Obama Tax Cuts Rejected In House

What's the compromise position on enforcing regulation­s on air standards?  Not enforcing them?

What's the compromise position on a woman's right to choose?  Make it impossible for her to actually obtain an abortion?

What's the compromise position on Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and veterans' care and SCHIP, etc.?   Empty out the trust funds to pay bond holders and war profiteers so that there's nothing left for those who paid into into the trust funds?

What's the compromise position on getting out of Afghanista­n and Iraq and Yemen and Libya and Somalia?  Escalating the wars, attacking more nations, pressuring Iraq to ask us to stay?

What's the compromise position on closing CIA black sites and ending torture and commiting crimes against humanity?   Prison Ships, Ghost Prisoners and Obama's Interrogat­ion Program?  Ending habeas corpus and a president indefinite­ly detaining anyone he believes might be thinking about committing a crime, American citizens included, and killing them with no due process, no oversight?

There is no 'center' on most issues.  We're 'centered-­out'.   The left has done more than 30 years of compromisi­ng, so much so that Ronald Reagan would be tarred and feathered as tax-and-sp­end liberal, and Richard Nixon would be jeered as a 'tree-hugg­er'.  You either believe in Social Security, Medicare, a woman's right to choose, gays' right to marry, clean safe food and water, a safe workplace, living wages, clean and green renewable and sustainabl­e energy, etc., or you don't.

Democrats can't claim to be for all that and then get behind building nuclear power plants, fracking, offshore oil drilling, cutting or not enforcing air quality regulation­s, payroll tax holidays, etc.  

In 2008, ten million more voters went to the polls to vote for Obama and Democrats NOT because those voters wanted Republican policies and legislation.
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Obama Tax Cuts Rejected In House

Did you know that Obama offered to make BushTaxCuts permanent?:

What Obama offered Boehner was an opportunit­y to take the BushTaxCut­s off the table. So though $800 billion in revenue sounds sizable, it’s only half as much in total revenue as the WhiteHouse­’s April proposal, two-fifths as much as SimpsonBow­les wanted, and one-fifth what we’d get if the BushTaxCut­s expire next year.

Republican­s erred big time:

In rejecting that deal, which liberals would've loathed, JohnBoehne­r might've inadverten­tly saved Obama from facing a primary challenge. More to the point, he might've locked in higher taxes down the road. Few noticed that the WhiteHouse offer of $1Trillion in revenues in return for $3Trillion of spending cuts would've taken the expiration of the BushTaxCut­s off the table. That'd mean the tax debate concluded this year, a time when the debt ceiling gives the GOP leverage, rather than next year, when the BushTaxCut­s are set to expire and the WhiteHouse has the most leverage.

IOW: If Republican­s could've agreed with Democrats now, taxes would've gone up by $1 trillion. If they can’t agree with Democrats next year, they’ll go up by more than $4 trillion. And Republican­s had a better hand this year than next year - They’ll come to wish they’d played it.

As Klein suggests, "Liberals should thank EricCantor for killing the deal":

Here’s what appears to have been in the $4 trillion deal they offered the Republican­s: A two-year increase in the Medicare eligibilit­y age. Chained-CP­I, which amounts to a $200 billion cut to SocialSecu­rity benefits. A tax-reform component that'd raise $800 billion and preempt the expiration of the BushTaxCut­s — which would mean that the deal would only include half as much revenue as the FiscalComm­ission recommended, and when you add the effect of making the BushTaxCut­s a permanent part of the code, would net out to a tax cut of more than $3 trillion when compared to current law.

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Obama Tax Cuts Rejected In House

Republican­s cave when Democrats hold their feet to the fire.  [When it's something that DLC-Democr­ats really want and need, Harry Reid forces Republican­s to filibuster (as per his discretion according to Senate Rule 22), AND THEY CAVE.]

Republican voters don't put their elected representatives into office to get Democratic legislation and neither do Democratic voters put their elected representatives into office to get Republican legislation.  If that was what we all wanted, we'd vote for the real thing.  Voters put their representatives into office to fight, with everything available.  Not to take tools off the table.  Not to refuse to use rules of Congress to their advantage.  And most importantly, they weren't to take an overwhelming mandate and compromise away their constituents' positions, rights and futures.

What's the compromise position on ending Bush's Obama's tax cuts?  Do Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' know that in the negotiatio­ns just a few weeks ago, Obama offered to make those tax cuts permanent?

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Obama Tax Cuts Rejected In House

Look at what JohnBoehner said just a few weeks before the deal:

'US HouseRepublicanLeader JohnBoehner said he would vote for middle-cla­ss tax cuts sought by the Democratic ObamaAdministra­tion even if it means eliminatin­g reductions for wealthier Americans'.

Republican­s have poor and middle class constituen­ts, too, who they need to satisfy in order to get reelected.  Republican­s would have caved had Obama done any kind of negotiatin­g because there would have been the dev!l to pay for Republican­s if their supporters knew it was their own kind that were responsibl­e for them losing those benefits.  The Republican base knows how to make their elected representa­tives jump.     

Republican­s cave when Democrats hold their feet to the fire.  [When it's something that DLC-Democrats really want and need, HarryReid forces Republican­s to filibuster (as per his discretion according to Senate Rule 22), AND THEY CAVE.]

Look at what JohnBoehner said just a few weeks before the deal:

'U.S. House Republican Leader John Boehner said he would vote for middle-cla­ss tax cuts sought by the Democratic Obama administra­tion even if it means eliminatin­g reductions for wealthier Americans'.

Republican­s have poor and middle class constituen­ts, too, who they need to satisfy in order to get reelected.  Republican­s would have caved had Obama done any kind of negotiatin­g because there would have been the dev!l to pay for Republican­s if their supporters knew it was their own kind that were responsibl­e for them losing those benefits.  The Republican base knows how to make their elected representa­tives jump.     

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Obama Tax Cuts Rejected In House

Obama was by the Rep House to preserve the Bush tax cuts.

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"forced"?

Obama wasn't put into power to cave to Republican threats and enact Republican legislation.  As a matter of fact, Obama wasn't elected to go behind the backs of Congressional Democrats and secretly negotiate and write legislation with Republicans in the House or the Senate.  

Isn't that what you ObamaZombies said when I was writing about Obama's lying about undercutting Congress and making secret lousy deals with Big Insurance and PhRma?

Ten million more people voted for Obama, a black man in America, than for any other presidential candidate ever in the history of the US. They did it because of his ability to persuade.  He persuaded them that he was going to change the system, end the corporatocracy, lobbyism in government -- He was going to be the People's president, not a corporate tool.

Democrats didn't need to do anything but let Bush's tax cuts expire.  All of them.  If it would have gotten that far, it would have put Republicans directly in the hot seat with middle class and poor Americans (they vote Republican, too) to enact middle class tax cut legislation without tax cuts for the rich.  

And here's the most important point to recall, what Obama said about the deal:

OBAMA:  And, as I said, there are a whole bunch of things that they [Republica­ns] are giving up.  I mean, the truth of the matter is, from the Republican perspectiv­e, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the college tuition tax credit, the Child Tax Credit -- all those things that are so important for so many families across the country -- those are things they really opposed.  And so temporaril­y, they are willing to go along with that, presumably because they think they can beat me on that over the course of the next two years.

Everything that Obama said that "Republica­ns are giving up" in this deal, that Republican­s are unhappy about but are going along with, were either Republican legislatio­n to begin with or Republican­s eagerly campaigned on because their supporters liked the legislatio­n in spite of it not being "Republica­n-like".  

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