Will President Obama go down in history known as "The Great Compromiser"? Maybe. BBI
Obama Caves on Tax Cuts, Endorses 'Bush-McCain Philosophy'
Ari Berman
December 6, 2010
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama said over and over that he was running to "put an end to the Bush-McCain philosophy." Campaigning in Colorado just days before the election, Obama clearly stated his opposition to Bush-era economic policies and ridiculed the idea that "we should give more and more to millionaires and billionaires and hope that it trickles down on everybody else. It’s a philosophy that gives tax breaks to wealthy CEOs and to corporations that ship jobs overseas while hundreds of thousands of jobs are disappearing here at home."
In 2008, Obama presented himself as a clean break from the Bush and Clinton dynasties and a fresh face for the nation and the world. Yet once in office he packed his White House with holdovers from the Bush and Clinton administrations and continued or even accelerated key Bush-era policies, whether in the realm of counterterrorism, Afghanistan or offshore drilling. The latest "compromise" on the Bush tax cuts, extending the upper-income tax cuts for two years in exchange for the continuation of unemployment benefits, is simply the latest in a series of capitulations from the Obama White House.
Obama and Congressional Democrats bungled the tax debate from the start, even though it was clearly a winning issue for the president and his party. Even though everyone knew the Bush tax cuts were set to expire at the end of this year, Democrats failed to develop an overall strategy for this issue last summer or force a vote in the Congress before the election—at a time when even Republicans like John Boehner said they’d vote to extend only the middle-class tax cuts if that was their only option. Yet Democrats refused to put the GOP on the spot or talk about the tax cuts during the campaign, blurring what should have been a core distinction between the parties; Democrats for the middle class, Republicans for the rich. As former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland said recently: “If we can't win that argument we might as well just fold up.”
Once Democrats finally decided to vote on only the middle-class tax cuts, last week, Republicans had all the momentum and the issue had become mere political theater. Even as Congress was voting on the Democrats’ plan, Obama signaled to Republicans that a more favorable deal was just around the corner, giving the GOP no incentive to side with Democrats. The Obama administration’s posture on the tax cuts is eerily similar to its stance on the public option during healthcare reform—the president says he wants the policy, but does absolutely nothing to fight for it, either through his own bully pulpit or on Capitol Hill. Last week, Organizing for America asked Obama supporters to phone bank in support of the DREAM Act, repealing "don’t ask, don’t tell," and a pay freeze for federal workers (yet another concession to the GOP), but did nothing on the tax front.
Read the full article at:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/156852/obama-caves-tax-cuts-endorses-bush-mccain-philosophy
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