Senator Kent Conrad is a member of the hideous Gang of Six that Dick Durbin is so willingly fronting, and it appears that his new budget is so bad that a mutiny is a brewing. You know how I dislike ConservaDems being in a position to cut their way out of a deficit. It's impossible, it's destructive to the American worker, and it's failing around the world. Yet for Conrad, austerity rules.
Senate Democrats are furious at their lead budget negotiator for crafting a blueprint that they think moves the party too far to the right, a senior Democratic aide said.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) has been bargaining for months in secret with Republicans in the so-called Gang of Six to craft a budget that might win bipartisan acceptance. On Tuesday, Conrad abruptly dropped the veil and rolled out his own offering for party colleagues -- to brutal reviews.
"He's going to be a man without a country," the Democratic aide said, describing a contentious Tuesday briefing.
The problem for Democrats is that, rather than put down a firm Democratic marker from which the party can negotiate, Conrad has adopted a plan that resembles the work he's done with legislators across the aisle.
In bringing it forward himself, Conrad sets the starting point for the Democratic position in a more conservative spot than President Barack Obama's budget -- and that was already a compromise. Obama's plan includes a spending freeze for federal workers, among many other concessions to the GOP.
"He's setting this out like it's the official Democratic position," a Democratic staffer said. "I don't know if this can pass his own committee without major changes."
Democrats think Conrad decided release his budget before the Gang of Six because the talks were collapsing. He is hoping to salvage the work of the bipartisan group by attracting a few Republicans to the more conservative plan...read on
Since Conrad was given such a lofty position as being part of the infamous Gang of Six, I wonder why the outrage from Democratic Senators? Did they think he would do anything less egregious?
