Obama Press Conference Question

I've been reading a lot of blogs today and no one has mentioned what I thought was one of the biggest moments in last night's presser:

"And there's an interesting reason why some of these critics haven't put out their own budget. We haven't seen an alternative budget out of them. And the reason is because they know that in fact the biggest driver of long-term deficits are the huge health care costs that we've got out here that we're going to have to tackle, and that if we don't deal with some of the structural problems in our deficit, ones that were here long before I got here, then we're going to continue to see some of the problems in those out-years."

It's a totally valid point, but it was a political gamble. He just gave the Republicans an opening. If they can put together an alternative budget that still address some of the issues ahead of us but that comes in with even a moderately lower deficit than Obama's budget (a bar that he has admittedly already set pretty high), then they'll be the winners in this political tet a tet and his first 100 days will be viewed as undeniably negative (whether wrongly or rightly).

I have to figure that the certainly with which he made the statment is real and he's reasonably sure that he's right, but it sure did feel like a West Wing moment where the staff all calls each other saying, "Are you watching this?" while the congressional Republicans stand on the steps of Congress  dealing the administration a body blow (which they'll, of course, solve after the next commercial break so the episode can end with CJ's feet on her desk, smoking a preverbial cigar).