Posted on 03/04/2013 10:04:35 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Looks like the Election Night buzz has finally begun to fade for Democrats. Both Roll Call and Politico have articles in which leading Democrats lament the discovery that the leverage they held on the expiration of the Bush-era tax rates didn’t translate into two years’ worth of arm-twisting. Let’s start with Barack Obama’s dissipating influence on budgetary matters, laid out on Friday night by Steven Dennis and Daniel Newhauser at Roll Call:
It wasn’t supposed to be like this for the White House and a re-elected president with political capital to spend.
But President Barack Obama is in a position of supplication to Hill Republicans, talking loudly and often about the harm of automatic budget cuts but lacking the leverage to get the GOP to buckle.
Senior administration officials had for months predicted that Republicans would cave on the sequester and agree to more taxes, even after agreeing to $600 billion in tax increases in the New Year’s Eve fiscal-cliff deal.
After all, aides noted, Republicans had caved again and again: on the 2012 payroll tax cut, on tax rate increases for the wealthy and on a debt ceiling extension.
Why not one more GOP rollover? Polls seemed solidly in the president’s favor.
But so far it’s not working out as the West Wing planned.
For one thing, the “cave” in this case came with a deadline. Had the Republicans not cut a deal on New Year’s Day, taxes would have gone up across the board, a politically untenable position for the House GOP. That was the real leverage, not the election and not the polls. The next election is almost two years away, and while the limited retreat from the GOP angered the base, they didn’t have much choice as long as the Democrats were willing to push everyone into higher tax rates as a consequence of the standoff.
Now, however, there are no more sunset provisions in tax policy. That was the upside for Republicans in that deal. By making all of the tax rates “permanent” (in other words, no built-in expiration dates), Democrats couldn’t force Republicans to readdress tax rates again. And with the GOP in charge of the House, they have no other way to get tax hikes, except by making it a budget fight in a conference committee.
That brings us to today’s lament from Harry Reid, as reported by Politico’s Steven Sloan:
Democrats toasted the New Year’s fiscal cliff deal with the belief that they had set a crucial new precedent: Tax hikes would be part of any future deficit reduction package.
Two months later, the champagne buzz is wearing off.
With about $85 billion in spending cuts — and no new revenue — kicking into gear on Friday, it appears that the exuberance expressed by many Democrats at the beginning of the year was misplaced. Efforts to avert the sequester never achieved liftoff, and Democrats are realizing that new tax revenues are off the table for the immediate future. …
Republicans flexed their muscle in the Senate on Thursday, blocking a Democratic measure that would have replaced the sequester through 2013 with a more palatable mix of spending cuts and revenue increases. A competing measure offered by Republicans that would have given Obama wide latitude in implementing the cuts also wasn’t allowed to proceed.
Democratic leaders were left to drag out the same rhetoric they employed in the weeks before the cliff deal, blaming Republicans for another round of Washington gridlock based on an ideological opposition to new taxes. Only this time, it’s not at all clear that the strategy will soon pay dividends.
“We’ve tried everything we can,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Thursday. “They will not budge on anything dealing with revenue.”
He’s tried everything he can — except, of course, his job. The Senate is required by law to produce an annual budget, a task that has gone unfulfilled for almost four years. Instead, Reid has insisted on budgeting via a series of artificial crises by demanding that House Republicans reach agreements on temporary spending measures designed to keep federal budgets at the free-spending FY2010 baseline, and creating “fiscal cliffs” through obstructionism. During that period, the House passed budgets every year, and even Obama produced the legally-required budget requests, even if they arrived late four years running.
Democrats are now forced to do their jobs by producing budgets they will have to defend. No wonder they’re lamenting their plight.
Only We, the People can fire them. For some reason, we don’t.
I predict there will be a massive blitzkrieg of taxes and everything else liberal sometime in the last two years of his administration.
The dems can’t pass a budget,but like Obama they can pass the buck and the blame.
The most powerful three words in the English language are “No I Won’t”. Especially when backed by the conviction to accept the consequences. The GOP has finally realized that they will be pilloried in the press no matter what they do. At that point inflexibility is what will eventually bring the other side either to reason or defeat.
The next two years are going to be ugly. I have serious doubts if the GOP leadership has the convictions to make this stick. But in a very real way they have little left to lose through defiance, and nothing to gain by negotiation. They are like the marines on Guadalcanal. There is no place to run, and the other side has made it clear they aren’t taking prisoners, so you may as well dig in and make a fight out of it.
it seems Barry is finding out like W before him that spending your Political Capital from a re-elect will basically buy you a cup of coffee.
Bush squandered his reelection capital by coming right out of the starting gate with immigration "reform". He stabbed his own constituents in the back with that one. You don't end up with popularity numbers in the thirties because the opposition dislikes you. You get there because your own voters don't like you anymore.
Democrats lament the discovery that the leverage they held on the expiration of the Bush-era tax rates didn’t translate into two years’ worth of arm-twisting...
Govenment by the people for the people...my ass !
I saw something along these lines on a youtube video showing someone resisting intrusive questions at a federal “checkpoint” on the highway.
“Sir, I need you to pull over to secondary inspection.”
“No, thank you. Am I free to go or are you detaining me?”
Looking back at it, I think McConnell and Boehner got the better off Harry Reid - they traded a one time tax increase in return for permanent lower tax rates later. I’d call that a good bargain.
The GOP has no good reason to revisit that agreement. If the Democrats are that bad negotiators that they have no leverage, well that’s not the GOP’s fault. If they don’t like the sequester, soo sad, too bad. They’ll have to come up with something else besides more tax increases.
Good luck with it, Harry; looks like you’re stuck with it.
Excuse me but I’m starting to sense a disturbing trend WRT the earlier (in Jan) fiscal cliff deal that actually will give the leftists more leverage, for no reason than laziness.
I do believe that, despite as is even implied by this article, the Bush tax rates were allowed to expire Jan 1st, and while the bill ( now law ) that dealt with this compromise uses language such as “make permanent” , the leftist media has seized on this language to imply, by omission of all the facts, that the Bush rates were “made permanent” for everyone except the “rich”.
First of all, if one does a search for “Bush rates expire”, or anything else similar, you won’t find any stories that report this fact. Probably because the bill doesn’t use such language bit also probably because of the complacent media, who doesn’t want to report the fact taxes went up for virtually everyone, not just the “ rich” January 1st.
Secondly, the bill itself indicates the rate for the 25% bracket went up to 28%, 35 up to 38, etc. but apparently the 10% bracket remains the same. What this means is that it’s not as easy to say “ everyone’s rates went up Jan 1st, but that is certainly more accurate than saying only the “ rich” we’re hit with a tax hike.
What’s the point here? That the Pubbies MUST get out in front of this, hammering home the fact that not only did they cave on more taxes for the “rich”, but that Obama is the one to blame for NEARLY everyone’s taxes going up!
Again, the record is already being expunged by the complacent media. Soon everyone will forget that it was Obama’s insistence to not only raise taxes on the “ rich” , but even for those in the ( formerly) 25% bracket. It’s a golden opportunity to righteously demonize him, and it’s being squandered.
IOW, the GOP meme now should be something like, “We gave Obama as much tax increase as is reasonable, and more, since now even those in the former 25% bracket are paying more. It’s time HE give something now, specifically serious talk about spending. “
Otherwise, the fact that nearly everyone’s taxes went up this year will be lost on everyone, as the media is omitting that fact in all this sequester talk , and clearly Joe American is too stupid to check his own paystub to see the permanant INCREASE in his OWN taxes.
The Bush tax cuts had sunset provisions that made them expire at the end of 2010, since otherwise they would fall under the Byrd Rule. Whether to renew the lowered rates, and how, became the subject of extended political debate, which was resolved during the presidency of Barack Obama by a two-year extension that was part of a larger tax and economic package, the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010.
Right, but as I pointed out before, there are virtually no stories out there (actually none that I could find), which explicitly states what we here on FR know: that the Bush era rates were allowed to expire in January of 2013, and thus, virtually everyone’s taxes went up. (So all this whining from the left that Obama just wants a balanced approach is bunk; he already got a tax increase, now he wants more tax increases)
This is the fact that’s being woefully under reported. So much so, there are no stories on it anywhere, not even in the new media, much less the MSM. Hence my post earlier. I’ve been thinking about making my own post (thread) about this. Maybe when I get home tonight.
Ignore my previous post(s). For some reason, it seems my own personal income has gone down this year (comparing from last year, and still taking into account the increase of the SS tax increase). Basically this is a problem on my end, something I’ll have to fix. Apparently the majority of the rates from last year remained the same.
I still don’t know why in the actual bill there is a section where “25%” is being replaced by “28%”, but I guess I’ll have to read it more carefully.
However the fact that taxes did increase for those earning more than $450K a year is still not being repeated and/or should be repeated by the Republican leadership. The “rich” are already paying their “fair share”, as of by at least January. Obama needs to be pushed to cut spending now.
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