You would swear that there has not been an election. The
same key issue that was fought day in and day out for two years is back again
in the forefront of public debate. Obama ran on the wealthy paying a bit more
to resolve the debt crises and Romney believed that the basis of solving the
financial shortfall was by cutting spending. One might have thought that the election had sorted the
matter out but the Republicans are still in total denial as to the outcome.
Because
resolution of the debt crises was legislatively deferred to the end of this
year the USA faces the “fiscal cliff”. This means if a deal is not realized by
the end of the year as to how the crises should be resolved, the Bush tax cuts,
for all Americans, will fall away and in addition automatic spending cuts would
be put into place. Taxes would be increased on everyone as opposed to just the
upper income 2%. These spending cuts are drastic and both parties do not want
it for differing reasons. If there is no compromise it could conceivably result
in a recession
OVERWHELMING, ONGOING, ELECTORAL SUPPORT FOR OBAMA PLAN.
Now this was a key issue in the winning Obama campaign. Not
only did Obama win but also 60% of the electorate, including over 20% of those
that voted for Romney, agreed with him on this issue. However, the Republican
Speaker Boehner refuses point blank to consider this reduction. This in the
teeth of a recent Pew Poll that found that if there was no resolution to the
fiscal cliff then 53% would blame the Republicans and 27% Obama. Another
National Poll showed that the electorate by 2 to 1 trusts Obama and the
Democrats more than they do Boehner and the Republicans, to solve the crisis.
This is not a surprising outcome as the Republicans have
been unashamedly non -cooperative on these issues for years now. Even worse for
the Republicans is the perception that they are doing this to protect their
billionaire and millionaire constituencies. Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana Republican
Governor commented that the public perception of the Republican Party is that
they are the Party of the rich and wish to get rid of Medicare and this needed
to change.
So at the moment the two sides appear to in a stalemate as
the fiscal cliff date gets closer and closer. Boehner defiantly stated on
December 8 that they were no closer to the solution - “This is the President’s
problem – stupid”
Why on earth would the Republicans stick to a losing
formula? Why would they march like lemmings going into no where?
REPUBLICAN DYSFUNCTION
As Jay H Ell has blogged ad infinitum, during the campaign,
the Republican Party is in total disarray. Their key unifying policy was to deny Obama a second term.
This has failed so they are left with vying factions within the Party. The most
influential of these is the Tea Party who if they had their way would reduce
income tax to nothing and cut back all government spending that wasn’t related
to defense. There is no hope of the
electorate, as a whole, ever accepting that. So unless the Republican
establishment gets its act together the Republican Party is headed to being in
the minority forever. The majority of the Republicans have neither the will,
the savvy nor the desire to take the Tea Party full on. In addition the key
Republican spokespeople and policy makers of the Republican party are unelected
megalomaniacs,who have or control large sums of money, who snipe from the sidelines.
Key to the dysfunction of this “do nothing” Repubulican Congressmen is the
process whereby they make the decisions that bring legislation to the
floor. A majority of the
Republican caucus has to agree that a piece of legislation can be debated. Put
another way even if there are a majority of Congressmen, made up of both
Republicans and Democrats, in the House of Representatives in favor of an issue,
the issue will never ever reach the floor unless a majority of Republicans
agree that it can.
Also this group is guided in it’s decision making process by
the pledge they made to Grover Norquist that they would never raise taxes.
Nothing but nothing takes precedent over these rules.
THE “COMPROMISE”
It is with this as a background that the Republican House
Speaker Boehner has to come to a compromise solution with President Obama on
averting the fiscal cliff and the introduction of higher tax rates for all. Obama
has proposed that only the taxes of the richest 2% in America are raised.
Boehner feigned shock telling the President that he could
not be serious. So did the Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, maintain that Obama did not understand that a large number of voters decided
against this solution! Boehner true to the Norquist line does not wish to raise
taxes on that top 2%. He has suggested other means of getting revenues by
cutting down on tax deductions. The latter is the very losing policy that
Romney touted in the campaign and that Obama has rejected outright. (SEE BLOG:
OBAMA MUST NOT CAVE AGAIN).
There is a very simple compromise out there to help the
Republican Party not to have to face up to Grover. Vote for the Bush tax cuts
on the 98% and the tax cuts on the top 2% will automatically fall away. Nobody
could say that they raised taxes then. The perception is that this compromise
has enough Republican support in the house to pass this with the Democrats. But
this simple solution is also out because Boehner needs the majority of the
Republicans to bring it to the floor for a vote. That would be against the one
of the aforementioned, Republican holy canons. (The Democrats are going to
introduce a procedural vote to try and bypass this impasse but that will not
fly.
ROMNESIA HAS BEEN CURED– OBAMA’S RESPONSE.
The Republican establishment has delayed a showdown between
them and the Tea Party. The longer they do the higher the stakes. Boehner is
trying to sell his compromise to the American electorate as “taxing the rich”.
He has no hope. Obama’s solution has been accepted. It is obvious that even
about half of his own electorate do not believe him. Romnesia has been cured.
(SEE BLOG: HALF OF AMERICA HAS ROMNESIA).
Other Republican Congressmen are even further removed from
reality. Some are still telling Obama they will come to a deal with him to
allow increase revenue if it is matched by spending cuts of $4 for every one
dollar of revenue. Senator DeMint,
the Tea Party Godfather has resigned from his elected Senate seat in order to
become another unelected megalomaniac operator of the Republican Tea Party
agenda. This symbolizes the de facto split between the Tea Party ideologues and
the main body of the Republican Party but the Republican establishment remains
in denial on this front as well
In truth the fiscal cliff is really a fiscal stepladder. One
can stop the chaos even after the 31st December. So Obama will call
Boehner’s bluff if necessary. All hell will break loose in January when the
first paycheck takes off the higher taxes. Sooner or later Boehner is going to
have to show some leadership. The longer it takes the worse the hole is that he
will have to dig himself out of.
Obama is continuing with his campaigning on this issue addressing
meetings and conducting his social media campaign with the same intensity as in
the election. He is doing what he does best – activist electioneering. Signs
are that support is just growing and growing. This issue is slowly becoming the
biggest grass roots issue since the Vietnam War and Civil rights.
In response to all this all Boehner is posturing as the
Republicans squabble amongst each other.
TEA PARTY
Heritage Action, the Republican think tank and another of
the Republican Party’s unelected leadership entities, has attacked the Boehner
compromise as well. This is the organization that Tea Party Godfather DeMint
left the Senate to lead. Heritage have said that Boehner is asking Republicans
to go back on their pledge to raise revenue thereby breaking their promise to
the American people. The American people do not seem to be clamoring for either the Heritage or a Boehner solution. If
anything they are blocking the switchboards in Congress and signing petitions
for the Obama solution.
Maybe Grover has “stuff” on everybody in the Republican
caucus, much like Edgar Hoover, because how on earth could this paranoid
megalomaniac be holding the Republic Party and therefore the country to ransom?
UNREALITY
The whole debate has an air of unreality about it. The
divided Republicans are functioning in their own space oblivious of the world
around them. Some of their commentators talk about “overreach” by Obama. Others
just go back to just attacking Obama. Most defend income tax rates as if it was
the Holy Grail that only Democrats would desecrate. They forget that the
percentage of one’s income that is taxed is just a number that changes all the
time in relation to society’s needs. The highest marginal rates were under
President Eisenhower - 90%. Both Regan and Bush 41 raised taxes. Nixon was most
distressed with tax evasion by the rich and introduced the AMT provision that
controlled the maximum deductions the rich could take. All these post war Presidents
were Republicans.
Bush 43, was the
first and only post war Republican President that lowered the tax rates. That together
with 2 unpaid for wars and a massive handout to the pharmaceutical industry
landed us n this fiscal mess. Now Grover Norquist has enshrined the Bush 43
rates in the Torah, New Testament and Koran like G-d handed these down at
Sinai. The Republican Caucus is following and are prepared, if necessary, with
religious fervor, to bring the country down with them.
Boehner pretends to have washed his hands of the whole
affair. He states it is the President’s responsibility to come up with a plan
that will pass both Houses!
Is Boehner serious?
All this and the fact that the Republicans failed to endorse
the UNO Convention of the Rights of the Disabled on the grounds that it
threatened US Sovereignty and the rights of homeschoolers led Harry Reid,
Democratic Leader of the Senate to question the rationality of the Republicans.
He queried whether a solution could be obtained to the fiscal cliff crisis in
the light of the Republicans’ state of mind.
IN THE END
In the end the Republicans have to cave. The sooner the
better for all concerned. Then the issues of what spending cuts are acceptable
can be debated. Obama has indicated that once this issue is resolved he is
ready to discuss these spending issues. Medicare is central to these
discussions and this will be the next area that the Republicans will be found
to have a disconnect with the American electorate and reality.
The battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party is
now officially on even if war hasn’t been officially declared. The fights in
Republican Primaries are going to be Herculean. Senator DeMint has said he
would rather have 30 Republican Senators that stood for Conservative values
than 60 Republican Senators that stood for nothing.
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