Free Republic

President Obama seems to have a strategy to terminate all of the Bush tax cuts, not just those for “the rich,” as he has been saying since 2008. He is offering the Republicans exactly zero concessions in the “fiscal cliff” negotiations. No spending cuts, no entitlement reform, no compromise on the rates. It is entirely my way or the highway, and if the Republicans refuse to do everything exactly as he demands, he will let the Bush tax cuts expire entirely, for the middle class and working people as well as the upper incomes, and blame the Republicans for refusing...

As politically unpopular as raising taxes is, cutting spending is much, much harder. And it’s getting harder by the day, as the share of the budget going to entitlements and interest on the debt increases and therefore “discretionary” spending becomes an ever smaller slice of the pie.