Whether you agree with what was done or not, it was good to see President Obama finally lead instead of having to clean up behind the mess made by the Dem. leadership. That's how I remember Presidents doing things--leading-- but somehow Barrack decided to defer to his party's congressional leadership instead of leading them. Didn't work out so well at the polls.
I didn't have a big problem with raising taxes on the rich, and even the so-called rich, but I didn't see how that was going to help the short term economic malaise and actually create jobs, and it was amusing hearing liberals talk like deficit hawks (I didn't think many of them even knew what the word deficit means).
Frankly I'm surprised and pleased the Republicans went along. Their policy of "Just Say No" was working pretty well and their efforts ( which I thought bordered on treason) not to agree to do anything that would make Obama look good and therefore more re-electable, even if it was in the best interests of the country, also seemed to be working. Maybe they, correctly, were worried about over playing their hand. However I won't give them that much credit.
Let the progressives scream (in truth they got what they wanted, but only didn't get to take away what others had), we finally got our President back.
Liberals don't know what the word deficit means? Sorry Eric, but it was Reagan's Secretary of the Treasury who said deficits don't matter in response to warnings by Ted Kennedy, among other liberals; it was Clinton who directly attacked the deficit by passing a tax increase over unanimous Republican opposition leading to an economic boom and budget surpluses; and it was Bush and the Republican Congress that put an end to those surpluses with a tax cut that was the worst economic policy mistake since Smoot Hawley. And nothing has changed. The conservatives fought to maintain that tax cut and ran their campaigns promising to repeal the $500 Million reduction in Medicare spending contained in the health care reform act. There is only one party that has been serious about fiscal reform in the last 40 years and it ain't the GOP.
ReplyDeleteI agree that was a cheap shot but the vast majority of the tax cuts go to the middle class, poor and other worthy recipients.
ReplyDeleteObama made a good deal for his constituency and the basic point of the liberals objection is that someone else shouldn't have gotten something.
Eric