BALANCE: Chicago Tribune To Obama: Hey, What About Those Spending Cuts?

UPDATE: Okay, this is worth quoting:

As we’ve said before, we wish Obama would take the money Boehner offered and run. Republicans make a strong argument that increasing revenue by limiting deductions, rather than sharply hiking rates, would have less of an impact on economic growth.

Yes, Obama campaigned on those tax rate increases. But he campaigned just as fervently on the need for a “balanced” mix of revenue hikes and spending cuts. With his obsession on tax rates rather than on debt and entitlements, the president does not look focused on finding a two-party solution for crises that two parties created.

Americans who voted for Obama reflect that call for balance more than his ultimatums have: Politico reported Monday that a poll for a moderate Democratic think tank, Third Way, found 85 percent of Obama voters favoring higher taxes on the wealthy: “Yet 41 percent who supported the Democratic incumbent want to get control of the deficit mostly by cutting spending, with only some tax increases, while another 41 percent want to solve it mostly with tax increases and only some spending cuts. Just 5 percent of Obama supporters favor tax increases alone to solve the deficit, half the number who back an approach that relies entirely on spending cuts.”

What Americans see, though, is a White House offering essentially the same tax-centric budget that Obama proposed last winter, while Republicans have moved away from the no-new-revenue budget the House passed.

Instead, Boehner and other Republican leaders on Monday offered Obama a package similar to the deal the two men agreed upon, then scuttled, in mid-2011.

Obama isn’t interested in raising revenue so much as punishing high earners and humiliating the House GOP. Forward! to Revenge!