There is a certain amount of kvetching about the deal among liberals. I find much of the criticism misguided. I have a hard time understanding how anyone can seriously accuse the President of "lying" or "breaking his campaign promise" because he ran on having the floor for the new higher Clinton rates at $250,000 and the agreement has it at $450,000.
Do these critics forget when Mitt Romney at the same time during the campaign was declaring that he wouldn't accept a deal that had 90% spending cuts and 10% tax increases? Then after the campaign Boehner said he agreed there should be revenue but only by closing loopholes. Then he said he'd accept rate hikes but only those over $1 million.
Mitch McConnell made his first offer last Friday night-for a $750,000 floor. So who you you say has compromised more?
The one area I agree is a source of some concern is the debt ceiling-and the sequester. Yes, it would have been better to get this stuff sorted out now. In truth there should be no debt ceiling at all. Yet, you can't expect everything all at once. The GOP just caved on a major piece of orthodoxy here. In order to do that many need to believe the debt ceiling is where they'll get deep spending cuts.
Now they're not going to get them. Still, during the debate over taxes it was helpful for many of them to believe they will or at least they might get a lot of spending cuts. A lot of people seem to think the President will cave on the debt ceiling. I disagree and the idea that Obama caved here is simply wrong. Again see above for how much each side compromised on taxes.
More importantly, the GOP idea making the kinds of cuts to Medicare that Romney ran-and lost-on seems to ignore the point of Bill Kristol: elections have consequences.
The idea that they'll get everything they want by playing debt ceiling chicken ignored the fact that they have no political capital for that. The GOP has tried to shutdown the government in exchange for draconian cuts twice-the 1995 government shutdown and the debt ceiling in 2011. Both times the GOP took a major hit to it's party's brand.
I don't believe the President will negotiate over it. Ultimately the GOP would only achieve the objective of convincing more Americans that they can't be trusted with any control at any level of government.
P.S. I don't think the President will blink over the debt ceiling and don't think he caved here. However, Josh Marshall has repeatedly asserted that Obama and his team don't believe that using the 13th amendment to get past the debt ceiling is constitutional and that even if it were it would have a very adverse effect on the markets.
If this is true I don't get it. I don't see how employing the 13th amendment is unconstitutional. As for fear that the market won't like it, hasn't no fact of economics been made more clear than that the bond vigilantes are paper tigers?
Even if you think for some reason the bond market wouldn't like the 13th amendment being used, would it like this or simply defaulting less?
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