On Tuesday, I wrote that the Obama budget is a liberal, big government document that should make moderates nervous. The column generated a large positive response from moderate Obama supporters who are anxious about where the administration is headed. It was not so popular inside the White House. Within a day, I had conversations with four senior members of the administration and in the interest of fairness, I thought I’d share their arguments with you today.

In the first place, they do not see themselves as a group of liberal crusaders. They see themselves as pragmatists who inherited a government and an economy that have been thrown out of whack. They’re not engaged in an ideological project to overturn the Reagan Revolution, a fight that was over long ago. They’re trying to restore balance: nurture an economy so that productivity gains are shared by the middle class and correct the irresponsible habits that developed during the Bush era.

The budget, they continue, isn’t some grand transformation of America. It raises taxes on energy and offsets them with tax cuts for the middle class. It raises taxes on the rich to a level slightly above where they were in the Clinton years and then uses the money as a down payment on health care reform. That’s what the budget does. It’s not the Russian Revolution.

Second, they argue, the Obama administration will not usher in an era of big government. Federal spending over the last generation has been about 20 percent of G.D.P. This year, it has surged to about 27 percent. But they aim to bring spending down to 22 percent of G.D.P. in a few years. And most of the increase, they insist, is caused by the aging of the population and the rise of mandatory entitlement spending. It’s not caused by big increases in the welfare state.

(Emphasis supplied.) Triangulation? Did I hear someone say triangulation? Here is the worrisome part of Brooks' column:

I’m more optimistic that if Senate moderates can get their act together and come up with their own proactive plan, they can help shape a budget that allays their anxieties while meeting the president’s goals.

But of course. For that is what Congressional "moderates" do - take a Democratic proposal and cut it, irrespective of the merits. Yesterday, Matt Yglesias revisited this issue:

Via Mike Tomasky, interesting reporting from Elizabeth Drew:

A prominent House Democrat told me that the decision, reached before Obama was sworn in, that the stimulus bill should be limited to $825 billion “was made from a political perspective, not for economic reasons.” He said, “I think the economic argument for going over $1 trillion is pretty good, but we feared that $1 trillion would produce sticker shock. We feared it would frighten off the Blue Dogs [conservative Democrats] and that Republicans would attack it.” It was assumed that the number would rise as the stimulus bill went through Congress, since that’s what normally happens with spending bills. Of course the Republicans attacked the lower number anyway.

And even then the Democrats’ majorities weren’t sufficient to give Obama all that he wanted. The stubborn fact remained that the Senate rules require sixty votes to pass anything of importance.

To me, the part I emphasized is the most troubling thing here. Any administration struggles with the fact that it’s hard to get congress to agree to stuff, and everyone needs to reel in their ambitions somewhat. But the White House appears to have undershot what it actually anticipated getting in terms of stimulus, assuming that the number would go up. Instead, thanks to the AMT patch, it in effect went down. That looks like a non-trivial exaggeration.

Triangulation happens in Washington. The Congressional "moderates" will do it no matter what you propose. It is discouraging when the President's team is doing it preemptively through David Brooks.

Speaking for me only