Make your choice: 1. All tax cuts extended. 2. No tax cuts exended. Republicans were not willing to compromise.
Call me jaded, but here's how it will play out in Congress... The WH is all in on this and keeps the Dems in line for a vote in favor of the "compromise." (Of course, they somehow couldn't do this when it was necessary for previous votes on the issue.) Repubs will rebel and it will pass with mostly Dem votes and handful of very safe Repub votes and then Repubs will run against it for two years, particularly the added deficit that the large tax cuts will bring.
I hate the party labels because it doesn't matter who is in charge, the middle class is getting screwed. It's middle class v elite at this point.
So when Obama bungles the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, which were temporary and created, supposedly, to "give back" money created by the surplus under Democratic President Bill Clinton, by not addressing this issue prior to the midterm elections, we're supposed to praise him for "reaching across the aisle" and being "bipartisan," when what he has in fact done is cave in to the Republicans on the issue they cared most about, rewarding their wealthy backers and, at the same time, reneging on a key campaign promise not only to those of his own party, made when running for the nomination, but a promise to the country should he be elected? That's leadership? So no one has a reason to complain? No one has a damn good reason to be angry? We're supposed to hope that he secretly has a grand political strategy to turn everything around in 2012, getting himself reelected and reversing the losses from the midterm elections? Seriously? Are you kidding? With all due respect, I have to wonder what alternate universe some of you are inhabiting. Tell me how you do it, please. Perhaps I can find another alternate universe, one where the middle class is rewarded, not punished and blackmailed. One where an intellectual, inexperienced Democratic President is actually a good leader of his political party and the nation. Notice I didn't even hold out for great. At this point, good is good enough. Good is better than the excrement that controls the Republican Party and appoints right wing radicals that now control the US Supreme Court, a radical court that declared a corporation a "person," tossing out several decades of established law to open the spigot for corporate donations to their favorite "charity." Their pawns, the Republican Party. This is just a perfect storm of stupidity. What's worse is that I still have to read the ardent defense of this president by the people he has betrayed, his supporters and the Democratic Party. I'm waiting for a miracle. I'm not holding my breath.
I though this video by Cenk Uygur is great: <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8lDpLy2rGs0?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Iou9Z3whTU" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>
I'm OK with extending the tax cuts for another two years. You don't raise taxes during a weak economy. Its not like the tax money will magically get back into the economy. The government is going to spend whatever they are going to spend regardless of tax cut or no tax cut. It does make Obama appear weak.
I was half listening to the Press Conference, but did Barack Obama just lie? It sounded like he said that he opposed the part of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and that Republicans were opposed to extending the Bush tax cuts for the middle class.
^He didn't lie, he spun. Both parties have been using those frames to the point that if Obama had no compromised (and let them expire), then he'd be seen as raising taxes against the middle class. Since Americans have shown and proven that they're idiots who digest w/o context, Republicans could frame that he broke his campaign promise not to raise middle class taxes.
But his statement was that they would still continue to debate this for the next 2 years and he would continue to oppose the Bush cuts for the upper class just like the Republicans would oppose the Bush cuts for the middle class. That's a flat out lie. The Republicans want to extend the cuts for both groups.
Also let me add that I love how Obama is school Chuck Todd right now from NBC. LOL Obama is using what I said earlier today about earlier he was being blasted for being too stubborn and now for being too willing to compromise. Obama: (paraphrased) Republicans will find I'm itching for a fight on a whole range of issues. Edit: Obama is killing some of these reporters right now. Stupid questions are being asked and he is embarrassing them. Obama: Aim for broader overhaul of tax code over next two years.
He spun the Republican hardline position of All or Nothing to imply a Republican willingness to "raise" middle class taxes.
if they want to extend tax cuts for both groups, they shouldn't have voted against it...they're on record as having done so.
Were you one of the ones saying Democrats who voted against troop funding measures in order to do better bills were against the troops?
oh, Sam, a little misleading, chap. Obama is better suited to community organizing and maybe giving a law school lecture here and there. He's not so good at the whole president thang
Just heard Obama's press conference and I think this was one of the most illuminating press conferences. What this told me was that Obama's real line in the sand is getting things passed. Unlike Clinton who was willing to handle not getting things passed and even seeing government shut down in the interest of ideology and politics Obama will not. Obama's biggest fear isn't necessarily the far right but gridlocked government and he believes in an activist government in the literal sense of a government that does things, not the ideological sense.
This is the best gloss that can be put on it. The GOP was so eager to please the over $250k crowd, i.e., themselves and key contributors that they were even willing to risk that even the inefficient stimulus might help the economy and hurt their main goal of defeating Obama. Still Obama supports key GOP narratives and looks like a wimp not something which helps the majority of Americans.
