On the Budget Fight

I get an email every day from The Atlantic Wire with the "Five Best Columns of the Day." I'm not so sure if those columns are always the "best" but they're usually interesting. Today's email had a link to Michael Tomasky's column in The Guardian. He's writing about the budget fight, noticing that even if it's politically good for the Democrats, the terms of the whole discussion, he points out, have been set by the Republicans. It's not a new argument, but it's well made. Here's a quote:

The Tea Party argument that there's bloat and waste in Washington will always fall on receptive ears in America. But the counter-argument isn't to quibble about how much to cut. The counter-argument is to say we believe in a society where the wealthy pay their share, which they plainly have not been doing. A political loser? So, for Democrats, is the coming debate about whether to slash healthcare for the poor by $4tn in a decade or a little less than that. We're on our way to a radically shrunken society, and the Democrats are helping take us there."