The truth of the matter

Tuesday, March 1, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

In a speech to the nation’s governors Monday, President Barack Obama offered to work with them on a variety of issues, including health care. But in a group that is dominated by Republicans, the message largely fell on deaf ears, and that’s too bad.

Republicans have largely rebuffed the president over the past two years, and that has hurt the nation. Instead of working with Democrats to move the nation back to prosperity, the GOP has used disingenuous arguments to fight sound proposals and initiatives.

For example, Obama said his proposed budget would “bring annual domestic spending to its lowest share of the economy since Dwight Eisenhower,” but Republicans say that isn’t good enough. Republican leaders in Congress have presented their own plan, yet Obama said if it was approved, “it would not make a dent in our long-term budget, wouldn’t make a dent in our long-term deficits — because of health care costs.”

Rising health care costs have hurt families and the government. The “biggest driver of the federal debt is Medicare costs,” Obama said, noting that health care costs can be a major strain on state budgets as well. However, instead of working to find ways to cut federal spending on health care, Republican governors have sued to try to repeal the new health care law, even though the legislation is expected to curb rising costs and help provide insurance coverage to millions of Americans.

“I am not open to re-fighting the battles of the last two years, or undoing the progress that we’ve made,” Obama said. “But I am willing to work with anyone — anybody in this room, Democrat or Republican, governors or member of Congress — to make this law even better; to make care even better; to make it more affordable and fix what needs fixing.”

Obama told the governors that if they don’t like the law, they can innovate and create something better as long as they meet certain federal standards. And Obama said he supported a proposal in the Senate that would allow states to move more quickly to set up their own plans.

But Republicans still complained about the law, saying it wasn’t flexible enough. They have tried to mobilize public opinion against the president’s plan, by vilifying the legislation, yet they have no viable alternative of their own.

In the states, many Republicans have relied more on rhetoric than reality as they face massive budget deficits. For example, they have railed against public employees’ pay and their unions, particularly collective bargaining.

As we have said before, overly generous pensions and benefits need to be reined in. There also need to be reforms in collective bargaining. But those are not the main villains, nor will any reform magically cure the states’ budget woes. Republicans merely want to use the budget crisis to implement their ideology, which is something they have accused Democrats of doing, like maintaining huge tax breaks for the rich while they try to eviscerate governments. As well, they have railed against government spending and the Recovery Act, yet they apparently had no problem taking federal money.

To solve the nation’s issues, it’s going to take shared sacrifice, as the president noted, saying everyone should be “prepared to give something up.”

The first thing to go should be the finger-pointing and the disingenuous games. The nation needs help to spur the economy, and Republicans should be working with Democrats to achieve that.