Obama's Weekly Address July 16

The deficit is when we spend more than we take in. If we cut spending and take in more revenue (increase taxes) we can shrink the deficit. The republican option is unbalanced. They only want to cut spending and gut programs that matter to a lot of people, such as Medicare and Social Security. If we modestly increase taxes, we don't have to shrink those programs as much.

Conservative columnist David Brooks on the tea party infection:

The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency.

Here's more from his recent column:

Moreover, many important Democrats are open to a truly large budget deal. President Obama has a strong incentive to reach a deal so he can campaign in 2012 as a moderate. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, has talked about supporting a debt reduction measure of $3 trillion or even $4 trillion if the Republicans meet him part way. There are Democrats in the White House and elsewhere who would be willing to accept Medicare cuts if the Republicans would be willing to increase revenues.

If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases.
....
This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers.

But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative. Read it all at the NYT