If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
There's going to be pain all around in whatever deal is struck. Most Americans are going to be directly impacted in one way or another by whatever bargain is made between President Obama and congressional Republicans.
I'm sick of all the palaver about Obama's so-called gifts to poor and middle-class voters. Republicans are free marketeers. Romney was virtually breastfed on Adam Smith. These people are supposed to understand capitalism. Didn't they ever hear of the invisible hand?
There is a relatively simple proposal that the president make that could raise more money than the nominal rate increase he wants, be progressive in its impact, and produce a more equitable and widely understood tax system.
Allowing the nation to go over the fiscal cliff for a very short period of time will provide all the legitimate political benefits of such a policy dive -- with few to none of the menacing losses that are looming at the bottom. We can readily fly off the cliff on January 1st and be back on the top by January 2nd, 2013.
Every major event in the last decade has exposed Pax Republicana as a crumbling empire based on false ideologies, none more dangerous than believing in the Tax Fairy that magically grows the economy and fills the treasury when Congress cuts taxes on the wealthy.
President Obama has available a "plan B" that will save the middle class and, in the process, devastate the Republicans.
Underlying all of the policy-speak, the Lame Duck budget battle is really about one question. Will the 1% of Americans who had the party that caused the deficit be asked to pay the bill?
As President Obama gets closer to making his deal with the Republicans on the budget, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the fiscal cliff is an artificially contrived trap. Were it not for the two Bush wars and the two Bush tax cuts and the House Republican games of brinksmanship with the routine extension of the debt ceiling, there would be no "fiscal cliff." Rather, there would be a normal, relatively short-term increase in the deficit resulting from a deep recession and the drop in government revenues that it produces. When the economy recovered, the deficit would return to sustainable levels. In the meantime, these deficits are necessary and useful to maintain public spending as a tonic to the economy.
Millions of Americans will start off their Thanksgiving statements with, "I am thankful Barack Obama will be our president for four more years. The biggest lesson we hope he learned from over the past four is to not start negotiating from a compromise position.
With the expiration date on the two wars in sight, why not let all of the Bush-era tax cuts expire, so that everyone has skin in the game? Let us simply go back to paying the rates during the Clinton era -- everyone.
We've all known a kid who upon losing a board game would freak out, hurl the game across the room and storm off while shouting something like, "This game sucks anyway!" It's no surprise the Republicans are doing exactly that.
This is all too complicated and controversial to be settled between now and the end of the year. I foresee a two-step process.
No one should continue to indulge this fiction. Republicans have voted to raise taxes. Repeatedly. They just did it again in 2010.
The best way to generate jobs and growth is for the government to spend more, not less. And for taxes to stay low -- or become even lower -- on the middle class.
This should not be so hard. The fiscal cliff is nothing more than one more set of self-imposed deadlines that Congress put in place so that they could comply with their own rules. We have seen this before.
We are in danger of going over "The Fiscal Cliff" -- in large part -- because of the framing of the Bush tax Cut issue and adding "revenue" to our debt crisis has been appalling. Why is no one breaking this down? And why are we ignoring two hugely relevant points?
Most Popular
