Ever go to the movies and be absolutely spellbound by the words rolling from the mouth of your favorite actor? Ever wonder how those words would sound when spoken by a different actor, or if a different choice of words could convey a completely different meaning?

With DVDs and Blu Ray discs, you can see outtakes and deleted scenes that didn’t make the cut, including ad-libs and alternative versions to scenes that we’ve come to view as classic.

Politics and negotiating deals play the same games with words. Hot button issues are hot buttons precisely because of word choice. Choose the words carefully and they convey a completely different meaning.

Take abortion for example. The opposing sides have self-selected identifiers of pro-life and pro-choice. Those same positions can also be described as anti-choice and pro-abortion (or pro-death) by their opponents. Proponents for both sides have picked the terms most favorable to them, while using the terms most likely to harm in describing the other side. That adds to the emotional impact.

Republican legislatures around the country are busying themselves with all manner of additional restrictions and curbs on the rights of women to obtain abortion, but the Republicans have framed this in terms of rights of the unborn child (doing it for the “child” is one of the central tenets of politics and negotiating - appeal to innocence and youth). Yet, those same laws undermine the rights of women to control their own bodies - and give the rights of the fetus precedence over those of the pregnant woman. Yet, these same Republicans are quick to claim that they are the party of small government - a completely contradictory statement at odds with their policy choices to get a government small enough to fit inside a woman’s reproductive system.

But it isn’t only about abortion and reproductive rights where framing the argument comes into play. It’s also in the discussion of the federal and state budgets, sequestration, and the laundry list of social programs.

Republicans have repeatedly managed to frame the argument to their benefit. And that affects negotiating positions too.

The President is submitting his own budget plan, and it’s a textbook example of negotiating against himself. He’s done this in the past, and he’s about to go down the same road. It’s exactly what I’ve been saying for some time, and it’s something fellow Democrats have been complaining about - both in private and behind closed doors.

The new budget doesn’t include a stimulus package that is seen as a way to improve the unemployment situation and spur further investment in infrastructure. It’s something the President and other Democrats have been calling for over the past couple of years. Yet when it comes time to present a budget to Republicans, he’s self-selected to not include it in the budget package. Moreover, he’s adopted a chained CPI rate to adjust Social Security and other benefits in a move that is expected to save billions of dollars over the life of those programs, mostly by reducing the annual inflation adjustments. That’s a sop to a couple of Senate Republicans in the hopes of getting their approval, even though the House Republicans wont go for it.

Less than a week after job-creation figures fell short of expectations and underscored the U.S. economy’s fragility, President Barack Obama will send Congress a budget that doesn’t include the stimulus his allies say is needed and instead embraces cuts in an appeal to Republicans.

“This is not our ideal budget,” Gene Sperling, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, told Bloomberg Television. “This does reflect a compromise offer. There’s measures in here we would prefer not to take.”

Obama’s budget for fiscal 2014, set for release April 10, will propose reducing Social Security recipients’ annual cost- of-living adjustments by changing the inflation calculation, according to an outline released last week. The Medicare insurance program for the elderly would be cut by reducing payments to health-care providers and drug companies and imposing more costs on high-income beneficiaries.

The President isn’t going to get this budget adopted by GOPers because they’ll use this as a floor to demand still more concessions from the Democrats, while the stimulus that the Democrats and the President had urged never sees the light of day.

It’s a given that the President and Democrats wouldn’t have gotten a stimulus approval in any event, but by not even putting it on the table, they’ve eliminated it without any corresponding concessions from the Republicans. Now, the Republicans get an edge in demanding more concessions on items that the Democrats have maintained without having to bargain for something in return.

The choice not to include these proposals means that the Democrats are adopting a position that favors the GOP over the long run.

We saw this with the tax debate too at the end of 2012 and culminating in the 2012 Tax Act (enacted in January 2013).

Democrats essentially conceded the tax rate scheme enacted in 2001 (and amended in 2003 and extended in 2009) to Republicans. It was only after the rates lapsed to their pre-2001 levels did Democrats succeed in keeping the top tax bracket back to the pre-2001 tax rates, but doing so as the argument was framed by the Republicans. At the same time, Republicans managed to spin the end of the payroll tax holiday as a massive tax hike perpetrated by Democrats and the President, even though the payroll tax holiday enacted by Congress separately was meant only to be a limited time event and the revenues raised by the payroll tax fund Social Security and Medicare; the reduction actually hurt the long term solvency of those programs and restoring the payroll tax helps reduce the imbalance.

Democrats did not succeed in altering the payroll tax cap, which imposes the tax on the first $113,700 in 2013. Amounts over that level are not subject to the 6.2% tax. Raising that cap would allow an overall reduction in the rate to everyone else, or increase the benefits. Someone making $50,000 has to pay $3,100 in payroll tax. The person making $100,000 pays $6,200 in payroll tax. However, The millionaire gets taxed only up to $113,700.00 (which is $7,049.40) meaning the balance is payroll tax free. It means that the percentage of income that goes to pay the payroll tax declines for every dollar earned over $113,700. Raising the cap would have reduced the overall burden on everyone, broadening the base and reducing the tax burden.

But Democrats conceded this front to the GOP and Democrats took the hit politically - all because of the way the issue was framed. And Democrats are still losing ground in Congress because Republicans are refusing to budge on taxes because they say that they’ve already given ground once - namely in allowing the tax rate on the rich to rise beyond the 35% that was in effect after the 2001 law was enacted.

That’s exactly happened, despite the argument that the President’s budget was intended to peel off some moderate Republicans in the Senate. It ignores that while the Senate might be predisposed to considering bipartisanship and working through some form of negotiated deal, the House GOP has taken the extremism to new levels and refuses to negotiate in good faith. House Republicans refer back to the 2012 Budget Control Act deal where they allowed taxes to rise on the top tax bracket as all the tax and revenue measures they needed to do and that any further deals are off-limits.

Then, take a look at the immigration debate. The Senate Gang of Eight is currently trying to hash out an immigration deal that would pass muster in the Senate, but faces an uncertain future in the House, where the far more radicalized Republican caucus is unwilling to negotiate in good faith. And it now turns out that Democrats may be getting played by Senate Republicans who are dragging out the matter in the hopes of watching it die before it even gets to the floor in the Senate.