Obama Stands Firm on "Fiscal Cliff"

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright Dec. 8, 2012
All Rights Reserved.                                         

         President Barack Obama shows no sign of backing down from his promise to raise taxes on individuals making over $200,000 and couples over $250,000.  Just how much Barack expects to raise the upper income bracket is anyone’s guess.  What’s known for sure is that he and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) play a dangerous game of chicken going down to the wire on the “fiscal cliff,” when Bush’s across-the-board tax cuts are due to expire.  After a stunning victory on Nov. 6, Obama believes he has the mandate to raise taxes on the wealthy, something backed by recent polls.  When the Labor Department reported Friday, Dec. 7 that the storm-ravaged economy still eked out 146,000 private sector jobs, dropping the unemployment rate two-tenths-of-one-percent to 7.7%, it vindicated his economic policies helping pull the country out of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

            Boehner and his GOP House friends insist that preserving tax cuts for the wealthy are essential to creating new jobs.  Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his VP pick Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) staked their campaign on Barack’s mismanagement of the economy.  Voters didn’t agree Nov. 6.  Nor did the slews of Labor and Commerce Department reports showing irrefutable progress over the three-and-a-half years since the economy collapsed in 2007.  Yet Romney and Ryan ignored every positive government and private sector report, hammering Obama for lack of economic progress.  With that battle over, Boehner and House Republicans continue the same old Supply Side economics fantasy about how only cutting taxes spurs economic growth.  Regardless of the size of budget deficits, Boehner’s Tea Party-leaning House only look to slash spending on social programs.

            House members have no limit to what they’d spend to subsidize the defense, drug or oil fracking industries.  Sky is the limit for government subsidies to publicly traded corporations, just not struggling taxpayers.  “Tax increases will not solve our $16 trillion debt.  Only economic growth and a reform to entitlement programs will help control the debt,” said GOP darling Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.), giving the same platitudes that led former President Bush’s economy to a financial collapse of epic proportions.  Rubio and other Tea Party types believe that only slashing government spending on entitlements is the way out of today’s red ink.  Yet since Obama took office Jan. 20, 2009, the government’s deficit-to-GDP ratio has dropped to under 7%.  As the economy adds jobs and generates more tax revenue, deficits drop automatically, just like the irrefutable recovery in the U.S. auto industry.

            Rubio and other Tea Party types continue the same mantra as Romney and Ryan, ignoring the latest Labor Department reports showing steady jobs growth.  If you listened to Mitt and Paul, you’d believe the economy was still losing 800,000 jobs a month during the waning days of Bush and Cheney.  It’s no accident that Bush and Cheney were practically ghost-like during the 2012 campaign, to break the association with GOP economic disaster.  “We must reform our complicated, uncertain, job-killing tax code, by getting rid of unjustified loopholes,” said Rubio, making more non sequiturs than real estate mogul Donald Trump.  Whatever one says about the arcane U.S. Tax Code, loopholes and write-offs are there for businesses to have more operating cash to hire workers.  Reducing loopholes makes it more difficult for businesses.  Obama simply wants wealthy taxpayers to pay their fair share.

            When voters found out that Romney paid only 14% federal tax on millions in income and parked his cash in the Cayman Islands and Swiss banks, he eviscerated his argument about giving more tax cuts.  Now Rubio talks of “job-killing tax code,” sounding more like a socialist than Tea Party devotee.  Romney and Paul talked of their secret plan to create 12 million new private sector jobs, concocted by their Hollywood-trained chief story telling strategist Stuart Stevens. Voters got wind of their real plan of slashing government jobs, tossing thousands of federal workers into unemployment.  “But our goal should be to generate new revenue by creating new taxpayers, not new taxes,” said Rubio, coming full circle into Obama’s camp.  Adding another 146,000 private sector jobs in November and creating over 5 million private sector jobs since April 2010, that’s precisely Barack’s plan.

            Republicans lost the argument about the economy and jobs in the 2012 election.  Voters, especially in the rustbelt Midwest, saw the rebirth of the U.S. auto industry.  They didn’t buy Mitt and Paul’s smoke blowing about the economy.  Making the same arguments now, Boehner and the GOP are losing more political clout.  With the “fiscal cliff” approaching and Congressional approval ratings at 16%, Boehner and his GOP friends are losing more ground.  “There are a lot of things that are possible to put the revenues that the president seeks on the table,” said Boehner, still fighting against a 3% tax hike for wealthy taxpayers.  When voters gave Obama a landslide victory Nov. 6, they didn’t vote for Boehner and the GOP’s economic program.  Boehner knows that Romney doesn’t need another tax break.  Preserving middle class tax cuts should help keep jobs and the economy rolling.

 John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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