{"id":3141,"date":"2013-03-04T11:01:09","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T16:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=3141"},"modified":"2013-03-04T11:01:09","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T16:01:09","slug":"this-is-why-obama-cant-make-a-deal-with-republicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2013\/03\/this-is-why-obama-cant-make-a-deal-with-republicans\/","title":{"rendered":"This is why Obama can\u2019t make a deal with Republicans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/obama19b_custom.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-420\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/obama19b_custom-202x300.jpg\" width=\"202\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/obama19b_custom-202x300.jpg 202w, http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/obama19b_custom-101x150.jpg 101w, http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/obama19b_custom.jpg 218w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 202px) 100vw, 202px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>My column this weekend is about the almost comically poor lines of communication between the White House and the Hill. The opening anecdote was drawn from a background briefing I attended with a respected Republican legislator who thought it would be a gamechanger for President Obama to say he\u2019d be open to chained CPI \u2014\u00a0a policy that cuts Social Security benefits\u00a0\u2014 as part of a budget deal.<\/p>\n<p>The only problem? Obama has said he\u2019s open to chained CPI as part of a budget deal. And this isn\u2019t one of those times where the admission was in private, and we\u2019re going off of news reports. It\u2019s right there on his Web site. It\u2019s literally in bold type. But key GOP legislators have no idea Obama\u2019s made that concession.<\/p>\n<p>The question my column left open was whether improving the lines of communication would actually change anything. Chait\u2019s view is no, it wouldn\u2019t.\u00a0He begins by\u00a0quoting\u00a0Upton Sinclair\u2019s famous line: \u201cIt is impossible to make a man understand something if his livelihood depends on not understanding it.\u201d Chait continues:<\/p>\n<p>If Obama could get hold of Klein\u2019s mystery legislator and inform him of his budget offer, it almost certainly wouldn\u2019t make a difference. He would come up with something \u2013 the cuts aren\u2019t real, or the taxes are awful, or they can\u2019t trust Obama to carry them out, or something.<\/p>\n<p>What happened next on Twitter proved Chait\u2019s point in every particular.<\/p>\n<p><strong>READ MORE:<\/strong>\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2013\/03\/02\/this-is-why-obama-cant-make-a-deal-with-republicans\/\" target=\"_blank\">This is why Obama can\u2019t make a deal with Republicans<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My column this weekend is about the almost comically poor lines of communication between the White House and the Hill. The opening anecdote was drawn from a background briefing I attended with a respected Republican legislator who thought it would be a gamechanger for President Obama to say he\u2019d be open to chained CPI \u2014\u00a0a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,22,20],"tags":[1654,24,139],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3141"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3142,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3141\/revisions\/3142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}