Politics & Power Quote by David E. Price

“And so we go over the cliff fiscally” is a deliberately cinematic choice: Price isn’t describing a spreadsheet problem, he’s staging a political calamity with a clear cast of characters. The phrase “fiscally” gives the metaphor a veneer of technocratic sobriety, but the real work is emotional. A cliff implies not just risk but preventable stupidity - a slow march toward a drop everyone can see. It’s a warning aimed as much at public perception as at policy.

Then comes the real payload: “our Republican friends,” a Washington nicety sharpened into a blade. The courtesy word “friends” carries the subtext of exasperation: he’s signaling bipartisan familiarity while suggesting bad faith. “Try to pin the blame” frames the GOP not as disagreeing on priorities but as running a narrative operation - a PR move, not an economic argument.

Price’s target is the familiar budget-script of the era: austerity politics that treat “discretionary domestic spending” as the convenient scapegoat. By specifying “including spending for security,” he’s undercutting the usual rhetorical split between “wasteful domestic programs” and “serious” government functions. If even security gets swept into the cuts-and-blame machine, the critique goes, then this isn’t principled trimming; it’s ideological theater.

“We pass budget resolutions that fall far short” lands as institutional self-indictment. He’s admitting Congress manufactures the crisis through incomplete, performative budgeting - setting goals without doing the hard governing that would make them real, then fighting over who pushed whom.