The Hill News

President Obama wouldn't leap first on entitlement reform in his State of the Union address this week and hasn't backed one recommendation from his own debt commission; the Tea Party freshmen are all over the map on cutting defense spending and so is their leadership; and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) retreated from a comment he once made supporting raising the retirement age for Social Security.
 
The debate over our debt crisis has begun, and heartening it is not. The two sides doubled down after the SOTU speech this week, with the news that the deficit for this year will climb more than $400 billion to $1.5 trillion, largely because of the extension of the Bush tax cuts â€" that one bipartisan policy agreement Republicans and Democrats came together on in December. Both parties are now digging in, with more Republicans threatening to vote against raising the debt ceiling without deep spending cuts, and the Democrats decrying GOP plans to slash more tha! n $60 billion from discretionary spending this year. President Obama, meanwhile, has taken a pass on tough debt leadership with an earmark ban and a spending freeze.

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