Democrats Open Arms to Obama’s Budget, With Some Caveats

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Democrats Open Arms to Obama’s Budget, With Some Caveats

Josh Anderson for The New York Times

Representative Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee, said the public would support tax increases if they led to “a strong country.”


By CARL HULSE and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: February 27, 2009


WASHINGTON — For years, Congressional Democrats tried to avoid anything that would let Republicans slap the tax-and-spend label on them. But on Friday, they cautiously embraced President Obama’s budget, with its ambitious blend of new spending and tax increases, calculating that they could turn the old attack line to their benefit.

As they began to digest the administration’s fiscal blueprint, even Democrats with reservations hailed it as a long-overdue example of honesty in federal budgeting after years of what Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, called “fudgeting.”

Several said they saw the tax increases as reasonable ones that could be sold to the public in difficult economic times, especially since middle-class taxes would be cut under the president’s plan.

“The American people have been denied the truth for many years,” said Representative Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat who has long warned of the dangers of rising deficits. “They are willing to take their medicine if it leads to a strong country.”

Yet even as Democrats praised what they described as the bold, broad strokes of the spending plan, fault lines began to show on important provisions regarding taxes, agriculture, energy and education, making it clear some elements would be revised or jettisoned as the proposal makes its way through Congress over the next two months.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/us/politics/28web-budget.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper