Criticize the President? We should not even be having serious conversations about this.

[Babel_17]

277. Boehner did say, more or less, he wanted to see the Chained CPI in the administration's proposal

So, there's a case to be made that it is smarter to not ignore that and instead do it and let Boehner choke on it.

I'd argue otherwise, but there is a case imo.

But I've yet to see any Democrat explain why, if it was a trap, the administration has been making the case for the Chained CPI being fair. Why are administration supporters also arguing its fairness?

If you bait a trap with poison, you don't neutralize the poison.

And one more thing.

We now have to come up with another budget proposal, unless we insist on the one with the Chained CPI.

Are we now going to get tough or is our next proposal going to offer red meat to Boehner in exchange for taking the Chained CPI out? Will we have just negotiated with ourselves again? And that after starting off with a compromise budget?

I really hope our party has girded their loins for selling the idea, in a big way, that the Republicans are being bigger anarchists than usual. If not, we aren't off to a good start in the negotiations.

If we don't get Boehner to submit something without a Chained CPI, then things could get really antsy.

If Boehner submits a budget with a Chained CPI we can either hope for a public groundswell against it, along with the media deriding it, or we end up having to attack the inclusion of a Chained CPI because it's just wrong. That could be a harder challenge than we ordinarily might expect.