Skepticism Grows in President's Own Party Over Healthcare Cuts and Spending

While the focus has been on Republican response to President Obama’s plans for healthcare, there is growing skepticism coming from within the president’s own party.

“While Democratic leaders are offering quiet support for Obama’s renewed campaign to strike a grand bargain with Republicans that would include cuts to Social Security and Medicare,” suggests a story in the Washington Post, ”a significant number of Democratic lawmakers are digging in their heels and vowing to protest any reduction in promised benefits.”

This was primarily evident in the Democrat’s recent budget blueprint. It proposed only minor trims to Medicare and Medicaid, vowing to make cuts without harming beneficiaries. This has long been a tenant of Republican budget platforms.

“I don’t want to break the bad news to you, but the president is not the only elected official in the United States,” said Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), a member of the Budget Committee, who pressed Patty Murray, Senate Budget Committee Chairman, to avoid any cuts to social programs in her spending plan. “Some of us believe very strongly that it would be absolutely wrong to cut Social Security benefits.”

The president is finding internal pressure mostly from liberal Democrats, unhappy with what they see as capitulation on the part of the Administration to Republican talking-points. “Republicans emerging from the meeting said the president was blunt about his willingness to pursue a deal over the objections of liberal Democrats. But he demurred, they said, when House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) asked whether the White House would proceed with changes to entitlement programs without raising taxes.”