Not that negotiating our country away from the fiscal cliff would be an simple task otherwise, but the Congressional Black Caucus isn’t making things easy for the president. Roll Call reports that Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D., Mo.) said last week that members of the caucus he chairs wouldn’t be able to support raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67.
“We would be in a really, really awkward situation if the president made such a proposal,” Cleaver said.
You may remember Cleaver as the wordsmith who coined the most memorable description of last summer’s debt-ceiling deal. Roll Call’s Steven T. Dennis writes:
Cleaver, more broadly, said that the fiscal cliff debate shows he was right in 2011 when he labeled the debt deal a “sugar-coated Satan sandwich” in an interview with CQ Roll Call. “You can see now why it was [a Satan sandwich],” he said. “Because, you know, initially it looked, like sin. It initially looked delicious. Once you start eating on it, peeling back the buns,” he said, you find nothing but “negativity.”
Indeed.