Progressives mad with Obama over debt deal
Lawmakers on both the left and the right finally came to a compromise today after months of debt ceiling discussions, but were there equal perks on both sides of the aisle? Not exactly.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) Monday night said, after a handful of drafts and earlier failed attempts at a legislation, by Monday evening he had received practically everything he had asked for in a debt bill.“When you look at this final agreement that we came to with the white House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I’m pretty happy,” Speaker Boehner told CBS. Democrats, even if they ended up agreeing to Boehner’s terms, weren’t exactly enthusiastic. While Republicans in the House voted in favor of the compromise bill by 174 to 66, Democrats were split directly down the middle; votes of yes and no each received 95 tallies on the left.“How many times can you give the Republicans 100 percent of what they want and still call yourself a Democrat?” asks Cenk Uygur on RT’s The Alyona Show Monday night. Uygur, who recently parted ways with MSNBC over a conflict of opinion, says that President Obama is losing Democratic support by budging to Republicans, and Progressives are flocking left and right.“What’s the point of having a black president if he’s not going to help black people?” asks Uygur. “He’s cutting as much if not more than a Republican president would,” adds the host of the Web show The Young Turks, who harps that Obama is not as much a progressive as he is a faltering puppet he would cave in to Republican demands. “He crumbles. He’s a house of cards,” says Uygur. “If you think his intent is actually progressive . . . then we have a much worse problem.”Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford returned to Capitol Hill for her first vote since being gravely shot seven months earlier. In a statement she gave after voting yes to raise the debt ceiling, she said that she was “deeply disappointed” at what’s been happening in Washington.“I strongly believe that crossing the aisle for the good of the American people is more important than party politics," said Gifford. "I had to be here for this vote. I could not take the chance that my absence could crash our economy."Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid said after the vote that while the left-wing did show some enthusiasm for the legislation, “some others said no such enthusiasm.” He added that the vote was a typical piece of compromise legislation but was quick not to praise it.Speaker Boehner, however, received a standing ovation from House Republicans on Monday. Only days earlier he was unable to get a substantial support from his own party on an earlier draft of the bill. Now, he tells CBS, he intends on staying Speaker of the House.
