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Obama Twists Own Arm, Says “Uncle” to Extending Bush Tax Cuts
Political mastermind David Axelrod says the White House is ready to cave in the wake of imaginary overwhelming pressure to extend all of the Bush tax cuts, exacerbating the “deficit” problem they’ve been completely obsessed with:
President Barack Obama’s top adviser suggested to The Huffington Post late Wednesday that the administration was ready to accept an across-the-board continuation of steep Bush-era tax cuts, including those for the wealthiest taxpayers.
That appears to be the only way, said David Axelrod, that middle-class taxpayers can keep their tax cuts, given the legislative and political realities facing Obama in the aftermath of last week’s electoral defeat.
“We have to deal with the world as we find it,” Axelrod said during an unusually candid and reflective 90-minute interview in his office, steps away from the Oval Office. “The world of what it takes to get this done.”
Me or David Axelrod — one of us does not understand how congress works.
Lame duck. Democrats still have the majority in the House. So they pass extensions for the middle class, excluding the ones for the wealthy.
All funding bills have to start in the House. And since a rather large number of Democrats aren’t worried about reelection at the moment, there’s not much downside for them.
Then the bill goes to the Senate. And at that point, Axelrod is worried the Republicans are going to filibuster the tax cuts?
Seriously?
I mean, THAT’S what he’s afraid of?
If Axelrod is the “political genius” guiding the Democrats these days, they should consider themselves lucky it wasn’t 100 seats.
Update: Kagro points out that they passed the Bush tax cuts through reconciliation the first time, and they could go that route again. But I guess we’re going to have another round of “pass the hot potato” like we did on the public option.
[Ed. Note/Update: The "genius" keeps on coming. Axe tries to walk back his HufPo comments. . . kinda sorta.]
- Posted in
53 Comments so far
Show Alljane, you are a delicious riot.
Preserving Bush tax cuts for the 2% for the purpose of keeping Bush tax cuts for the 98% is akin to stepping over dollars to find nickles.
Unless ALL Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire on 1/1/11, the 2% wins and the rest of us lose.
The amount the Bush tax cuts save you and I is less than the loss of services the tax cuts caused.
There is no hope for the US working class until ALL Bush tax cuts die and the rest of the Bush legacy programs are abandoned.
In periods of popular demand for reform the Democratic President will need – indeed may have to cultivate – plausible excuses for failure.
Democrats have always killed any progressive agenda:
http://counterpunch.org/connolly10292010.html
Not always.
FDR had his New Deal.
Obama has his New Steal.
It's getting harder and harder for supporters of the Democratic party to justify doing so.
This is the last straw.
OBAMA---GO HOME!
Let's here more now from Michael Moore and all the people on CD about how we should go out and vote for the Dems! Losers!
Could Obama be any worse? Seriously!
Yes, and I'm sure over the next two humiliating yrs. he'll do all he can do live down to our lowered expectations for him and his team. We need to prepare a primary for these weaklings.
Right on Seaglass,
Who is going to be the first Democrat in the progressive caucus to call for a primary challenge? Kucinich? Alan Grayson? He's got nothing to lose anymore.
Maybe progressive Democrats could hold a convention of their own next summer to prepare for the convention of 2012.
I know most people here would prefer a third party. So would I. But to become more than a club of intellectuals a third party needs a social movement behind it. The communists in the 30's worked along side of, and within, the CIO and the anti-eviction movement. Peace and Freedom came out of the civil rights, student and anti-war movements of the 60's.
So unless we can build movements which are at the equivalent of those in the 30's and 60's, a Democratic primary challenge is the way to go. It will help us build a movement later, by allowing us to articulate pro - working class solutions now.
Spread the word.
@ Laurenceofberk November 11th, 2010 1:57 pm: I'm all for a progressive challenge to Dem candidates, and it would be easier than trying to get a third-party candidate elected.
However, as far as building movements, these days we have such 'moderate' creampuffs as Jon Stewart holding rallies to tell the folks to let the other guy in traffic and not go too 'far out' in any direction, so that leaves us with a bunch of tame puppies who will calmly accept whatever they're told, in the interest of not causing a fuss. Last night on Rachel Maddow, Stewart baffingly allowed that Junior Bush was 'technically guilty' of war crimes but then took the attitude of "what the hell, as long as he's not Pol Pot, that's okay." He also disingenuously eschewed his role as a motivator of youth; despite the 200K crowd of mainly young folks he drew to Washington for a political rally, and the well-known fact that he's the only news source for many people under 30, he keeps hiding behind his standard lame dodge that he's just a comedian, you know, like Jerry Seinfeld, and has no influence on politics and isn't really part of the news media.
Imagine if Jon Stewart had been around during the Vietnam War? "Hey, man, this southeast Asian war's not so bad -- I mean, technically maybe the president and Pentagon are war criminals and getting Americans killed in a trumped-up, unnecessary war, but, hey, at least they're not like Stalin or something, right?!? I mean, let's not get upset about it or anything! Hey, and what a great segueway to bringing on the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry! Give him a big hand, folks!"
I have no idea WTF Stewart is up to, and I hope he's not following the dismal path of Dennis Miller but, with easy-listening milquetoasts like this leading the parade, you're never going to organize progressive kids to match the anger of the elderly Teabaggers and, without the youth vote, every progressive challenge is doomed to failure.
"Could Obama be any worse?" I asked myself that about George Bush after he won in 2004, my first instinct being if I had money I would flee this country. So the answer is yes, Obama will get worse. The real concern should be will enough people wake up between now and 2012 to make a real difference.
Obama just rolled over. He should have traded something for this that Americans need, like another unemployment extension. This guy doesn't have a chance in 2012 ....
It's time to weaken Obama by calling for his impeachment.
count me in. i would love to help facilitate the process.
For all of Obama's caving in to the GOP and our corporate overlords, he will be rewarded with a big fat knife in the back from the GOP once they take charge in the House. Obama extends the hand of compromise and conciliation to a giant crazed Nile crocodile determined to eat his liver with fava beans and a fine Chianti, thup, thup, thup. We have a thorough going plutocracy, a government of the billionaires, for the corporations and by the defense contractors. Tax breaks for the rich, destruction of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for the masses.
And a delicious glass of hemlock for all the knee-jerk left wingnuts?
FU Horace!
I wonder if the Democrats think they are really fooling people anymore, even after the last election when the biggest lesson is that they were not (which is why so many didn't vote for them, or at all).
'but you can't fool all the people all the time'.
What is needed is for people to do what they can to prepare for the coming financial collapse and transformation of the US into a fascist 'bananna republic' -- the result of all of this -- to cope as best they can until the 'sleeping giant' finally awakes.
Coming? It's here friend. The plutocrats and their oligarch over lords have decided 'Mericans can go to hell. They have billions of people out here that will work for pennies a day and they've decided it's past time to fire most 'Mericans. As for what we'll all do? They couldn't care less.
I wonder if Obama played basketball this way---Let the other side win half or more of the time to keep them happy?? It is about time now to make some points for his own side for a change. There is absolutely no reason to continue the tax cuts for the top 2% of the wealthy while talking about cutting practically all programs for poor and middle class people.This nation may not survive this takeover by the greedy rich and the large corporations.
It's only one team. Basketball analogy doesn't work in this case. :-)
As long as we allow the military to suck up more than a trillion dollars a year nothing will get any better.
"We have to deal with the world as we find it," Axelrod said...
Is this the same as "change you can believe in"?
Here's their slogan for 2012: "there's really nothing we can do".
Axelrod is just Obama's butt boy and does what he's told.
Obama has tarnished the (D) brand beyond repair. (D)s in the House are just as afraid of Obama selling them out as the (R)s. "We" need another candidate in 2012 and not another Clintonian 'free-traitor'. "We" are living Plato's Republic and have been for 2500 years.
A lesson from history - Do not send your blood off to foreign lands to defend an empire you have long had no stake in.
This is how you turn a $4 billion investment into a $200+ billion return: buy the House, and offer the President 'plausible deniability' to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%.
With returns like that, its actually crazy NOT to do it.
fairelectionsnow.org
People only will care when they no longer have a job and can't pay their bills and their house is being foreclosed and the car repoed. Then they'll get angry and join the tea party and demand that the Gov't stay away from their food stamps!! The triumph of GOP messaging!!
What does it matter what they do in a lame session? The Republican majority in the House will do their own "tax cutting", the Senate will make it look a tad "moderate", and Obama will do his usual "I'll sign whatever Congress passes because I have to be bipartisan to win !". That's your "bipartisan" recipe for the next two years folks !
I was especially struck by Axelrod's statement that "We have to deal with the world as we find it." Strange, the Bush administration did not share that opinion. In fact they boasted that "Reality is what we say it is." They restructured the world exactly according to their views. And got away with it, plunging us into a nightmare, making good on their boast, making their reality ours. And they are still getting away with it. Would that the Democrats had just a tenth of the chutspa and willingness to bend reality to their programs that the Republicans had and have. But then I am beginning to believe that Obama is the Trojan Horse of the Zionist/Rothchild-run power structure. And by the way, can we please stop calling the United States the world mostg powerful nation? The U.S. is nothing but a pawn. The most powerful nation in the world is the Rothchild's Israel. It pulls the strings on all of us.
Really, Mr. Bonniejr,
Is Europe Israel's pawn? Japan? How about China, now the second capitalist power?
I wouldn't say that anti-Zionism is the same as anti-Semitism. But it plays a very similar role politically. Hitler started out calling himself a socialist. Nazi = National Socialist. But he couldn't move against actual capitalists. They were subsidizing him, including our own Henry Ford. So what to do about the masses' hatred of capitalists in a period of economic collapse? Easy. Give them the blood sucking Jews instead, as a scapegoat. Much easier. The capitalists could hire people to fight back, but the Jews were only 1% of the German population and were helpless. (In 1648 Poland, by the way, there was a similar event. Peasants were given Jews to kill instead of feudal lords.)
And today, for those "leftists" who don't have the guts to fight the real capitalist powers, there is always Israel. Sorry Bonniejr, but if Israel were wiped off the map tomorrow, you would still be a slave to the American capitalists, and the Egyptians and Iranians would still have to struggle against their own ruling classes.
The relationship between Israel and the US? Mostly Israel is a base which helps the US control Arab oil. It's true that Israel has sent advisors to prop up Central American capitalist dictators. But who "pulled the strings" there, Israel or the US? Does Israel control the maquiladoras spreading south from Mexico? Does Israel dominate United Fruit?
Which is not to say that we shouldn't struggle against Israeli oppression and occupation of Palestinians. Just as we should struggle against Indonesian occupation of New Guinea, and the massacres by Turks against Kurds and Sudan against southern Nubians and western Darfur.
The obsession with Zionism can take on comic proportions. I once read a blog by a Russian who claimed that there are vast stores of "abiotic" oil lying beneath the organically created oil which is now running out. So who is responsible for the pernicious idea of "peak oil?" The Zionists of course.
So really Mr. Bonniejr, don't we have enough to do contending with Chase-Manhattan and British Petroleum and all their corporate and political (and military) allies? Or would you, and too many others I'm afraid, rather direct your energies obsessing about a country of 7 million which somehow controls the world? Shades of the "Protocols of the elders of Zion," which, by the way, was distributed in the US by our friend Henry Ford.
Agree with your full-throated rejoinder, L of B.
But what explains AIPAC's consistent influence in Congress and the State Department, etc?
How close are the Pentagon's relations with the Israeli military? Has the MIC been getting valuable weapons use intelligence info for years from this small nation-- as an adroit first-use tester of new weapons--since its inception?
Is Israel seen by permanently hawkish US policy elitists as perhaps some sort of a forward base bastion of Empire-building in the irrational,impossible quest to achieve permanent Middle East oil hegemony?
LAURENCE & SIMON: You both raise fair and intelligent points.
First: Obama? I understand you work for the Banksters that own The Place and you have to do what you're told to do. That said, you and your Dems can go f**k yourselves for helping the venal, uber-greedy anti-Americans Upper Class continue their 30 year string of victories in their War On The Other 99% Of Us.
Second: I'm not paying my taxes.
Third: I have this really neat thimble I plan to use as a catch when the Upper Class tax cut bonanza starts to trickle down to us poor, lazy bums who hate work and God and teddy bears.
I completely share your cynicism.
And not one Democrat is going to make a stink over this. Not one.
Feingold may have, just for the sake of drama, because he never actually followed through with any one of his "stands".
Ah, the good ol' "filibuster" anticipation technique.
"Well, recently a thought popped into my head about how we could create this really cool society, and then I started writing down all the really cool policies that would make America fairer--and way cooler!--then what it is now...and then I counted the votes in the Hoouse, and thought, "yeah, we could get that done, maybe..." and then I realized that Republicans would just filibuster, so I started thinking about getting a hooker instead, 'cause there's no way they filibuster that!"
Not sure I can hate this WH enough. I'm working that issue, tho.
The democratic party elites and strategists are simply no match for their republican adversaries. They are weak of mind and spirit. The party is practically useless.
Actually, they are a complete match, as in a perfect union. Not every Democrat, but as you say, the Democratic Party elites and strategists.
Contrast this more cogent take on this issue, with the current headliner http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/11-1 by Fineman and Stein from the Huffington Post.
The latter is a nice, inside the beltway Axelrod friendly piece of puff journalism, and without a comment section.
I always puzzle over the occasional CD article published without the comments feature, hue_sir_name.
I generally don't bother reading the articles that don't allow comments. It would be nice to at least understand why comments are excluded from certain articles, since there's no self-evident explanation.
Given the unfortunate administrative opacity and deep-seated ambivalence toward comments threads here, it's impossible to know whether this is an oversight or a deliberate editorial choice.
oversight? i doubt it. proceed with caution, always.
I appreciate your thoughts on this. Until today, I had always just assumed it an oversight, but now I question that assumption.
I am impressed by Obama being so eager to keep the 2% tax cut for the middle class that he is willing to preserve the 5% tax cut for the filthy rich.
Oh well, there's always Social Security to be gutted to make up the deficit. So nice to hear that he says removing the cap would solve the Social Security funding issue. So then why did he appoint a Deficit Commission full of Democrats and Republicans who have a long history of wanting to destroy Social Security and are coming out with a recommendation to do just that? Because Obama will "have no choice" but to adopt their recommendations. All part of the corporate takeover plan for our country and working as intended.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Bush invades Iraq: "We have to deal with the world as we find it."
Bush cuts taxes and doubles the debt: "We have to deal with the world as we find it."
Bush looks the other way as WallStreet gambles its way into MainStreets insolvency: "We have to deal with the world as we find it."
Bush bails out WallStreet with taxpayer dollars: "We have to deal with the world as we find it."
Obama continues the bailouts and bonuses: "We have to deal with the world as we find it."
Obama's solution to a healthcare crisis is to reward the pirates: "We have to deal with the world as we find it."
Obama extends the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest 2%: "We have to deal with the world as we find it."
Obama cuts Social Security to 'solve the deficit': "We have to deal with the world as we find it."
We, the people, have to deal with the world as we find it. And we're finding it pretty scr*wed up by powerful people like these two. They have the power to not scr*w up, but they aren't using it. And there is just no way they 'have to deal with the world as they find it'.
"The White House panel on reducing the deficit has released a list of recommendations including widespread cuts to Social Security and Medicare. On Wednesday, co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson proposed raising the retirement age for Social Security to 69 by 2075, decreasing the cost of living benefits for Social Security recipients, imposing new limits on the Medicare health insurance program, and ending several middle-class tax breaks. The proposals also include the elimination of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the capping of jury awards in malpractice cases, and a major reduction in corporate income taxes."
[Source: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/11/headlines#1]
"We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear — fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts, or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Obama's slave mentality has permeated the entire administration--Axelrod has adopted Obama's "can't do" mindset. Can we impeach Obama before he gives away even more of our rights and taxes?
we may be able to impeach him for not presenting his birth certificate every time someone wants to see it.
but no fat chance in impeaching him for war crimes and crimes against humanity within the system that is fully committed to the said crimes.
We need a counter-coup to stop corporate "personhood" from killing all of us.
Yet again, let's take a closer look at perception management in this country and the completely illusive nature of contemporary American politics.
During the election the meme was Obama the savior, right?
Remember the pictures of Obama in front of the Superman statue? It was ubiquitous.
As soon as he won, they switched gears and started building their next meme:
Obama the mere mortal
This meme is designed to help pacify the American people as they got f*cked over through the enactment of previously planned austerity measures like SS reduction and service cuts.
How was this meme construction accomplished? Let's take a look.
Instead of having O use his masterful rhetoric and honed abilities in delivering scripted speeches more over the first two years of his Presidency - something his supporters and those on the left have been actually curious about since that is what propelled him to the WH in the first place - O has been quite reticent.
Interesting, huh?
I mean, his handlers know quite well how he got elected. They know how effective the man is in swaying public opinion given the opportunity. He did it many times throughout the campaign.
So why haven't they used this weapon more to actually help people?
Might so conspicuous an absence be - gasp - deliberate?
We'll never know but we can hypothesize.
Is it so that it would be easier for the public to "buy" the austerity horsesh*t coming our way like SS cuts, continued tax cuts for the rich and whatever else he has and will capitulated on?
By having O seem more human - shown in media settings like one-on-one interviews, stuttering at town halls instead of behind a podium all silver-tongued - wouldn't a populace be more apt to "accept" supposedly hard decisions and go "quietly" if their leader seems chastened by the real world, the "world the way in which he finds it" and not a silver-tongued superman?
If you're perceived as a superman, you never stop trying, don't get hurt, never capitulate.
If you're perceived as a superman people want you to fight and - more importantly -THEY want to join you in your fight.
Thus, the last thing the elite would want right now as they bring down the big austerity hammer is an inspired populace and what better way to dispirit them than give them a deflated leader - one who would like to inspire but is really all too human.
A Clark Kent that golly gee whiz just can't do the right thing, huh?
We talk about being propagandized and manipulated on this site a lot.
I think we're getting real good at spotting it.
Poly 6:27 Excellent analysis and I was foolish enough to believe he is stuttering from continually lying.
Notice also that Hillary finds it difficult to speak but she is attempting to maintain a tough cookie personae.