I have been trying to figure out who got screwed out of this deal Obama and the Republicans negotiated. It seemed to be fairly simple, Democrates wanted to continue the Bush Tax cuts for everyone earning under about $250k. Seemed reasonable given the debt concerns but also the fragile economy.
They couldn’t get this passed in the Senate due to the stupid rules they have where you need to control 2/3s or the minority can just fillisbuster. Use to be that Senators were above all that but no longer.
So Obama goes to these stubborn Republicans and figures out how to what? I thought to extend the Bush tax cut for the majority of the people. But it seems that somewhere, reauthorizing the extension of unemployment benefits came into the equation. Oh boy. The Republicans were against that. The easiest way I think to understand how the Republican’s think is to say “starve the beast”. They are happy to do anything that reduces revenue for the government. They then can point at the debt and say cut spending. So now you can see the republican’s are going to win/win on this deal even if they agreed to the reautorization of unemployment extension. Notice that everyone was quite about the deficit during this discussion. The demoncrats think that is behind us now. But it is not.
Obama took the bait of getting more cuts in revenue, like the Soc Sec payroll tax break(????) where did that stupid idea come from?, and the other crap he thinks will stimulate the economy. It won’t. And now the deficiet has been increased significantly and there will be a big price to pay by????? the middle class and poor. While the rich got their tax breaks.
That is why this is such a bad, bad deal and Obama and the democrats haven’t even realized it. They really are out smarted by republicans at every turn.