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Now you have to pay close attention to the detail that Lawrence provides describing the intricacies of negotiations at the Senate level and to help with that here is a great transcript written up by the folks over at the Daily Kos.If you don't have time for that I completely understand but I do want to draw your attention to this portion here:
If you've ever actually tried to get a Republican in the House or Senate to vote on an income tax rate increase, proposed by a Democratic president--if you've done that--and perhaps only if you've done that, then you understand how hard it was for President Obama to get a tax increase out of a Republican House of Representatives and out of a Senate where the Republicans can block anything.
Most pundits and members of Congress for that matter have never negotiated anything more complicated than a car loan or a mortgage and some of them will surely continue to criticize the President's negotiating skills but the President was playing a very long game here.
Literally years of strategizing including allowing a two-year extension of the Bush rates in order to get strategically positioned, so that he could force Republicans to cast a vote they vowed never to cast.
Now are you impressed? Because I KNOW I am!
Lawrence is spot on. And these critics who bash Pres. Obama whenever he makes a tough decision, they don't like, could never do what he does. These critics take to the airways using TV and newspapers, internet, with their nasty critiques, and if they are superior to our President Obama. I won't name names, but you guys know who they are.
ReplyDeleteAs I always say, and I will say it again, the Repubs, and well as the Democratic firethrowing critics are playing checkers, as President Obama is playing chess. CHECKMATE
Correction of my 4:49 AM post:
Delete-->These critics take to the airways using TV and newspapers, internet, with their nasty critiques, 'as' if they are superior to our President Obama.
I am very impressed with Pres. Obama's skills. I voted for him twice, and have never wavered in my support. I am so sick of the fair-weather Dems, that if they do not get their unicorn, they take to the airways and insult our President Obama.
ReplyDeleteI am just so happy we won AGAIN, I have been giddy since November 6th.
Oops, I must correct a typo in this part of my comment above 4:54 AM -->they take to the airways and insult our President Obama.
DeleteI should have typed 'airwaves', not airways.
I'm hoping his "long game" (seems like Chess) will carry him through the "debt ceiling" fight. I would actually like to see President Obama reduce the GOPs brand to a size that he could "drown in the bathtub".
ReplyDeleteThis is yet another instance in this Administration´s term when I am grateful Joe Biden is my Vice President.
ReplyDeletePresident Obama called the plays.
Vice President Biden completed pass after pass in what seemed like a million yard touchdown drive.
And scored.
When I first heard that Joe Biden was chosen to run with Barack Obama in 2008, I was surprised and rather skeptical since they seemed like such a mismatched pair. Clearly, I was wrong.
DeleteTheir strengths complement each other very well and they make a great team.
Once again, our esteemed President really knows his stuff. I get so tired of the naysayers and I'm glad Lawrence O'Donnell does what he does. I just wish more people saw and heard him.
ReplyDeletePresident Obama is the Master!! Of chess, of the Jedis, whatever...I will never stop singing his praises to anyone who tries to tell me otherwise. I've been doing it since his primary fight with Hillary and I'll do it forever.
And NOT because I've drunk the koolaid. He is simply a very fine, fine man and a superb CIC.
Where O (and the rest of us) missed was being misled into thinking there is a "deficit" and that it needed to be "fixed".
ReplyDeleteIt's not a deficit. And it doesn't need to be fixed. It's government's net contribution to society.
We've all been fooled by >3 decades of bad economics instruction.
We actually need our government -- which is a social construct of our own making -- to make MORE of a contribution.
WE NEED A BIGGER "deficit" (aka "government contribution).
So, what O bargained for, a tax hike on the rich, while it does address some unfairness of opportunity (a substantial root problem), would have been better addressed by bargaining for limiting the influence of the rich on governance -- that they exercise via Wall St., other corporate lobbying, etc.
And, as a tax hike, it actually removes money from the economy (a bad thing) -- although it doesn't do so as badly as the expiration of the payroll tax deduction. O apparently bought into the need for the latter because it was (paraphrase from a WH spokesman last summer) "always supposed to be temporary". (As has been noted elsewhere, so were Bush's tax cuts, but he fought to make those permanent for many.) Same for only getting 1-year of extension of unemployment benefits.
Both of those, the tax hike on the rich and the tax hike on the middle class REMOVE $ and JOBS from the economy. The latter is estimated to remove 1 MILLION JOBS from the economy.
Time to re-educate ourselves. $ are not backed by anything but the health of our economy. And that economy is supported and enabled by government's net contribution -- more in downtimes, less in uptimes to limit inflation.
The fact that O, DEMS, AND PROGRESSIVES have all accepted the Repub's/Tea Party's, … "we need to cut the deficit" line is sick.
And the saddest case is the Progressives. The fact that O and the DEMS have fallen for this nonsense is more easily understood. I did. We all did. But Progress-ives have no excuse.
It's an "austerity bomb" -- and it's destroying the country.
Our government (like most except for the EU) is "monetarily sovereign". It can print/mint as much currency as is needed in the given circumstances.
And, AT THIS POINT, it needs to contribute to our welfare.
And one way to get that issue on the table is to sign the White House petition to "Direct the United States Mint to make a single platinum trillion dollar coin!"
@Gryphen, sign the petition at http://wh.gov/UpcC.
The logic for it is laid out in many posts, particularly those by Joe Firestone, at http://neweconomicperspectives.org.
Whether you agree with the particular mechanism of minting a coin or not, getting White House to address the issue is key to raising the issue of our collective mis-understanding of economics.
Sign the petition, please.
For a quick explanatory video covering part of the coin issue, see
Deletehttp://www.businessinsider.com/the-trillion-dollar-coin-and-the-republican-debt-ceiling-fight-2013-1#ixzz2H8OjTmkc
The author of the article almost gets it and sort of presents the concept positively (which is all pretty good for someone at Business Insider), but still gets a bit stuck in the old paradigm.
This is tough and requires a hard grind of rational thinking.
There was no "middle class" tax hike within this latest bill; $400,000 annually hardly qualifies as middle class. As far as expiring the Bush Tax cuts on those over $400,000 annually, we've learned these last three decades that "trickle down" doesn't work; the wealthy were not creating jobs with the money they saved on taxes and they weren't dumping it into main stream economic channels. They may have been dumping it into Wall Street but they weren't using it to "grow our economy".
ReplyDeleteYes there was a middle class tax hike -- under the heading of expiration of the payroll tax reduction. It's from 1-2% -- up to $2000 for incomes under $100K. And that's what's estimated to cost 1M jobs.
DeleteAgree re "trickle down" -- I call it "trickle on". The rich weren't, by-and-large, creating jobs. Whether they created any jobs or not, though, is less important than the basic concept that draining money out of the economy -- which is what a "tax", by definition, does -- is helpful in terms of generating jobs.
If the tax-on-the-rich was not paired with a tax-on-the-middle-class in the form of the expiration of the payroll tax reduction, but rather with a massive spending INCREASE for jobs, say, on infrastructure, environment, and education, then that would have achieved not only Progressive, but Democratic, and O's claimed ideals. That can be, if sufficiently massive, coupled with CUTS in defense (which doesn't add as many jobs per dollar expended) to set things right (i.e., left).
But O has been -- LIKE THE REST OF US -- duped. Big time.
[correcting mis-written part]
ReplyDelete… draining money out of the economy — which is what a "tax", by definition, does — is (generally) harmful in terms of removing jobs.
Great Post, Larry's been fantastic lately! The POTUS and VPOTUS complement each other perfectly. They tag teamed Congress and I can't wait for their next move.
ReplyDelete