If anyone doubted that the 2012 presidential election campaign has begun in earnest for both sides, the new Barack Obama 3 trillion deficit cutting scheme should remove all doubts.
While most of the proposed government savings will not come from cuts in entitlement spending, but from a presumed peace dividend created by a withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, the remaining cuts to the deficit will be created by $1.5 trillion in taxation.
Obama is banking on the fact that a "soak the rich" policy will help rally the Democratic base, and suffocate talk amongst liberals about mounting a primary challenge to Obama himself and Democratic congressional candidates.
Electorally the administration believes the package will prove a game changer based on the simple assumption that there are more disadvantaged people than extremely wealthy ones, but each person has one vote.
The president also knows that he is waving a red flag at the Republican leadership that has drawn a line in the sand against tax increases.They have called the Obama policy class warfare and economically self-defeating, as it will serve as a negative stimulus to investments and job creation.
Perhaps in the expectation that his Republican opponent may well be Governor Rick Perry of Texas, who has labeled Social Security a Ponzi scheme, Obama has let it be known that the deficit reduction plan "will not include any changes to Social Security."
To top this off, the Obama administration threatens to veto any congressional bills that don't raise taxes for the wealthy and on corporations.
There are some cuts in Medicare enabling Obama to contend that he was engaging in painful compromise, but the immediate cuts will affect the service providers and not the beneficiaries who only start to pay more in 2017 (the year that Barack Obama would leave office if he won the 2nd term)
This has created an almost impossible situation for the congressional debt committee, set up to avert a default crisis in August when congressional Republicans balked at raising the debt ceiling.
Liberals are not dismayed by the prospects that the debt committee, that has two months to come up with a package, will be unable to reach agreement. According to the deal, failure to reach agreement will trigger automatic cuts in the defense budget, a prospect that alarms Republicans but does not faze liberal Democrats.