Budget battles

Glad to see Kasha standing up for arts funding. It is a bit out of character for her as a hard core spending hawk, but she has ties to local arts council.

She is such a budget hawk that she didn't think her party's budget in the House went far enough, and she was stripped of her position on the budget negotiating team. Is this the right decision. Standing up for principles and losing influence, or sacrificing principle for the moment to try to win influence for them later on?

One thing I question is her concern about the overall budget rising 6 percent. Most of that is apparently Medicaid, which is mostly funded by the feds. Medicaid had taken hits in the past couple of years. So just because of the overall figure is larger than before, doesn't mean that the budget lacks fiscal discipline or is more disciplined than before.

Both she and Abrams, interestly, are pretty gloomy about the future of the economy. There's some real doomsday rhetoric coming out of conservative circles these days. At the federal level, the GOP is making such a case to support their dramatic cuts to entitlements - Medicaid, Medicare.

It's interesting because usually the Democrats are the worry wort pessimists, and Republicans are "morning in America."