I've said before that I felt that the middle class tax cuts were being held hostage to the high end tax cuts. I think it's tempting not to negotiate with hostage takers unless the hostage gets harmed. Then, people will question the wisdom of that strategy. In this case the hostage was the American people and I was not willing to see them get harmed.
OK. So look, I hate and detest the deal. So do you.
But Obama sees the choice as this: Let all the unemployment benefits end; let all the progressive tax cuts (including the EITC) end; or cut a deal and take the argument to 2012. That's the choice; it's useless to complain about the menu, because there aren't other options. (For those of us who are furious about the deal, we might do well to consider what the consequences of a standoff would be — and whether we're actually willing to suffer them.)
Usually when you hammer out a deal, you shake hands, smile for the cameras, and provide CYA for everyone. This was different. Obama is calling the GOP hostage-takers of the American public. He's right. And he's saying, you win today — but I'll see you in 2012, and we'll see who's priorities win.
So … I'm not sure that strategy will work. I'm not sure Obama — or even more likely, Congressional Dems — will be able to survive the base-depressing fallout.
Many of us see this as a turnover. Obama's calling it a punt. Personally I'm not sure.
Don’t know what to think of this one quite yet. I’d like to believe the rhetoric , and think that maybe, Mr O has finally caught on.
The left ain’t happy right now, I say wait and see. Does he fight or does he back down?
The most important thing we need is more stimulus. So in exchange for letting the Republicans keep their stupid tax cuts, we got some pretty decent stimulus: FICA tax cuts, which tends to skew poor because of how regressive the FICA tax is, and extending unemployment insurance. So that’s okay.
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p>I’d say the main problem though is that the Democrats are afraid to raise taxes on the middle class. It’s tremendously difficult to negotiate when the reasonable range of discussion is between keeping the Bush Tax cuts for all and keeping the Bush Tax cuts for all but the rich, especially when the only real leverage you have is to threaten to let the middle class pay taxes. Just because taxes should be progressive does not mean it’s practical to shunt all taxes on the rich.
will undermine Social Security. Do you think that they will ever be restored in this anti-tax environment? Moreover, the GOP will point to this shortfall later saying that benefits need to be reduced or the plan privatized because of the insolvency of the system.
The Social Security Trust Fund is just an accounting convention; it makes no actual difference whether money comes from Social Security or general revenue.
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p>And Republicans can make any bullshit argument they want, but at the end of the day that bullshit doesn’t matter. Elections are mostly determined by fundamentals, and so if Republicans control Congress they’ll do what they want, and if Democrats control then we’ll do what we want. We should be concerned with the facts of reality, not all this optics bullshit. I think I remember the phrase “reality-based” being used on some blog somewhere. đŸ™‚
those of us who take SS seriously and want to preserve it care very much how it’s funded. To us it’s not an “accounting convention” any more than is our national debt through treasury bonds.
You had better believe that Republicans will use the real underfunding of Social Security as a way to argue for dismantling it. And guess what — it will probably work!
It is true that the Social Security Trust Fund has the full faith and credit of the United States Treasury, just as privately held bonds are, so the Social Security Trust Fund ain’t nothing. But still, if the government is really committed to maintaining social security then if the Social Security Trust Fund ran out they could just borrow more from outside the government, and conversely the government is quite capable of killing Social Security even with money in the trust fund.
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p>Ideally what I’d like would be if a FICA tax cut was paired with an explicit transfer of money into the Social Security Trust Fund equal to how much money is lost from the tax cut (for all I know, that’s part of the deal, although that sounds like something the Republicans would whine about). That way, the trust fund isn’t actually effected by this maneuver. But in an imperfect world, I think that doing something that could potentially be problematic for Social Security in the future is an acceptable cost for getting stimulus now.
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p>(Also I’m not entirely unsympathetic to the logic of Chartalism, so in a sense the debt itself is an accounting convention: we could in principle just print the money directly, but going through the intermediary of borrowing money (that is itself backed with treasury bonds) helps assure the marketplace that our currency is trustworthy and that we won’t go all Zimbabwe. More generally, most financial matters are ultimately an accounting convention. Money is just numbers on paper. But by the same token, that means that saying something is just an accounting convention can be misleading, since these numbers on paper have painfully real effects.)
The biggest problem Democrats have is letting fears about what Republicans will say about them in the future prevent them from achieving the best policy.
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p>This tax compromise isn’t the best policy, but it’s still a stimulus. In fact, the payroll tax cut is a pretty decent stimulus since it is targeted at the people most likely to spend the money. We can’t worry that Republicans will use this as an argument to cut Social Security in the future. Let them; we already know from the past few years that being on record as wanting to cut Social Security is political suicide.
is eroding. Most people now wrongly believe that it’s nearly insolvent. The worst thing that can happen to the program is that it is seen as an anti-poverty measure or a free ride for the lower class. The fact that it’s a pension plan for every American, rich and poor, alike, and that everyone pays into it is the reason it’s so popular.
There are many better ways to stimulate the economy than to undermine SS.
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p>The means testing for SS is right around the corner. We’re hearing Dems and Republicans both talking about cutting out people “who don’t really need SS’… even though these same American people have contributed their whole life, AND also contributed far more than the average Joe.
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p>It will become another entitlement taking care of people who didn’t make plans for themselves while the people who are responsible will be “cut out” of the system.
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p>I suspect this is the goal of the Wall St. gang and that they are priming us to believe that benefit cuts will be “necessary”. When that happens, the middle class will kill the program for them. It will be a sad day when retirement security hinges on an easily manipulated stock market.
would take a measure like increasing the retirement age by a year or two. That would violate human rights, so the only solution must be to means-test the system
fair to ask someone to work as a waitress until 68? Or, a factory line worker? Or, a gas station attendant? Or, a grocery clerk? Can you imagine working on your feet all day in your late sixties? Let’s do remember, not everyone in this country works a nice desk job, with plenty of vacation time. Further, do you know that the life expectancy rate for the bottom 50% of workers has hardly risen since 1977? Don’t you think people deserve some retirement?
If they plan correctly and live their lives responsibly, they can retire anytime they want. You are a great example of the “Entitlement lifestyle” which has overtaken this country and will eventually cause our demise!
Are you kidding me? SS has a great ROI. It’s exactly the right program for retirement insurance.
like the young family for whom the breadwinner suffers a terrible accident and is disabled, unable to earn. Or the children who didn’t plan far enough ahead during their eight years on earth to be prepared for a deceased parent.
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p>OASDI baby. The S is survivor, the D disability. Social Security matters to those folks too, and being a survivor or disabled has little to do with responsibility.
Certainly you could have found a more obscure example of where SS is truly designed for. IMO, the vast majority live their lives with little to no planning for retirement. They put all their trust in SS simply taking care of them and that is not the purpose of SS. How many recipients as a percentage have situations like you mentioned?
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p>Be honest.
How many working-class people have access to workable pensions and retirement benefits? How many employers offer such plans to hourly workers?
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p>How does a family with two hourly workers, each making, say, $10/hour, “plan for retirement” in Massachusetts in 2010?
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p>Be honest, John.
So I would say not many hourly people are offered pensions.
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p>Why are two members of a family making $10/hour for their whole career? You may be one to something. What kind of people are happy to make $10/hour? My upbringing came from a blue collar family in a blue collar neighborhood in Dorchester. My take was I was going to do better than my parents and my neighbors. I wasn’t going to settle and if it meant more education then I was going to get it. For all the whining about education costs, the fact is people making $10/hour get their education for FREE! Matter of fact, they get lots of stuff for FREE.
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p>If you work for $10/hour for your whole life, then you should be happy with whatever the rest of us give you.
Good point about the silliness of the example of someone who works for 50+ years and raises a family but never manages to get a promotion or a better job along the way.
Give it to them.
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p>Don’t extend the tax cuts. Don’t “fix” the AMT. Don’t provide a temporary tax cut on payroll taxes.
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p>Only in bizarro world could the Dems have the House, Senate, and WH and the stimulus package (of yore and of Dec 2010) have more total money in tax cuts to those making $200k+ than it does in infrastructure projects and salary to firefighters, cops, and teachers combined.
unless you’re willing to lose, you should never enter into negotiations. The Democrats supposed calculus was that they weren’t going to lose the middle-class tax cuts. The Republicans are playing the Democrats like a fiddle. Why wouldn’t the Republicans then move as far to the right as possible knowing that the Democrats will accede to anything. Negotiating requires that you not reveal your whole hand.
Pretty pathetic really, and it doesn’t bode well for the party that is supposedly advocating for the middle class.
It’s taking the ball and sprinting to your own end zone…and being surprised when you’re tackled inside of it for a safety.
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p>Republicans have gotten to the point where they will more or less threaten the survival of the Republic if they don’t get this or that narrow slice of their agenda. Mainly because they’ve learned that it works with this current president.
I agree. The Republican position was essentially “give us lots of tax cuts or we will not give people unemployed longer than 1/2 a year any benefits, and we will cause taxes to be raised on everyone”. For God’s sake, did you see what they got on the estate tax? $10 million before it kicks in?
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p>Since this worked, the Republicans will do it again and again until they are called on it. They will become bolder in January when they have the majority in the house.
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p>Plus, in 6 months time, no one will remember the sausage-making. Obama will be criticized for the “Obama deficit” caused by the tax bill he signed.
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p>Obama should call out Republicans on their hostage taking techniques.
or bits of it on C-SPAN2 during Glee commercials. He was defensive but, of course, he had called it to defend what he had done. Beyond that, though, he looked tight. That’s what happens when you do dumb things and have to grope for tortured logic to justify the unjustifiable. I am afraid that he has lost his footing, his direction, not that his direction was so good in the first place. I hope I’m proven wrong on this. Reminded me a bit of Nixon in his delivery, strangely, and then of Bogart in the Caine Mutiny. Have I got too active an imagination? Nixon turned to be a decent president, program-wise, though.
That’s how bad this feels to me. Why couldn’t Obama insist on the right thing, i.e. ending the tax cuts for the wealthiest AND extending unemployment benefits? Fight it out (I know, “fight” is not in his repertoire) and then pin the tail on the elephants when they stonewall it. Let them feel the heat from the public. Then compromise at the end if need be. Instead Obama compromises early. His mantra seems to be, “Why compromise later when you can compromise today?”
we have to ask, why does Obama keep ticking off progressives? We can rationalize his strategies and tactics and the legislative obstacles he faces all you want – as we did with the health care reform bill and financial reform that left “too big to fail” still too big to fail – but at some point, his unwillingness or inability to wage spirited and successful progressive fights becomes hard to deny.
Even some people who you hear today are “not voting for him in 2012” blah blah blah. They sound like the people who were going to move out of MA if Deval won reelection. All talk, no walk! All these progressives will be voting for Obama come 2012 so he really doesn’t lose anything by dissing them.
must be embarrassed. Clinton stared these hostage takers RIGHT in the face…and WON. Anyone remember the poison pill they attached to flood relief that got vetoed? Who had egg on their face? Not Clinton. People blamed the Republicans who attached it.
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p>If you’re going to be a Clintonian Democrat on policy, then for god’s SAKE man, be a Clintonian in tactics too. Battles do need to be picked and waged, and this was the one to do it on.
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p>Meh.
Lynne, the Clinton I remember caved on tons of stuff. I’ll have to do my homework to prove it, but for now I’ll just say I remember differently.
…and won that fight politically.
Not on the income tax. His first act as President was Omnibus reconciliation of 1993, where he raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans and doubled the earned income tax credit, and it was a nail bitter, with Al Gore coming in to cast the deciding vote. If Democrats don’t even stand for Clinton-era taxation, what the hell do they stand for? He also allowed Newt Gingrich to close the federal government so he could protect Medicare from draconian cuts. All Obama needs to do is stand tall on the these tax cuts exclusively for the wealthiest Americans. If he can’t do that, he really should pack up his ball and go home.
He caved on things in order to appeal directly to the independents, and was nails on anything else.
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p>So: he “caved” on gays in the military, crime, and AFDC, but was willing to play chicken with Gingrich to the point of a crash, and beat him. In so doing, he broke a variety of GOP wedge issues that contributed to losses by Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis.
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p>I haven’t seen that kind of toughness from Obama on any issue. Rather, he makes noises that are music to the left’s ears and un-woos independents, makes unilateral concessions in order to appear “reasonable” which drives his wing crazy, and is barely noticed by the independents, except to the extent that he winds up being perceived as weak.
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p>If Clinton wanted to do this, he would set it up in such a way as to portray the GOP as unreasonable unless they did what he wanted.
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p>Obama is a partisan politician, and is therefore not suitable to mediate the political divisions in the country, which seems to be what he wants to do. He might as well be a Clintonian happy warrior, kicking his wing to the curb when necessary, but wading right into the fray when possible.
The reason he’s weak now is he didn’t fight before. The way to fight bullies is to stand up to them, which I don’t think he’s done at all in the past two years. If Obama had shown more strength before he wouldn’t have his back against the wall now.
Point #1: All the recent noise over the national debt appears to be just noise making, as this deal means a lot of borrowing from the likes of China and India. Why did we have that debt commission?
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p>Point #2: If you haven’t read this piece in the Washington Post by Scott Wilson, I recommend that you do so. The sources are allegedly from inside the White House and it lays out the strategy:
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p>I’m still digesting the article, so I’ll leave my own comments for later (I also have to cook dinner!).
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that it was independents who’d voted Dem in ’08, but not this year, that cost so many seats, don’t they think there’s a likelihood that those independents were disappointed that the change they expected did not happen? I think there is.
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p>Eight awful years of Bush and a tanking economy prompted a huge repudiation of Republican policy – which was then followed by two years of The Democrats largely pursuing the same policies. Why would those independents reward that, any more than Progressives would?
You know for a so called conservative columnist he’s a pretty smart guy. On December 2 he said.
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p>Pretty weird huh? Think the President is going to take the opportunity to make significant change in our tax code?
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p>C’mon guys tell me if this is crazy or not.
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I think he might tell Congress to do something like that, but not put any pressure on to make it happen. Congress would then cough up some half-baked mess of Democratic sound bites and Republican favors to the wealthy, and call it “reform.” Then Obama would sign it.
this president seems to think all he has is wielding the damn pen for signing legislation after it’s passed.
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p>Whither leadership??
and Obama won’t play. I’m not even sure he knows what the game is. Remember the appeasement meme? Candidate Obama will appease terrorists? We now know that our President is constitutionally incapable of dealing with conflict.
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p>As Krugman pretty much said on Monday, Obama has not only given up the battle, he’s doing his best to surrender the war. He’s positioning himself and the Democrats for a terrible (i.e. 2012) end game.
Krugman calls him the Incredible Shrinking President. When I was a kid, we had a word for guys like him, and it rhymed with wussy.
The Bush Administration was very much a good example of the dangers of “strength.” To be sure, part of the problem is that they were aggressive on behalf of wrong ideas. But they were also aggressive on behalf of basically good things that they just did very poorly.
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p>Most people would agree that terrorism is bad. So taking some sort of action against terrorism is an uncontroversial stance, especially given the position the Bush Administration was in in 2001. But when you’re concerned with being as aggressive as possible, it motivates you to go into directions which don’t really make sense for the sake of being aggressive against terrorism, invading countries left and right, hugely cracking down on civil liberties, etc. If a pussy had been President, he would have been more cautious. And even if there had still been hawks in Congress pushing for action, and even if he had submitted to their wishes, (and let’s be honest, Obama has been flawed on civil liberties and foreign policy) he wouldn’t have been adding more fuel to the fire.
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p>Politicians need to be cautious, and they need to accept political realities. To some extent that’s a “conservative” idea, but since actual conservatives have long since abandoned it, someone ought to subscribe to it. If it’s all just loud-mouthed assholes pushing for the most aggressive version of their ideals, then there’s no time for calm contemplative consideration of the actual facts of the matter.
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p>To be clear, I think Obama is probably too much of a pussy on certain issues. But I think that the pendulum of political discourse in general has been pushed way too far away from pussies. We need more pussies.
Desperate times call for bold action. Two wars, a disastrous recession with foreclosures and prolonged unemployment, and world climate change is not the time for timid leaders. He can be civil, he just needs to be vocal, resolute and stand on the side of justice, not on the side of caution.
… riven by cynical emotionalism and sui generis entitlement…
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p>…Pragmatic and deliberate, indeed cautious, progress can, itself, be bold action.
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p>Seriously, ya’ll need to decide if you’re looking for good policy or some sort of cathartic liberal orgasm. Now this compromise isn’t great, to be sure, but it is acceptable and it’s nowhere near the accusation of blind and feckless abdication some here are trying to paint. I, as much as anyone here, want to see the GOP get the comeuppance that ought to be up and coming. But I won’t be holding my breath and waiting for the adults to panic. That is, frankly, childish.
It’s being satisfied with treading water when we’re up to our necks and hoping a favorable tide will take us to a safer place at some later time.
Can we please find another epithet?
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p>This is vulgar, demeaning to every woman (and certainly to the many strong women here who are perfectly able to fight), and just plain boorish.
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p>We all know what you’re saying. It has nothing to do with gender and nothing to do with anatomy.
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p>Please find another word.
Frankly my mind doesn’t jump to the gynecological connotations of the word pussy, although of course that’s the etymology. There are cats and there are wimps and there are vaginas. Three completely unrelated homonyms.
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p>But yeah sure, Obama’s a “wimp” then. I was just following Mark Bail’s lead. (He self-censored, but whatever, we all know knew what he was talking about.) Vulgarity doesn’t really bother me at all, but I certainly don’t want to demean people. If I did that, I’d just be a dick.
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p>(I’m sorry, that pun was too easy. I’ll stop now.)
Getting good stuff done is more important than our ideological purity.
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p>To hear the Senators complaining you would think that they weren’t the ones who created this monstrous situation by their constant embrace of the banner of bi-partisanship (how about that Baucus health care plan) and their failure to have the guts to push an agenda using every trick in the rule books to beat the Republicans. They were more worried about process than accomplishment, thus playing right into the Republican’s hands. Let’s face it, do you think our candidates would have been better off saying we accomplished all these things in spite of the Republicans instead of whining that we couldn’t get anything done because the Republicans wouldn’t let them?
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p>I am glad to see that Obama is going to try to avoid the same mistake. It may not be pretty, but some very good things are going to happen for people who need the help, and we live to fight another day on taxes on the wealthy.
The Obama meme is that we’re a bunch of lefties who won’t compromise. Democratic Party faithful believe in ideology AND politics. The tax bill extension is both, and Obama screwed them both up.
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p>This issue was eminently winnable for the Dems. It was worth the fight. The GOP could have been revealed as hypocrites for crying about the deficit and then extending a tax cut that increases it. The GOP could have been attacked for caring about rich people and their tax bill than the unemployed. The Dems could have let the tax cuts expire, blame the GOP for its intransigence, and then gone for a real stimulus package next session and further embarass the GOP. But noooooooooo! Obama doesn’t play politics. Would I even miss the $15 I get in my check?!
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p>What happens instead, a bill with little stimulative advantage. A bit of help on unemployment, but more income inequality.
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p>Obama thinks the Presidency is the same as his AP U.S. Government test.
We Massachusetts Dems have many things to be proud of. Tragically we now see that helping elect President Obama is quickly receding from that list of accomplishments we cherish. Without the support of Ted Kennedy, of John Kerry, and those of us who will always be proud to have followed them, President Obama would not be where he is today.
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p>It is time to let our President know we are not amused by his total capitulation to forces we have fought against throughout our years of work as Democrats.
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p>It is time to figure out who can best raise our banner in 2012, and to recognize that person may not be Barack Obama.
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p>I believe that Senator Kennedy’s 1980 campaign strengthened the Democratic Party. I will always be proud of having given that year to work for him, and for our country. There are many on this list that did the same, and think the same today.
This is from David Kocieniewski of the NY Times who lays out the ugly details here. Let’s hope that there are enough principled Democrats in Congress left to scuttle this grand bargain. Indications are that many are finally rising up in dissent.
Last night his lines included references to “that great Republican President, Barack Obama”, that the President’s new slogan is, “Yes We Caved!”, and that Democrats are so upset now THEY are the ones asking to see the President’s birth certificate.
The jury is out once again on will this stimulate job growth. In my opinion it will do very little, instead it will likely just keep hope alive for so many until other factors kick in and kill our dreams once and for all 10% unemployment is likely just around the corner and who runs on growing unemployment. Should prove interesting in 2012.
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p>Obama has no line in the sand and the Republican now know it they will keep pushing and pushing to get what they want.Lets hope Bernie Sanders has the strength in the Senate to push back. If that fails it would appear that Republicans will continue do this because they know how to win in a dog fight we do not.
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p>Cutting the Social Security tax is a bad idea it is only shifting the deficit off line, a simple accounting trick to buy time. The comments thus far have been more or less on point in this argument how much 2% of most peoples contribution will go to grow the economy is likely to be just spent on inflation in the energy sectors not new spending.
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p>Obama has now crossed my line in the sand and I will support any other Democrat who will run in 2012. Obama should be a one term President.
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p>One more tidbit to chew on I got this from a Colleague overseas this AM
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p>how about cutting these out to put more stimulus on Main Street
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p>Best to all
Speaking of no lines in the sand (literally in this case), he was also unable to apply pressure successfully on the settlements issue and has officially given up.
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p>I always thought the President of the United States was supposed to be the Most Powerful Leader in the World. New title ideas:
– Conceder in Chief
– Master of Throwing in the Towel
– Champion of Conflict Avoidance
– Mitch’s Bitch
At least Obama gets something from major concessions to the Republicans.
BBC :
The Half-a-Loaf Oaf. But that doesn’t work because he goes for far less than half a loaf.
It must be obvious to Netanyahu that if Obama did “draw a line in the sand” and say, “if you build settlements, we’re gonna do X in response/retaliation”, then the Republicans would knee-jerk say, “no we won’t” and filibuster the response.
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p>By not standing up to the Republicans, Obama has cut himself off at the knees in many other areas, and the world knows it.
Deep breaths everybody.
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p>If you don’t believe the President did the right thing your time is better spent calling your own Members of Congress to urge them to vote no or you won’t support them in 2012. They don’t have time to read anonymous posters on BMG for advice.