Obama Budget Leaves GOP With 'No Excuses'

President Obama's budget proposal is the latest move in his administration's "systematic" effort to expose flimsy GOP excuses for government inaction, writes Ezra Klein in the Washington Post. Republicans had complained that Obama didn't extend a hand to them; now, he's constantly meeting with them. They said he wouldn't touch Medicare or Social Security; the new budget does. In fact, "half of its purpose is showing what they’re willing to do," Klein notes.

The White House sees the budget going one of two ways: Either there will be a "grand bargain," or the budget will prove "to the press and the public that Republican intransigence is what’s standing in the way." Indeed, Republican tax-and-spend attacks will "strain credulity when the president is catching hell from real socialists like Sen. Bernie Sanders," writes John Avlon at the Daily Beast. Republicans are complaining, too: Sen. John Thune warned of "Carter-era results" from "Carter-era policies," CBS News reports. If both sides are fuming, you know the budget's "a good one," Avlon notes. Click for Avlon's full column, or here for Klein's. (More President Obama stories.)