After a few more weeks of Democrats and Republicans playing their fiscal game of chicken, it would not surprise me if they come up with a plan at the eleventh hour to avoid falling over this cliff. Not least because they themselves created this so-called doomsday scenario—in the spirit of mutually assured (political) destruction—precisely to force them to strike a deal. Except that, given the way Republicans have been deliberating lurching the government from one eleventh-hour cliff to the next (in a brazen attempt to undermine Obama’s presidency), it’s only a matter of time before they push it over … no?
(“Ignore Chicken Littles. Fiscal Cliff as Real as Mayan Calendar,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 3, 2012)
Well, just as I predicted, despite all of the now patented drama and brinkmanship, Congress passed a bill at the eleventh hour (literally around 11 o’clock last night) to avoid going over the fiscal cliff. Never mind that the leadership conveniently moved that eleventh hour from midnight on December 31, 2012 to midnight on January 1, 2013 (i.e., just hours before the U.S. markets are scheduled to reopen for the New Year today).
But trust me, except for socking families earning more than $450,000 a year with higher taxes, the details of this bill are not terribly important. Nonetheless, try telling that to outraged right-wing Republicans who are damning as traitors their Party members who voted for it.
Look, there are a lot of conservatives in the Republican caucus in the House who hate the bill, and for good reason. This is a complete surrender on everything.
The ratio of tax cuts, of tax hikes to spending cuts is 40-to-one, rather than one-to-one or one-to-two, or one-to-three. So, I mean, it’s a complete rout by the Democrats, so it’s understandable.
(Huffington Post, January 2, 2013)
This is how no less a person than the philosopher king of conservatism, Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, is rationalizing their outrage. But to his credit, instead of becoming unhinged like everyone from Matt Drudge to Newt Gingrich, Krauthammer duly acknowledged that Obama simply handled Republican negotiators with “great skill, and ruthless skill, and success.”
For example, Republican anti-tax guru Grover Norquist looked even more panic-stricken trying in vain to explain why this bill does not raise taxes on the rich (in violation of his Talibanic no-taxes pledge) than Karl Rove looked trying to explain why Obama did not win Ohio.
On the other hand, here is how no less a person than the philosopher king of liberalism, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, is rationalizing the outrage among Democrats who are damning Obama as a surrender monkey:
He gave every indication of being more or less desperate to cut a deal before the year ended… [H]ow credible is his promise to hang tough over the debt ceiling, which is a much brighter red line…? I have to say that I now expect Obama to cave on the ceiling; and so, of course, do the Republicans.
The only thing that might save this situation is the fact that Obama has to be aware just how much is now riding on his willingness to finally stand up for his side; if he doesn’t, nobody will ever trust him again, and he will go down in history as the wimp who threw it all away.
(Krugman, The New York Times, January 2, 2012)
In any case, you know America is becoming a house divided against itself when conservative and liberal intellectuals are aping conservative and liberal politicians by propagating rhetoric in parallel universes.
That said, here is why averting this fall over the cliff is ultimately much ado about nothing:
The compromise bill passed by Congress to avert the worst effects of the ‘fiscal cliff’ is a small, imperfect package that will do too little to address the nation’s long-term debt problem…
We hope the nation’s leaders will be able to accomplish in stages what they have been unable to do in a series of self-imposed crises: raise more revenue and significantly reduce future entitlement spending. But the fiscal cliff episode offers little encouragement.
(The Washington Post, January 2, 2013)
This is a bad bill that made a bad situation worse. The only thing it did was avoiding sending the signal (to the rest of the world) that we’re reckless and out of control.
(Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, MSNBC, January 2, 2013)
But I warned it would be thus:
Frankly, these days Republicans and Democrats are behaving more like Israelis and Palestinians. Which is why, instead of passing legislation to resolve this looming fiscal cliff crisis, they seem determined to ape the Israelis and Palestinians by pointing fingers and agreeing only on stop-gap measures to kick the can down the road to fight this same fight another day.
(“Popular Republican Blames ‘Tea Party Chuckleheads’ for Congressional Dysfunction,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 28, 2012)
So until the next round, which the media are already hyping as “the debt ceiling showdown”….
Meanwhile, Krauthammer claimed to be speaking for all Republicans when he warned that Obama will pay a price on the debt ceiling, immigration reform and other major initiatives for ridiculing Congress:
He ridicules the Congress, he spikes the football on the Republicans. He rubs in the fact that they were resisting a raise in rates and he made them do it.
(FOX News, December 31, 2012)
Mind you, I saw Obama deliver the statement on Monday that evidently incited so much offense. His clear intent was to urge the House to follow the Senate’s lead by passing the compromise bill to avoid the fiscal cliff before the looming deadline.
And far from ridiculing Republicans (as if they need him to do that), Obama merely noted that this bill codifies the main promise of his winning presidential campaign, which was to provide tax relief for the middle class and ensure that the rich pay a fairer share of federal income taxes. Not surprisingly, he also decried the global anxiety and chaos “Congress” (i.e., he never even said Republicans) causes by always waiting until the last minute to get anything done.
So besides betraying their political thin skin, this vindictive and antagonistic proclivity among Republicans also betrays the inherent flaw in their political strategy, which has been geared, pathologically, from day one at settling petty political scores with Obama — even at the expense of solving the country’s worsening economic problems.
Ironically, Krauthammer is also the one who led the chorus of those criticizing Obama for expressing bewilderment recently at the way Republicans continually act as if destroying his presidency is more important than governing the country. Yet here they go again….
Related commentaries:
Ignore Chicken Littles…
Blames Tea Party Chuckleheads…
* This commentary was published yesterday, Wednesday, at 9:11 am