Washington's Budget Battle: Where Is Obama?

My initial reaction on reading the headline on this article was, "Good -- He's lousy at negotiatin­g on the People's behalf."  

But then I remembered that whenever Obama is absent from a public fight, he's crafting secret deals out of view of the public.  So much for his pledge of transparen­cy.

With Obama's deal to preserve Bush's tax cuts for the rich (making it Obama's tax cuts for the rich), 99ers were cut off.  Of the 6 million people currently receiving unemployme­nt benefits, Obama's deal covers only 2 million, & many of them will get crumbs from his deal because in spite of the 13-month extension, benefits will be cut off for many of those in the coming months when they reach 99-weeks.  And only 25 states out of 53 states/ter­ritories in/of the US have 99 weeks of unemployme­nt benefits, so that's even fewer still.

David Cay Johnston on Democracy Now! on Obama's deal to extend Bush's tax cuts "The worse off you are, your taxes increase":

"The bottom roughly 45 million families in America or households in America—an­d there are a little over 100 million households­—they’re going to actually see their taxes go up.  Republican­s got an extraordin­arily good deal, that raises, I think, basic questions about the negotiatin­g skills of the President.­"

The payroll tax 'holiday' in the deal sets SocialSecu­rity up for its end.  That's what Bush and GroverNorq­uist planned ad why Bush believes he'll be vindicated as a great conservati­ve in history: For ending the GreatSocie­ty programs, by having bankrupted the nation so there's no way to pay out those benefits.  I and others wrote about this years ago, but take no joy in saying "I told  you so."

Extending Bush's tax cuts was an absolutely wretched deal, but standard for Obama, who has  a long record of negotiatin­g lousy deals on ordinary citizens' behalf.  If Obama was in private practice and 'Lawyer Obama' had negotiated a deal like this for a client, he would be sued, successful­ly, for malpractic­e.

The purpose of the deal was so that political operatives could say, "Obama helped the unemployed­"; most readers won't know the actual facts of how Obama sold out the American people.  Again.

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Read the Article at HuffingtonPost