Falling For The Cliff

The "fiscal cliff" was a contrivance Democrats and Republicans, Obama and Boehner/McConnell, all thought would work for them. It should have worked for Obama and the Democrats.

Obama won reelection convincingly, and his most salient deficit-cutting issue was raising taxes on the wealthy with incomes over $250,000. That was part of his proposal to reduce the deficit with proper balance between expenditure cuts and revenue increases. Polls showed high levels of support. So, why did he give in to Republicans at all?

Sure, the Biden/McConnell tentative agreement is an admission by Republican Senators that they are on the wrong side of the tax issue, unemployment insurance extensions and low-income enhancers like the Earned Income Tax Credit.

On the other hand, for Democrats, trying to avoid the 'fiscal cliff' was bad strategy, because allowing tax increases to go up temporarily would have increased Obama's leverage: the no-tax-hike GOP can be assailed for opposing tax cuts, if the deadline of the fiscal cliff really passes with no agreement. Isn't it more plausible that they'd vote for tax cuts to everyone with incomes below $250,000, instead of raising taxes on the wealthy? They wouldn't even break the Norquist no-tax-hike pledge. And people wouldn't blame them for a stalemate, which growing numbers of people--and financial rating institutions--will do if they don't go along.

But, no, Obama, after months campaigning on the $250,000 figure, opens his latest bid with raising the rate to $400,000, a position Speaker Boehner had taken less than a month before.

Obama has already sounded conciliatory about cutting Social Security benefits--through adjusting the Cost of Living--yet Social Security is self-funding and its surpluses have financed some of the deficits for a long time. He's tried out cuts to Medicare eligibility, but Medicare proponents--Democratic activists--through much pressure, have persuaded him to withdraw the proposal.

Why doesn't he, or other Democrats, propose cuts to oil and coal subsidies? We have no business continuing to promote these polluters in the face of accelerating global warming.

Obama and "moderate" Democrats are either afraid of the money big oil, banks, etc. can wield against them, or they’ve been bought out by it. The same could be said of "defense" expenditures: no one spends anywhere near as much as we do on military and surveillance, yet neither Democrats nor Republicans see the mandated Pentagon cuts as an opportunity.

The US, through its dysfunctional politics and polarization, its obeisance to status quo interests and its fear of crossing capitalists, is leading the world to a violent conflagration brought on by increasingly disruptive climate change. Capitalists, said Lenin, will sell you the rope to hang them.

In fifth-century Rome, Senators even bought the rope, and applied it to their own necks.