Posted on 12/23/2011 5:41:07 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (AP) — On a political high, President Barack Obama capped a bruising year by securing a tax cut for millions of Americans — an achievement that overshadowed Washington's deepening dysfunction and the slow progress of the economy on his watch.
The White House has ended a year with a political victory before. This time around the stakes are higher, and the president is by no means assured of carrying the momentum deep into an election year.
Addressing reporters before heading to Hawaii on Friday, Obama looked like a president in command of the stage again, for now. He left the capital after presiding over a two-month extension of a payroll tax cut — about $40 per paycheck for someone making $50,000 a year — that came when House Republicans caved on demands for a longer deal.
Yet on this issue, like many, enormous work remains for Obama after the new year, just when voters begin choosing a Republican nominee to try to oust him from his job.
Obama initially had pushed for a year-long extension of both the Social Security payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. He got only two months on both because Congress could not agree on how to pay the bill for more without gutting their own political priorities — the same problem that awaits all sides in the weeks to come.
Although Obama calls a full-year extension a "formality," politically, it is not. So he pushed Congress to work "without drama, without delay" when they return from their own recess.
The whole scene was reminiscent of a year ago, when Obama took a self-described "shellacking" in the midterm elections but still ended up leaving for his yearly Hawaiian holiday on a high note.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Breathless praise from Yahoo-Obama and AP-Obama, having little bunny orgasms for the Kenyan Muslim Usurper.
My wife and I just turned off Scott Pelly. Couldn’t stand the lies.
He wrestled a 2 month extension from those Republicans who wanted to give a whole year!
It would be a good Monty Python skit..
Obama is very likely to be reelected because none of the false beliefs that led to his election in the first place have been changed in any significant way.
Obama’s backside must look like an octopus grabbed him with so much of the media’s lips attached.
“Obama is likely to be reelected because none of the false beliefs that led to his election in the first place have been changed in any significant degree.”
Plus there are more people dependent on the government and fewer people employed in the private sector to support them.
This will be forgotten by mid January.
The only thing that matters is how the economy is doing by September.
Obama starves the Social Security program. Our side offers 12 more months of it, and the Senate cuts it to 2 months, making it not only bad policy, but impossible to implement.
Senate goes on vacation, making the House sign on to the bad bill. Media declares Obama victor. The population continues their Christmas shopping, ignoring the entire situation.
The Second Annual Holiday Season Republican Butt Whipping(Remember the drubbing they took in the 2010 "Lame Duck Session"?)
Hey but I get to buy
pizza once a month for two entire months!
Ah, the media is admitting this now. Still leaving out that the paycheck is bi-weekly though.
So the Obama sob story guy losing his weekly pizza night makes over 100 grand? If you can't afford pizza with that kind of income you have made some very poor financial decisions.
Never got called on spinning this as $40 a week by the media.
Yes, it will all be forgotten. Nobody pays any attention to this stuff. Hopefully one of his many scandals will bring him down. Hopefully the Republican candidate will have to guts to say what he really is. There’s always hope.
So the same Republicans in congress will get a ‘clue’ next year and actually formulate a counter-strategy to turn the tables on Obama?? So far Republicans have squandered the 2010 midterm win.
Obuma, like his hero Lincoln, is the most hated man in America and will not win re-election.
From your lips to Gods ear
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