Somehow, it never occurs to Jon that Obama likes to talk about taxing the rich, a lot, much more, in fact, than he actually enjoys taxing the rich. A politician who says one thing and does another! Imagine that!
Bruce Bartlett, as ever the voice of reason, points out that the tentative agreement isn’t a game changer because the economy is perking along reasonably well, and neither the President nor Congress makes tough decisions unless they have to. Why not? Well, back in 1991 George Bush I made a tough decision, agreeing to a package of substantial spending cuts and tax increases. Result: George lost in 1992. In 1993, Democrats in Congress voted for a similar package. Result: They lost in ’94. In 2008, George II made some tough decisions—after making a lot of lousy ones. Result: Republicans got clobbered in 2008. In 2009, the Democrats made some tough decisions. Result: They got clobbered in 2010. The moral is, don’t make any tough decisions.
At this writing, it looks like the Republicans in the House may bail. I would love to see the Republicans fall out in total civil war, but they’re probably too smart for that to happen. Optimist that I am, I like to think that the external and internal political fallout will be harsher for the Republicans than the Democrats. I think Boehner will be bruised whether the deal goes through or not, and I think Obama will get the credit if the deal passes and the Republicans will get the blame if it doesn’t
Afterwords
Regardless of all the politics, the killer for me is that the package contains the one-year extension of a tax credit for wind farms. Hey, every bill needs a provision that is totally useless. Right?
Update
The House Republicans did bail, not by rejecting the bill but by having an up and down vote on the Obama Plan, which passed, thanks to massive support from Democrats and tepid support from turn-coat Republicans, including Speaker Boehner, who must be wishing he could spend more time working on his tan. Some people are saying that the vote on raising the debt ceiling, now scheduled to come up in late February, will be the Republicans’ turn. It may be that Obama will feel that he owes Boehner one, that it’s a bad idea to back your adversary into a corner over and over again. I think Obama is still too willing to make a deal on Social Security and Medicare that will make his Wall Street friends happy, so there’s nothing wrong with liberals to continue howling about “giveaway,” even though I think they’re often wrong on the details.
CORRECTIONS
Well, I screwed this one up royally. In my “clobbering” paragraph, I mangled the dates horribly, writing “2000” when I should have written “2008,” etc., so that my chronology was about eight years off, making the whole thing total gibberish. I’ve cleaned it up now (I hope), so that no one can see how stupid I am. OK, no one is probably reading this now, and the people who read it the first time around have probably stopped reading the blog, if they ever started. Lame!
