Obama does reminds me about the way the Soviet Union used to negotiate – “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours will be mine”.
by Charles Krauthammer
Let’s understand President Obama’s strategy in the “fiscal cliff” negotiations. It has nothing to do with economics or real fiscal reform. This is entirely about politics. It’s Phase 2 of the 2012 campaign. The election returned to him to office. The fiscal cliff negotiations are designed to break the Republican opposition and grant him political supremacy, something he thinks he earned with his landslide 2.8-point victory margin on Election Day.
This is why he sent Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to the Republicans to convey not a negotiating offer but a demand for unconditional surrender. House Speaker John Boehner had made a peace offering of $800 billion in new revenues. Geithner pocketed Boehner’s $800 billion, doubled it to $1.6 trillion, offered risible cuts that in 2013 would actually be exceeded by new stimulus spending, and then demanded that Congress turn over to the president all power over the debt ceiling.
Boehner was stunned. Mitch McConnell laughed out loud. Alas, Boehner gave again, coming back a week later with spending-cut suggestions — as demanded by Geithner — only to have them dismissed with a wave of the hand.
What’s going on here? Having taken Boehner’s sword, and then his shirt, Obama sent Geithner to demand Boehner’s trousers. Perhaps this is what Obama means by a balanced approach.
He pretends that Boehner’s offer to raise revenues by eliminating deductions rather than by raising rates is fiscally impossible. But on July 22, 2011, Obama had said that “$1.2 trillion in additional revenues … could be accomplished without hiking tax rates, but could simply be accomplished by eliminating loopholes, eliminating some deductions and engaging in a tax reform process.” Which is exactly what the Republicans are offering today.
As for the alleged curative effect on debt of Obama’s tax-rate demand — the full rate hike on the “rich” would have reduced the 2012 deficit from $1.10 trillion to $1.02 trillion.
[........]
Such nonsense abounds because Obama’s objective in these negotiations is not economic but political: not to solve the debt crisis but to fracture the Republican majority in the House. Get Boehner to cave, pass the tax hike with Democratic votes provided by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and let the Republican civil war begin.
It doesn’t even matter whether Boehner gets deposed as speaker. Either way, the Republican House would be neutered, giving Obama a free hand to dominate Washington and fashion the entitlement state of his liking.
This is partisan zero-sum politics, nothing more. Obama has never shown interest in genuine debt reduction. He does nothing for two years, then spends the next two ignoring his own debt-reduction commission. In less than four years, he has increased U.S. public debt by a staggering 83 percent. As a percentage of GDP, the real marker of national solvency, it has spiked from 45 percent to 70 percent.
Obama has never once publicly suggested a structural cut in entitlements. On the contrary, he created an entirely new entitlement — Obamacare — that, according to the CBO, will increase spending by $1.7 trillion.
What’s he thinking? Doesn’t Obama see looming ahead the real economic cliff — a European-like collapse under the burden of unsustainable debt? Perhaps, but he wants to complete his avowedly transformational social-democratic agenda first, and let his successors — likely Republican — act as tax collectors on the middle class and takers of subsidies from the mouths of babes.
[......] If Obama remains intransigent, let him be the one to take us over the cliff. And then let the new House, which is sworn in weeks before the president, immediately introduce and pass a full across-the-board restoration of the Bush tax cuts.
Obama will counter with the usual all-but-the-rich tax cut — as the markets gyrate and the economy begins to wobble under his feet.
Result? We’re back to square one, but with a more level playing field. The risk to Obama will be rising and the debt ceiling will be looming.
Most important of all, however, Republicans will still be in possession of their unity, their self-respect — and their trousers.
Tags: Charles Krauthammer
GERONIMOOOOOO!!!
Do it, 0. Take us off the cliff yourself.
And Boehner/Cantor are playing right into his hands
Here’s how the negotiations work…
@ eaglesoars:
Boehner has the spine of a jellyfish. It was his stupidity that set up the “Fiscal Cliff” in the first place. This is a win-win for Obama. If the Republicans cave, all that Krauthammer says will come to pass. If they don’t, Obama gets a recession he can demagogue and blame on the Republicans. Obama can’t lose and we can’t win. This is a result of Boehner’s stupidity or collusion. Like I’ve said before, I don’t think the Republican “leasdership” is actually trying to win.
Iron Fist wrote:
Have you read about the consent decree that the Republicans signed some time back, which prevents them from investigating voter fraud?
Utterly mindboggling.
Iron Fist wrote:
And at a time when the Democrats were running scared, too—with the Tea Party congressional win on one side and an uncertain election coming up on the other.
Boehner was at the fulcrum, and he blew it.
Iron Fist wrote:
He thinks if he doesn’t get ‘a deal’ they’ll lose the mid-terms. Hence the purge.
But now it’s civil war.
@ eaglesoars:
Boehner doesn’t seem to understand that without the base, they don’;t have a majority. Or he doesn’t care. As I’ve said before, I am convinced that the Republican “leadership” is just as happy to be the minority party. They don’t act like they want to win.
Iron Fist wrote:
Did you see my quote the other day from Orwell’s essay on Kipling, referring to “a permanent and pensioned opposition?”
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Yes, I did. I think that sums it up nicely. I think that is exactly what the Republican “leadership” has become. Add into that that they like their tony parties in Georgetown, and if they became an opposition party in truth, the invites to those would dry up. It is more than just money to these people. They are all, Democrat and Republican alike, unimaginably wealthy. It is about status to them.
Iron Fist wrote:
WH Auden had it pegged, long ago. Read the whole thing, but particularly the last 18 lines or so:
The Managers
—WH Auden, 1948
In the bad old days it was not so bad:
The top of the ladder
Was an amusing place to sit; success
Meant quite a lot—leisure
And huge meals, more palaces filled with more
Objects, books, girls, horses
Than one would ever get round to, and to be
Carried uphill while seeing
Others walk. To rule was a pleasure when
One wrote a death-sentence
On the back fo the Ace of Spades and played on
With a new deck. Honors
Are not so physical or jolly now,
For the species of Powers
We are used to are not like that. Could one of them
Be said to resemble
The Tragic Hero, the Platonic Saint,
Or would any painter
Portray one arising triumphant from a lake
On a dolphin, naked,
Protected by an umbrella of cherubs? Can
They so much as manage
To behave like genuine Caesars when alone
Or drinking with cronies,
To let their hair down and be frank about
The world? It is doubtful.
The last word on how we may live or die
Rests today with such quiet
Men, working too hard in rooms that are too big,
Reducing to figures
What is the matter, what is to be done.
A neat little luncheon
Of sandwiches is brought to each on a tray,
Nourishment they are able
To take with one hand without looking up
From papers a couple
Of secretaries are needed to file,
From problems no smiling
Can dismiss. The typewriters never stop
But whirr like grasshoppers
In the silent siesta heat as, frivolous
Across their discussions,
From woods unaltered by our wars and our vows
There drift the scents of flowers
And the songs of birds who will never vote
Or bother to notice
Those distinguishing marks a lover sees
By instinct and policemen
Can be trained to observe. Far into the night
Their windows burn brightly
And, behind their backs bent over some report,
On every quarter,
For ever like a god or a disease
There on earth the reason
In all its aspects why they are tired, the weak,
The inattentive, seeking
Someone to blame. If, to recuperate
They go a-playing, their greatness
Encounters the bow of the chef or the glance
Of the ballet-dancer
Who cannot be ruined by any master’s fall.
To rule must be a calling,
It seems, like surgery or sculpture; the fun
Neither love nor money
But taking necessary risks, the test
Of one’s own skill, the question,
If difficult, their own reward. But then
Perhaps one should mention
Also what must be a comfort as they guess
In times like the present
When guesses can prove so fatally wrong,
The fact of belonging
To the very select indeed, to those
For whom, just supposing
They do, there will be places on the last
Plane out of disaster.
No; no one is really sorry for their
Heavy gait and careworn
Look, nor would they thank you if you said you were.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
He’s well named.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
That’s why I strongly recommend disbanding the RNC and starting all over again -- WITH DIFFERENT PERSONNEL!