Obama Ignores Own Expert Or Any Compromise, Refuses To Budge On Tax Cuts

The phrase “uncompromising radical ideologue” comes to mind.  As does the phrase, “the president of no.”

Barack Obama chose to ignore his own expert’s advice (which would explain why both of his top economic experts are leaving the Obama administration) and go his own way.  Given that Obama’s life experience basically consists in community organizing (i.e., Marxist-type fomenting of grievances rather than any actual business experience), that’s kind of scary.

Obama’s own budget director, his own party’s Senate Budget Committee chairman, and his own party’s moderates, are urging Obama to give ALL Americans tax cuts for at least a couple of years.  But Obama is determined that there should be no compromises with his socialist-redistribution class warfare agenda.  He says he’s not budging on ending tax cuts for the higher income tax rate brackets.

But have no fear: a president can always find a “yes man” to pitch whatever policy he wants.  That’s the advantage to having fewer officials with business experience than any other administration in history; the actual real world doesn’t matter.

First, outgoing White House budget director Peter Orszag, in his own words:

One Nation, Two Deficits
By PETER ORSZAG
Published: September 6, 2010

The nation faces a nasty dual deficit problem: a painful jobs deficit in the near term and an unsustainable budget deficit over the medium and long term. This month, the Senate will be debating an issue with significant implications for both — what to do about the Bush-era tax cuts scheduled to expire at the end of the year.

In the face of the dueling deficits, the best approach is a compromise: extend the tax cuts for two years and then end them altogether. Ideally only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now. Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the high-income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it.

Why does this combination make sense? The answer is that over the medium term, the tax cuts are simply not affordable. Yet no one wants to make an already stagnating jobs market worse over the next year or two, which is exactly what would happen if the cuts expire as planned.

Higher taxes now would crimp consumer spending, further depressing the already inadequate demand for what firms are capable of producing at full tilt. And since financial markets don’t seem at the moment to view the budget deficit as a problem — take a look at the remarkably low 10-year Treasury bond yield — there is little reason not to extend the tax cuts temporarily. […]

Senate Democrats and Republicans almost never come together anymore. This month, they should fight the dual deficits rather than each other. Let’s continue the tax cuts for two years but end them for good in 2013.

I have to take issue with Orszag simply based on the obvious facts.  Orszag says, “Ideally only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now.” And then only moments later he proceeds to provide his reasoning for why we need to keep the tax cuts.  He says, “Higher taxes now would crimp consumer spending, further depressing the already inadequate demand for what firms are capable of producing at full tilt.”

But there’s an inconvenient truth that means, on Orszag’s very own reasoning, that we badly need to keep the tax cuts for the rich:

August 5, 2010, 12:27 PM ET
U.S. Economy Is Increasingly Tied to the Rich
By Robert Frank

Who cares how the rich spend their money?

Well, perhaps everyone should these days. Consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of U.S. gross domestic product, or the value of all goods and services produced in the nation. And spending by the rich now accounts for the largest share of consumer outlays in at least 20 years.

According to new research from Moody’s Analytics, the top 5% of Americans by income account for 37% of all consumer outlays. Outlays include consumer spending, interest payments on installment debt and transfer payments.

By contrast, the bottom 80% by income account for 39.5% of all consumer outlays.

So you’ll have to explain why Orszag would say that we have to have tax cuts because “higher taxes now would crimp consumer spending,” and then proceed to abandon his own reasoning by even suggesting that we shouldn’t keep the tax cuts for the rich along with everyone else.  I submit it’s because Orszag – like everyone else Obama has appointed – is himself a liberal ideologue first, and an intelligent economist second.  And whenever the first contradicts the second, so much the worse for the second.

That said, Peter Orszag is still now on the official record advocating that we keep the Bush tax cuts.  All of them.  Including for the rich.  For at least the next two years.  That, he says, in his capacity as Obama’s chief handpicked expert in dealing with the budget and budget deficits, is the best course.

Unfortunately, Orszag’s boss is something of a fool.

I’m reminded of a quote about another disastrous presidency in regards to the ruining of the economy:

[Franklin Delano] Roosevelt’s string of business failures did not surprise those who knew him well.  One friend, Franklin Lane, Wilson’s secretary of interior, concluded, “Roosevelt knows nothing about finance, but he doesn’t know he doesn’t know.” Therefore, he [Roosevelt] tried one scheme after another, pursuing whims not research, always thinking the next idea would be a winner.  Henry Wallace, who would become Roosevelt’s vice president, liked his boss in politics but not in business…. “I reached the conclusion,” Wallace said after watching Roosevelt in action, “… that I would under no circumstances, ever have any business dealings with him” [Burton Folsom, Jr., New Deal or Raw Deal?, p. 27].

As I point out, we’ve got another FDR on our hands, and that definitely aint a good thing.  Unless you like living through Great Depressions that just go on and on, that is.

Obama isn’t listening to his budget director.  He isn’t going to compromise, like Peter Orszag begs him to do.  Nope.  “Compromise” isn’t the kind of thing ideologues do:

Obama Is Against a Compromise on Bush Tax Cuts
By JACKIE CALMES
Published: September 7, 2010

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday will make clear that he opposes any compromise that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy beyond this year, officials said, adding a populist twist to an election-season economic package that is otherwise designed to entice support from big businesses and their Republican allies.

What’s Obama’s plan?  Nothing but pure, simple demagoguery.  Obama plans to dig in and refuse to budge, and then demonize his opposition for digging in and refusing to budge.

But he’s playing chicken with the US economy, and with a lot of Americans’ livelihoods and lives.

Peter Orszag is hardly the only Democrat who is opposed to Obama’s hard-core ideological refusal to compromise:

Democrats unlikely to repeal tax cuts for the rich
By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Democrats in Congress are poised to play a leading role this month in thwarting their party’s effort to raise income tax rates on the wealthy.

Tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 expire at the end of this year. President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have been eager to extend the breaks for individuals who earn less than $200,000 annually and joint filers who make less than $250,000. Those who earn more would pay higher, pre-2001 rates starting next year.

However, a small but growing number of moderate Democrats are balking at boosting taxes on the rich. Many face electorates that recoil at the mention of any tax increase. Some represent areas that are loaded with wealthier taxpayers. Further, some incumbent senators who don’t face voters this fall are reluctant to increase taxes on anyone while the economy remains sluggish.

Without their support, the push to raise rates on the rich probably will fail.

“The economy is very weak right now. Raising taxes will lower consumer demand at a time when we want people putting more money into the economy,” said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., who isn’t seeking re-election.

[snip]

Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., represents the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, one of the nation’s wealthiest districts. Median family income there in 2008 was $117,892, well above the national average of $63,211. He said that repealing the top rates would have political consequences.

“Sometimes we forget how we became the majority. We did it by winning some affluent districts,” he said.

The bigger problem for Democrats looms in the Senate, where Majority Leader Reid’s immediate problem is getting the 60 votes needed to cut off debate on the measure. Democrats control 59 seats, and at least three of them — Bayh, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Kent Conrad of North Dakota — have signaled that they won’t back a permanent repeal of the tax cuts for the wealthy.

They suggest a way out of a stalemate — temporarily extending all the expiring tax rates — but so far the leadership isn’t going along.

Sean Neary, a spokesman for Senate Budget Committee Chairman Conrad, said the senator backed such an extension “for now.”

“The general rule of thumb is that you do not raise taxes or cut spending during an economic downturn. That would be counterproductive,” Conrad said.

Nelson also offered what’s become the centrist Democratic mantra. He, too, said he’d back extending the tax breaks for the wealthy “for at least a period of time because raising taxes in a weak economy could impair recovery.”

That stand could be even more popular with Democratic candidates for the Senate who aren’t incumbents. The hottest races are in conservative states, such as Kentucky, where Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Jack Conway are battling for the seat now held by Republican Sen. Jim Bunning.

Of the expiring tax cuts for the wealthy, Conway spokeswoman Allison Haley said that he “believes we should extend them now, especially when so many Kentucky families and small businesses are struggling under this recession.”

In Missouri, Republican U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt and Democrat Robin Carnahan are in a tight race. Despite a welcoming embrace with Obama at a Kansas City fundraiser in July, Carnahan said last week that she wanted to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone.

“Now is not the time to raise taxes,” she said.

In Indiana, U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth, D-Ind., who’s seeking to replace Bayh, told the Evansville Courier & Press this summer that all the Bush-era tax cuts should become permanent.

That position makes sense, said Brian Vargus, a professor of political science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, because Indiana is “an overwhelmingly Republican state … and there is never support for taxes or public goods.”

Here we go again.  Just like the stimulus boondoggle that is so unpopular that no Democrat in over 230 races is campaigning on having passed it; and just like ObamaCare which is so unpopular that no Democrat in over 230 races is campaigning on having passed it; the only actual bipartisan compromise is all on the Republicans’ side.

The moderate Democrats, and the bipartisan vote, are siding with the Republicans.  That is a fact.

But that doesn’t stop Barack Obama from demonizing Republicans.  Because he’s a demagogue and an ideologue, and that’s just what he does.

I recently expressed the same point in another article, along with pointing out other critical facts that make that article worth reading.  But the same rationale for keeping the taxes low on the middle class and the poor demands that we also keep the taxes low for the rich.  And if we don’t cut taxes for the rich, then let’s tax the bejeezus out of everyone.  Let’s start taxing the 47% of Americans who pay no federal income taxes whatsoever.  Let’s tax them out of their homes and into the poorhouse, and then let’s tax them out of the poorhouse and onto the street.  And then let’s impose a street tax.

Either that, or force Democrats to be consistent.  For just once in their lives.

Americans Recognize Obama A ZERO On Economy

What does a president do when his country recognizes he is an abject failure?

July 23, 2010
CNN Poll: Obama’s approval on economy drops to new low
Posted: July 23rd, 2010 12:30 PM ET

Washington (CNN) – Americans approval of how President Barack Obama is handling the nation’s economy has dropped to its lowest level of his presidency, according to a new national poll.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey indicates that 42 percent of the public approves of how Obama’s dealing with the economy, down 2 points from March, with 57 percent disapproving of his performance on the economy, up 2 points from March. The survey’s Friday release comes as the president made comments at the White House on what he termed the progress made this week on the economy and job recovery.

Full results [pdf]

The poll suggests a wide partisan divide on the issue, with nearly eight in 10 Democrats giving the president a thumbs up and nearly nine in 10 Republicans disapproving of Obama’s job on the economy. According to the survey, two-thirds of independents disapprove of the president’s economic performance.

“The public hasn’t given Obama good marks on the economy since last September, and his approval rating on the economy, now at 42 percent, has been stuck in the mid-to-low 40s throughout this year,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Part of the reason for that is that Americans haven’t seen much to cheer about on the economic front. Nearly eight in ten say that economic conditions are somewhat poor or very poor.”

While there were some vague signs of optimism in poll results earlier this year – when the number of Americans who said that the economy was in “very poor” shape had been slowly but steadily declining – that seems to have fizzled. Thirty-seven percent said things were in poor shape in our May poll; the same number feel that way now.

So what can Barry Hussein do?  Lying about his bogus “summer of recovery” isn’t working.

And he can’t agree with other Democrats that we should keep the Bush tax cuts in place in order to prevent damaging the economy even more.  He’s too much of an ideologue for that.

Dems may keep Bush tax cuts
By Alexander Bolton – 07/22/10 06:00 AM ET

Democrats are considering a plan to delay tax hikes on the wealthy for two years because the economic recovery is slow and they fear getting crushed in November’s election.

It could mean a big reprieve for families earning $250,000 and above annually.

President George W. Bush’s tax cuts will expire at the end of the year unless Congress acts to delay their sunset.

Some Democrats are now arguing forcefully that a delay is a win-win plan that would help the federal budget without hurting the economy.

Wealthy families would not have an incentive to cut back on spending and budget writers could assume an inflow of tax funds in future years, making five- and 10-year budget projections look less scary.

How long have the Democrats been demonizing the Bush tax cuts?  Seven long years?  And now more and more of them are arguing – likely out of fear for their own political skins – that they were misrepresenting the truth all along, and the Bush tax cuts maybe didn’t actually cause the Dark Ages after all.

But Obama is way too much of an ideologue for that kind of rubbish.  That kind of acknowledgment is about as likely as a bomb-vest-wearing terrorist acknowledging that maybe Allah ISN’T so great, after all.

So what’s Obama to do?

Only one option remaining: keep blaming Bush and Republicans.  No matter how obviously asinine it is, never quit blaming, never quit trying to divert attention for his failures to some GOP straw man.

The last time Republicans ran Congress in January 2007, unemployment was at 4.6%.

The ‘Slaughter Solition’ As Epitome Of Obama ‘Transparency’

I’m sure anyone you meet can tell you all about the self executing rule that the Democrats are now relying upon to pass their health care boondoggle.

They will know all about the “Slaughter solution.”  It will be “transparent” to them.

Because this is the most “transparent” administration in history.

Right?

Wrong.

Democrats routinely demonized the Bush White House as “the most secretive administration in history.”  But it is now a documented fact that the Obama administration is at least 50% more secretive than Bush:

PROMISES, PROMISES: Is gov’t more open with Obama?
By SHARON THEIMER Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) – The government’s use of legal exemptions to keep records secret rose during President Barack Obama’s first year in office, despite promises of increased openness, an Associated Press review found.

The review of annual Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that overall, the use of nearly every one of the open-records law’s nine exemptions to withhold information rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October. […]

Major agencies cited that exemption to refuse records at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, compared with 47,395 times during President George W. Bush’s final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies. Obama was president for nine months in the 2009 period.

This lack of transparency – hypocritical as it is because Obama demagogued Bush while promising to be so much better – has taken root in health care.  His “transparency” is an outrageous and incredibly cynical lie just like all his other outrageous and incredibly cynical lies.

The Democrats are like the “Mr. Brooks” character portrayed by Kevin Costner: self-designated pillars of the community who are all the while actually brutal mass-murdering schizophrenic psychopaths.  They say one thing in public, but the very ugly truth is a very different thing behind closed doors.

It’s rather fittingly ironic that ObamaCare is going to be shoved down our throats with Constitution-schmonstitution shenanigans named “The SLAUGHTER Solution” and “the Self EXECUTING Rule.

Barack Obama – who was THE most liberal U.S. Senator in Congress the year he announced his candidacy for president (in 2007) – stated as his core promise that he would “transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars.”  But it turns out that he was a hard-core partisan ideologue radical.  It turns out that he is the most polarizing president in history.  It turns out that he would see this country erupt in flames not seen since the Civil War (when Republicans were as usual in the right and Democrats were as usual the party of genuine depravity) in order to impose an unpopular “fundamental transformation” onto the American people.

Now this lying demagogue – who attacked the reconciliation strategy as “majoritarian absolute power” right out of the ugliest pages of the Karl Rove playbook, and who claimed that anyone who would pursue such a strategy doesn’t believe in government – is now hypocritically and cynically embracing a strategy that makes reconciliation look positively tame.  I mean, at least you actually VOTED with reconciliation, even if that vote was a joke; with the “self executing” Slaughter solution, you don’t even bother with such pretension, but merely “deem” it to have been voted upon.

In the modernized version of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the line from today’s bandits is, “Vote?  We aint got no vote!  We don’t need no vote!  I don’t have to show you any stinking vote!”

Obama is the one who doesn’t believe in government.  The man who once said, “You’ve got to break out of what I call the sort of 50-plus-1 pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory of 50 plus 1, but you can’t govern,” and who once said, “Karl Rove doesn’t need a broad consensus, because he doesn’t believe in government,” now reveals himself to be the political anarchist who would blow up our entire political process in order to ram through his incredibly unpopular ideological agenda.

Our founding fathers went to war to rid themselves of a king who wasn’t half the tyrant Barack Obama has revealed himself to be.

And all the while he keeps brazenly trying to pass himself off as something he absolutely is not.

Reminds me of what the Bible says about the devil:

“But I am not surprised! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14, NLT).

Does Even Obama Know He’s Destroying Himself And His Party? Maybe So.

The trend is strikingly visible in a single image from Rasmussen:

The green line is the people who like Obama.  And it’s dropping like an asteroid.  The red line is the people who don’t like Obama.  And it’s going higher and higher.  And the “-14” is the difference between the people who really like Obama from the people who really don’t like him.  As you can see, the “really don’t like hims” have it.

At traffic lights, I’m a big fan of encountering green.  Here, I really love the red.

Obama is already speaking about the possibility that he might be so politically gangrenous by 2012 that he won’t even bother to run.

“You know, if – if I feel like I’ve made the very best decisions for the American people and three years from now I look at it and, you know, my poll numbers are in the tank and because we’ve gone through these wrenching changes, you know, politically, I’m in a tough spot, I’ll – I’ll feel all right about myself,” Obama told CNN’s Ed Henry.

Obama went on to say:

“I’d feel a lot worse, if at a time of such urgency for the American people I was spending a lot of time thinking about how I could position myself to ensure reelection.

“Because if I were doing that right now, I wouldn’t have taken on health care, I wouldn’t be taking on things that are unpopular,” the president said. “I wouldn’t be closing Guantanamo. There are a whole series of choices that I’m making that I know are going to create some political turbulence. But I think they’re the right thing to do, and history will bear out my theories or not.”

All I can say is, “or not.”  You’re “theories” are bogus, Barry.

Health care was bad enough, in terms of a blatant display of either ignorance or disavowal of the clear will of the American people.  But when you look at the determination to put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other terrorists on civilian trial in New York City in the face of overwhelming rejection of the electorate, you can see that Obama frankly doesn’t give a damn what the nation thinks.

As Rasmussen puts it:

Just 29% agree with the decision to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and five other terrorists suspects in a New York city courtroom. Only 14% believe terrorist suspects should receive the same legal rights in court as U.S. citizens.

We can add the fact that Obama hasn’t bothered to try to keep our citizens safe at home or our soldiers safe abroad (or at home for that matter).  Between Afghanistan, Fort Hood, and the H1N1 debacle, you’ve seriously got to wonder.

Only 47% of Americans at least somewhat approve of Obama.  And only 47% of Democrats strongly approve of him.

But he’s not listening to you.  He’s listening to George Soros and Andy Stern.

And there are portents of a total disaster for Democrats in 2010 if they continue on their suicidal path into the hard-core ideological liberal agenda they have been pursuing.

The Huffington Post (hardly even remotely CLOSE to being pro-conservative) has this:

NEW YORK — Despite sweeping Democratic successes in the past two national elections, continuing job losses and President Barack Obama’s slipping support could lead to double-digit losses for the party in next year’s congressional races and may even threaten their House control.

Fifty-four new Democrats were swept into the House in 2006 and 2008, helping the party claim a decisive majority as voters soured on a Republican president and embraced Obama’s message of hope and change. Many of the new Democrats are in districts carried by Republican John McCain in last year’s presidential contest; others are in traditional swing districts that have proved tough for either party to hold.

From New Hampshire to Nevada, House Democrats also will be forced to defend votes on Obama’s $787 billion economic recovery package and on energy legislation viewed by many as a job killer in an already weak economy.

Add to that the absence of Obama from the top of the ticket, which could reduce turnout among blacks, liberals and young people, and the likelihood of a highly motivated GOP base confused by the president’s proposed health care plan and angry at what they consider reckless spending and high debt.

Taken together, it could be the most toxic environment for Democrats since 1994, when the party lost 34 House incumbents and 54 seats altogether. Democrats currently have a 256-178 edge in the House, with one vacancy. Republicans would have to pick up 40 seats to regain control.

Republicans hold a six point lead over Democrats in generic balloting – and have held a lead for four months.  That hasn’t happened since the dinosaurs walked the earth.  That’s actually even bigger than it sounds, given the fact that those identifying themselves as “Republican” are considerably more likely to vote than those identifying themselves as “Democrat.”

On my own view, the Democrats aren’t in 1994 trouble; they’re actually more along the lines of being in 1997 trouble.

1997 was the year of the Heaven’s Gate cult mass suicide, as members – all wearing the same kind of Nike sneakers – committed suicide in order to beam themselves onto the spaceship hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet.

As the Democrats pursue radical leftist policy after radical leftist policy, they are essentially saying, “Beam me up, Scotty!” just like their Heaven’s Gate intellectual forebears did before them.  As the American people clearly are turning against the Democrats’ radicalism, the Democrats are calling for still more radicalism.  It’s almost as if they’re saying, “If we guzzle more of our Kool-aid faster, we’ll be SURE to win.”

I was never a Bill Clinton fan.  But one thing you could count on Slick Willie to do was whatever was politically best for Slick Willie.  He was a liberal; but if the people demanded he be a moderate, he would suddenly discover that he was a moderate.

That isn’t Barry Hussein.  He is a hard-core ideologue.  People like me tried to warn you that the man who spent 23 years in a racist, anti-American, Marxist church would be such an ideologue.

Barry will destroy his presidency, and destroy the Democrat Party, in order to advance an agenda that is far more radical than the American people understood when they elected him.

Say hello to Obama’s little friend, the Cloward-Piven strategy.

Update, November 24:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 27% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -15. This is the lowest Approval Index rating yet measured for President Obama (see trends).

Fifty-two percent (52%) of Democrats Strongly Approve while 68% of Republicans Strongly Disapprove. Among those not affiliated with either major political party, just 16% Strongly Approve and 51% Strongly Disapprove (see other recent demographic highlights from the tracking poll).

Oh, oh, Democrats.  It looks like independents utterly despise your Messiah.