack — demanded that President Obama propose large budget cuts for Social Security and Medicare (though offering no specifics on those cuts themselves), and the two Democrats — Pryor and Ross — didn’t argue, apparently intimidated. The Republican message to Obama is “We want to whack the needy, but we want to blame you for it.” It’s an offer the president is wisely refusing, though he’s otherwise been much too tolerant of Republican mischief. Whenever congressional Republicans talk about “reform” — “entitlement reform, tort reform,” whatever — they’re looking backward, not forward, back to the days when corporations ruled the earth, and the common man suffered in silence.

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