“But For Protecting The Middle Class”: Still Believe President Obama Seeks A Permanent American Socialist State?
One of the strangest—and for me, most annoying—perversions of politics in the Obama era is the meme pursued by so many on the right suggesting that this president is a raging socialist who seeks to install a permanent welfare state in America—despite all evidence to the contrary.
In the wake of the fiscal cliff deal—supported not only by the President but by an overwhelming vote of elected Democrats—we should now be able to put this foolishness to rest once and for all as we acknowledge a simple and clear reality—
If Barack Obama is indeed a socialist, he must be the absolute worst socialist in recorded history.
How do we now know this beyond any reasonable question of a doubt?
Any good conservative will be among the first to tell you that financing a permanent welfare state takes huge amounts of money—money that can only be raised by taxing a wide swath of the nation’s citizenry. And yet, the President just pushed through a law permanently lowering taxes for some 99 percent of all Americans— and was hailed as a big winner for his effort to do so.
For someone who would prefer to be President of, say, Sweeden, such a deal could only be viewed as a crushing defeat, not a political victory.
And if you somehow imagine that the President believes he can accomplish the financing of his “European style welfare state” through the rather meager increase in progressive tax rates now to be levied on the nation’s largest earners, I would suggest you take heed of the many conservatives who have incessantly reminded us over these past few months that the sum total of the tax increases on the rich will only serve to fund government for a few days a year—clearly nowhere near enough cash to fund a true, socialist agenda.
Still, I know what you’re thinking…the President is planning to create his socialist paradise by borrowing and printing all the money required to pay the high cost of the expanded welfare state he covets.
Sorry…it just doesn’t work and the President would know this better than just about anyone.
While borrowing money may be the modus operandi for filling in the shortfalls when it comes to financing entitlement programs in an era of relatively low taxes (at least comparatively speaking) and a dramatic increase in the senior population depending upon entitlement programs, I suspect even the most conservative economists would tell you —correctly I would add—that all of our available borrowing power is strained just trying to stay even with our entitlement and defense obligations, let alone expand entitlements to the point where we would even approach a government philosophy that could be comparable with a European socialistic society.
Indeed, even if the President chose to press for more borrowing or printing, he could, at best, only do so in support of the existing entitlement programs as it would take an act of Congress to expand the system.
Does anyone believe the Congress is heading in the direction of expanding entitlements? We have a House of Representatives gerrymandered into GOP control for a period likely to last at least until the end of the decade—meaning it will outlive Obama’s second term.
Thus, when Obama got behind preserving the Bush tax cuts for all but the wealthiest Americans, he did so knowing that he would never be able to expand the entitlement programs at any time during the remainder of his term. If it was a socialist society he was seeking, he had but one chance and that was to raise taxes on everyone, not just the very wealthy.
So, exactly how is it possible that a President and a Democratic Party—hell bent on creating this permanent welfare state in America—could support any deal that would not allow the Bush tax cuts to sunset as scheduled so that tax rates would return to the larger numbers of the Clinton era?
Such support would make no sense for anyone favoring expansion of the welfare state. And yet, this President chose to support the permanent lowering of taxes on the middle class as did his party.
While you may be displeased with the fiscal cliff compromise for any number of reasons, including the failure of the parties to do much of anything about spending, the simple fact remains that—for better or for worse—decades of Democratic Party/progressive tax philosophy went out the window last week when an overwhelming majority of Democrats voted to support the fiscal cliff deal—and with it went any rational support for the notion that President Obama and his party have some secret, European socialist vision in mind for the country.
All you need do to understand this is take a look at the number of Congressional Democrats who cast their votes in support of the two pieces of legislation that produced the Bush tax cuts and compare those votes to the vote of the Congressional Democrats making those very cuts permanent for approximately 99 percent of all Americans.
The vote tally for the 2001 bill that created the first round of the Bush tax cuts delivered just 28 votes in support from House Democrats. The second round—which came in 2003—could only muster up 7 Democratic votes in support.
The vote this week to make these very same tax cuts permanent received overwhelming support from House Democrats, who cast 172 votes in favor of very likely ending middle class tax increases during our lifetime—and they did so at the specific behest of the same Democratic president who many argue is committed to creating the American welfare state.
That simply does not add up for a President looking to create France in America.
As a result, one cannot rationally argue that the President, and his party— who cast their support in favor of leaving more money in the pockets of 99 percent of Americans so that they could spend the money supporting the businesses of America rather than handing it over to government to spend it for them—desire the path of socialism.
While I’m certain there will be no shortage of issues available to those wishing to attack the President, can we now dare to hope that the next time someone feels the need to vent, they might do so without the whole “Obama is a socialist” narrative?
I hope so. What was a silly narrative before the fiscal cliff deal, it is an embarrassingly preposterous narrative today.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, January 6, 2013
“A Deal For All”: A New Focus For Congress Called “Fixing The Economy”
The Perils of Pauline melodrama over the “fiscal cliff” will drag on as Washington heads toward another “debt ceiling” faceoff that will climax over the next eight weeks or so.
This farce captivates the media, but no one should be fooled. This is largely a debate about how much damage will be done to the economic recovery and who will bear the pain. There is bipartisan consensus that the tax hikes and spending cuts that Congress and the White House piled up to build the so-called fiscal cliff are too painful and will drive the economy into a recession. So the folderol is about what mix of taxes and spending cuts they can agree on that won’t be as harsh.
Largely missing is any discussion of how to fix the economy, to make it work for working people once more. Just sustaining the faltering recovery won’t get it done. We’re still struggling with mass unemployment, declining wages and worsening inequality. Corporate profits now capture an all-time record percentage of the economy; workers’ wages have hit an all-time low. A little constriction, or a lot, won’t do anything to change that reality.
So how about a New Year’s resolution for Washington’s political class: Vow to focus on what can be done to fix the economy, rather than on how much to lacerate it. That would require dealing with causes, not effects. And those surely would include:
Inequality: Clearly — as even the International Monetary Fund has recognized — extreme inequality saps the effective demand needed for a robust economy.
We need to rebuild a middle class if we want to again have a vibrant, growing economy. That requires a lot more than repealing the Bush tax breaks for the top 2 percent. We should be lifting the minimum wage, empowering workers to bargain for a fair share of the productivity and profits they help to generate, and limiting CEO pay packages that give them multimillion-dollar incentives to ship jobs abroad or plunder their own companies. Congress and the White House might also imitate the Federal Reserve and keep pressing the stimulus pedal until we move much closer to full employment.
Catastrophic climate change: Gross domestic product registers growth when people go to work picking up the pieces after a climate disaster, but Americans suffer rather than benefit. It’s long past time for the United States to get serious about global warming, make the investments needed to capture a lead in the green industrial revolution that is sweeping the world, end the subsidies to Big Oil and King Coal, and help the movement to clean energy.
Fixing health care: The wrongheaded agonizing over whether to cut scholarships for poor students or lay off food inspectors ignores the gorilla in the accounting books. Our long-term budget deficits are a consequence of our broken health-care system. If we spent per capita what other industrial nations spend on health care (with, incidentally, better health results), we would be projecting surpluses. This isn’t about stripping 65-year-olds of Medicare; it’s about taking on the drug and insurance companies and hospital complexes that drive up our costs. Affordable health care is a right, not a privilege.
Rebuilding America. While Washington hyperventilates about cutting spending, the excesses of this conservative era have starved society of essential building blocks. A high-wage economy needs a modern, efficient, world-class infrastructure to be competitive. Families depend on effective governance for clean air and water, safe sewage, enforcement of occupational safety standards, world-class schools and more. Our debate has deteriorated to the point that a Democratic president brags that domestic discretionary spending — which covers basic public services from the Coast Guard to child nutrition — will be cut to a share of the economy not seen since Eisenhower. That is, in a word, goofy.
Why not at least begin an informed discussion of the services we need and the ways we can afford them?
The Congressional Progressive Caucus has started that discussion with its “Deal For All” — a smart mix of fair-share taxes and cuts designed to ensure that those who never benefited from “shared prosperity” don’t get whacked unjustly by the prevailing mantra of “shared sacrifice.”
Americans, sensibly enough, will grow more disgusted with Washington whatever resolution is reached on the fiscal cliff over these next weeks. Politicians will continue to fight about how much damage to do, not how to build what comes next. What the country needs is legislators who will focus on building rather than dismantling.
By: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 31, 2012
“Leaping Lizards And Other Reptiles”: Senate Showdown Set For Today On Fiscal Cliff
Fiscal talks took a step backwards earlier today when Republicans insisted on including chained CPI in the agreement. A Senate Democratic aide told me this afternoon, “We believed it was mutually understood that chained CPI was off the table for a smaller-scale agreement, and see Republicans’ continued insistence on including it as a major setback.”
Democrats held firm, and soon after, GOP members backed off — at least on this one provision.
Negotiations over a last-ditch agreement to head off large tax increases and sweeping spending cuts in the new year appeared to resume on Sunday afternoon after Republican senators withdrew a demand that any deal must include a new way of calculating inflation that would lower payments to beneficiary programs like Social Security and slow their growth.
Senate Republicans emerged from a closed-door meeting to say they agreed with Democrats that the request — which had temporarily brought talks to a standstill — was not appropriate for a quick deal to avert the tax increases and spending cuts starting Jan. 1.
To hold the line against raising taxes on high-income households while fighting for cuts to Social Security was “not a winning hand,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.
Imagine that. Republicans were, in effect, arguing, “We’ll raise middle class taxes unless Democrats accept Social Security cuts.” It would seem “not a winning hand” is an understatement.
But while the GOP’s shift in posture helped keep the talks from collapsing entirely, the remaining areas of disagreement — estate taxes, the sequester, extending jobless benefits, a debt-ceiling extension — have not been, and may ultimately not be, resolved.
With this in mind, the stage has been set for an interesting Senate showdown tomorrow.
On the one hand, there are the ongoing efforts to reach a compromise. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had nothing more to offer Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), so the Republican has now begun negotiating with Vice President Biden.
If they can work something out — what such an agreement might look like is hard to imagine at this point — the bill would be brought to the Senate sometime after 11 a.m. tomorrow. And if it were to pass, the House would have a half-day, or perhaps a little less, to consider the agreement, bring to the floor, and vote on it.
On the other hand, if no Senate deal emerges, Reid will take President Obama’s advice, bring the White House’s original offer — lower rates on income up to $250,000 and extended unemployment benefits — and dare Senate Republicans to filibuster it.
And what about the House? Leaders in the lower chamber aren’t saying much at this point, in large part because they have no idea what the Senate will do, but the House is already prepared to waive its three-day rule — the measure intended to give members time to read a bill before voting on it — and House Speaker John Boehner has already committed to both sides that he will bring to the floor any bill that passes the Senate.
We’ll know a bit more by morning.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 30, 2012
“Hijacked By Ideologues”: The Republicans Have Now Agreed To Raise Taxes For The Entire Country
The inside line from Washington is that there will be no Fiscal Cliff deal before the end of the year.
That’s not surprising. Unfortunately, it always seemed unlikely that our politicians would agree to any vote that could be framed as them having voted to “raise taxes” — which any deal before December 31 could have been framed as.
The more likely scenario seemed to be that politicians would wait until taxes increased automatically on January 1 and then heroically vote to cut them — at least some of them.
And that’s still my bet about what will happen in January.
But just because it seemed likely that politicians would be ruled by “politics” instead of pragmatism doesn’t mean this is something to be proud of.
And let’s be clear about what has happened in the past two months.
What has happened is that the political party that has based its entire existence on never agreeing to a tax hike of any kind has essentially agreed to tax hike for the entire country.
By not accepting the Democrats’ offer to extend the Bush tax cuts for ~98% of Americans, the Republicans have agreed to let taxes rise on ALL Americans.
The Republicans have done this, it appears, only (or at least mainly) in a stubborn attempt to preserve lower tax rates on the highest-earning Americans.
And now those tax rates, too, will go up.
And the economy will slow down.
The Republicans have tried to pin the blame for the tax hikes on the Democrats, but most Americans have seen through this. And rightly so. The Republicans agreed to the coming tax hikes when they voted for the legislation in the summer of 2011. And now, by refusing to extend the tax cuts for all Americans but the richest 2%, the Republicans have tacitly once again agreed to raise taxes on all Americans.
This is what happens when a party that used to be known for pragmatism and responsibility allows itself to be hijacked by ideologues.
A deal to mute the impact of the Fiscal Cliff and raise the debt ceiling should be within easy reach of reasonable people on both sides of the aisle.
Unfortunately, our government isn’t run by reasonable people anymore. Especially on the Republican side.
NOTE: This is my personal view, not “Business Insider’s” So if you want to lecture someone about how the Republicans are absolutely right to agree to raise taxes on the entire country just to avoid voting to increase taxes on the highest-earning Americans, please direct those notes to me.
By: Henry Blodgett, Business Insider, December 27, 2012
“A Very Naughty Boy”: John Boehner Gets More Than 2,000 Lumps Of Coal For Christmas
House Speaker John Boehner will be greeted by more than 2,000 pieces of coal when he returns to Washington after what was unlikely to have been a relaxing vacation in Ohio amid the standoff over the fiscal cliff.
The coal is being delivered by The Action—a campaign to end the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent—which says Boehner has been extra “naughty” this year.
Last week, Boehner proposed legislation called “Plan B” that would have ended the Bush-era tax cuts on those with income of up to $1 million, but some House Republicans refused to support it. Democrats and Republicans disagree over whether the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers should see higher rates, but both parties agree they want to avoid tax increases for the middle class.
On NaughtyBoehner.com, The Action entreats supporters to call Boehner’s office because he “is desperate to protect the richest Americans at the expense of the rest of us.” For each call made, the campaign promises to hand deliver one lump of coal to Boehner’s office. As of this writing, the campaign counts 2333 pieces of coal as ready for delivery.
President Barack Obama will be back in Washington Thursday to try to negotiate once more with Congress to avoid the fiscal cliff before tax increases and spending cuts kick in at the end of the year.
By: Elizabeth Flock, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, December 26, 2012
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