{"id":3351,"date":"2010-11-12T02:03:04","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T10:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3351"},"modified":"2010-11-12T02:52:40","modified_gmt":"2010-11-12T10:52:40","slug":"obama-goes-spelunking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/12\/obama-goes-spelunking\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Goes Spelunking"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you don\u2019t know, spelunking is the exploration of caves, and Obama appears to be exploring a huge cave on tax cuts.\u00a0 One could not ask for a finer gift from the Republican Party than this issue. Majorities of Democratic, Independent, and even Republican voters oppose busting the budget to give a tax cut to the top 2%.\u00a0 Yet Republicans are holding hostage the tax cut for 98% of us, unless the tax cut for the rich is included.\u00a0 That will cost $40 billion in 2011 alone, $40 billion that could be used for education, infrastructure, small business tax credits for hiring, or other things we desperately need.\u00a0 We now have our last majority in both houses of Congress that we will have before 2013, if then.\u00a0 This is our best opportunity.\u00a0 And if we can\u2019t get a tax cut for the 98% through the lame duck Senate, Republicans will be be blamed.\u00a0 I\u2019m disabled.\u00a0 Everything is going up, except my income.\u00a0 Not getting this tax cut would cause my federal income taxes to increase 50%, so I need that tax cut.\u00a0 But I would prefer to see Republicans block my tax cut than see Obama cave-in on this issue.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"12cave\"Sorry folks, there’s nothing ambiguous about this: agreeing to the Republican tax cut plan without putting up a fight would pretty much be the textbook definition of caving<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

As everybody knows, President Obama’s tax cut proposal would permanently extend middle-income tax cuts but would allow upper-income tax cuts to expire. Everybody would get a tax cut under the Obama plan, but income above $250,000 would return to Clinton-era rates.<\/p>\n

Republicans oppose the Obama plan — they want to extend upper-income tax cuts in addition to the middle-income tax cuts. Moreover — and this is crucial for them — Republicans want both tax cuts to remain linked, so that whether they are extended permanently or temporarily, they are not treated as separate tax cuts, otherwise known as decoupling. Republicans know that decoupling the tax cuts would mean the upper-income tax cuts would eventually be phased out because they would not be able to hold middle-income tax cuts hostage<\/strong>, in the process losing their leverage to continue the upper-income tax cuts.<\/p>\n

As Greg Sargent points out<\/a>, any plan that both extends the upper-income tax cuts and fails to decouple them from the middle-income tax cuts represents a clear Republican victory<\/strong>. The Obama administration is now trying to define victory as being any plan that (a) extends middle-income tax cuts and (b) doesn’t include a permanent extension of upper-income tax cuts. Implicit in this is the notion that they will accept a temporary extension of both tax cuts without decoupling\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Daily Kos<\/a>><\/p>\n

Keith Olbermann and pollster, Sam Greenburg confirm this:<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/span><\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s earlier position is crystal clear.\u00a0 It was a campaign promise in 2008.\u00a0 Last month, I heard him say it in person when he visited Portland.\u00a0 If Republicans block tax cuts for the 98%, a wage earner with an income of $50,000 per year will pay nearly $2000 more per year in taxes.\u00a0 A fat cat earing $1,000,000 per year will pay $40,000 more per year than they would under the Democratic plan.\u00a0 He should dare them to earn all the anger that will bring.\u00a0 In my opinion, Obama\u2019s political future depends upon him drawing lines in the sand and holding firm, not spelunking.\u00a0 What better place could there be to draw a line?<\/span><\/p>\n

Breaking update:\u00a0 The White House denies the original story and claim they are firm on the issue.<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you don\u2019t know, spelunking is the exploration of caves, and Obama appears to be exploring a huge cave on tax cuts.\u00a0 One could not ask for a finer gift from the Republican Party than this issue. Majorities of Democratic, Independent, and even Republican voters oppose busting the budget to give a tax cut […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}