President Barack Obama will release a plan Monday to cut the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade, drawing half the savings from new tax revenue and sparing Medicare recipients from having to wait longer to collect benefits, senior administration officials said Sunday.
Suffering an erosion of support from the broad coalition that elected him, Obama has crafted a plan that reads more like a blueprint for shoring up his restless Democratic base than a vehicle for reaching across the aisle in search of bipartisan compromise.
His proposal forces Republicans to side with corporations and the wealthy, sidesteps the most controversial remedies for overhauling Medicare and Social Security, and offers up a populist-sounding “Buffett Rule,” which would prohibit millionaires from paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.
The President delivered a campaign style lecture, it was not a plan. He is the professor-in-chief. Unfortunately, lectures are not scored by the CBO, as he well knows.
There is panic in the air. Democrats, desperate for Barack Obama to succeed in his bid for re-election, are both irritated that the last chance for the liberal 60's agenda of European social democracy has been squandered by the guy who promised it to them and also determined to pull for him in 2012. What choice do they have? He is the only guy on the ballot for them.
The President was 20 minutes late, as is his habit, and as the speech (lecture) progressed, it was clear that everything old is new again. The very tax increases Barack Obama claimed in 2009 would be bad for our country's poor economic condition is now a-ok.
Let's refresh our memory, shall we?
That is from August 2009. Is anyone going to argue that the economic climate is now strong enough for raising taxes? Is it now "the right thing to do"? That is how Obama ended his lecture from the Rose Garden today. He said it was the right thing to do.
Frankly, he should have let the teleprompter go it alone today. He was petulent, defensive and flat in his delivery. He employed the use of strawmen and berated Speaker Boehner in advance for the anticipated opposition to this stuff Obama calls a solution to our deficit woes.
No one paying attention has any hopes that this 'plan' will pass either the House or the Senate.
But his plan has little chance of passing and is already inflaming Republicans, who have vowed to oppose new taxes and have called for deep cuts in federal spending and entitlements. On Sunday, Republicans responded with vitriol to the proposal to create a special tax for millionaires.
“Class warfare may make for really good politics, but it makes for rotten economics,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It adds further instability to our system, more uncertainty, and it punishes job creation.”
Something odd was noted by some journalists on Twitter as the lecture ended. The audience, the White House press corps, applauded. And there was music playing. This never happens. Why did the press corps applaud?
Steve Forbes called it "political theatre". I agree. How sad.
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