Personally, I think Obama made a sensible decision. I didn't care much for his prickly press conference and his "hostage-takers" comments, but it seems the compromise was wise-and a pretty good deal for the Republicans.
But boy are the liberals upset. MSNBC was on fire last night. Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and the butter and egg man, Ed Schultz are beside themselves because of those "tax cuts for the rich" (Everybody who pays taxes will get a tax break under the compromise.) A red-faced Schultz featured the deal on his daily "Fired up" segment. (He's always fired up.) Maddow put a permanent depiction of Obama on her screen with the tag, "baseless". And that $1.98 Cromwell, Keith Olbermann launched into another Cromwellian "Special Comment" to blast the President. At least he didn't say, "Have you no shame, Mr President".
Chris Matthews? That leg is still tingling.
"He looked (like a) president."
"powerful language"
"Wow! Somebody's home."
"I've never seen his eyes so wide open."
Actually I have never noticed myself.
I am no economist, but I believe that lower taxes is not only the right thing but the smart economic thing to do. And that includes the much-maligned rich-who usually employ a lot of people (and pay the lion's share of taxes), but even more so small business owners, who also employ people and might make around $250,000 a year more or less. Why should they be penalized when small business is the economic backbone of the country?
It is time to stop this class warfare and demonization of rich people. The goal should be to join the rich people. Our system provides that opportunity, but if you are going to tax the rich to death and increase taxes on the middle class, you only force the rich to cut back (including hiring) and keep the lower classes from moving up.
The way I see it, the government doesn't have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem. If we have a deficit, whose fault is that? Instead of further burdening the tax-payer in a down economic period, how about the government learning to make do with less. After all, it is our money.
The classic example is California, where I live. Insane government spending has brought us to the brink of bankruptcy. Add that to insane regulations and environmental restrictions and we have a state being vacated by productive people and their businesses. And who fills that void? Aside from illegal aliens, others who depend on government.
So for guys like me, we can only hope something gets done in Congress before January 1, when all of us see our taxes go up. Then we can sweat this out again in 2 years. What a way to run a country.
1 comment:
As William F. Buckley Jr. pointedly reminded a rather addled S.I. Hayakawa, the ONLY time a sensible person compromises is when they HAVE TO. President Obama, quite sensibly, sees that returning at least some tax brackets to the levels that prevailed when William J. Clinton left office is essential if we are to reverse the deficits run up since that time, the majority of them on the watch of President Bush, who improvidently pushed for these tax cuts in the first place. But, Obama doesn't have the votes, so there is no point in caterwauling about it.
Barack Obama knows - although many liberals apparently don't - that he is President of the United States, not King of the World. However, he can veto anything that comes out of congress, and the Republicans don't have a solid two thirds majority to routinely over-ride him, even in January. So, he did what an sensible person does when they hold some cards but not a winning hand. He cut a deal.
Republicans did the same. After all, if they didn't give him something in return, he COULD veto a bill to extend the tax cuts -- then EVERYONE's taxes would rise, and if he's astute, he could blame that on Republican intransigence. Are we happy? No, but our nation is stumbling forward through the muck and mire a small step or two.
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