I read an article a couple of days ago talking about how Republicans surrendered on the chain CPI, in that they removed their demand for a Chained CPI change from the bill despite the fact Obama have already conceded the point to them in his previous offer.
Now of course they did that, because after the House Plan B bill blew up in John Boenhers face and weakened the GOP so badly they had no choice to basically allow the Senate Democrats and Obama to figure something out.
In otherwords the last I paid attention the very strong Democratic hand had just been made a lot stronger.
So I was a little shocked when I read the details of the final plan.
First we've got the tax increases....for those making more then $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples. Which is alot higher then the 250,000 Obama ran on.
To be fair given the most recent republican offer in the house of taxes staying the same for 1,000,000 and lower its a hell of a lot closer to what Obama wanted then the GOP, so i guess we can call it an Obama win.....except of course when your in a strong enough negotiation position that your opponents give back concessions you've already made.
I mean I realize I sound a bit like a Tea Party republican, but seriously, why should you compromise anymore then you have to in that kind of situation? and I'm not convinced that was a compromise that had to be made.
Plus their is the other way of looking at it. The whole reason taxes were going up was because the tax cuts were expiring. They were expiring because they had been intended to be temporary, because the GOP knew that making them permanent wasnt cost effective and wouldnt be doable given how detrimental that vote would be to the GOP long term. Its not that they didnt want to make them permanent, they couldnt politically afford to.
And now Obama just did it for them for more then 98% of all the cuts.....so thats actually a massive win for the GOP, and would have been even at the original Obama offer of 250,000
Now to be fair, its also possible that the increase in capital gains taxes from 15 up to 20% may have been traded for raising the bush tax cuts from 250 to 400 thousand, and honestly if so, then I guess I'd be behind it, simply because since the richer someone is the more likely the are to pay capital gains and capital gains alone thats a very very effective tax to raise to get the rich to pay more. So if it was a trade I give Obama a pass....otherwise I'd like some explanation.
And my personal favorite concession., and by personal favorite I mean "What the fuck?" is the part I'm gonna call the Fiscal Kick. Basically they moved the sequester part (the cuts) down the road for two more months.
I really really really dont get this. Like the balance in the current round of negotiations was basically the GOP wanted some cuts and no tax increases and the Dem's wanted tax increases and some cuts.
Which meant if nothing happened, the Dem's would win taxes (get the tax increases) and both sides would move to repair the cuts. And the Dem's could use the tax increases they already had to trade for the cuts they wanted (they'd back tax cuts for the increases they got in trade for the cuts).
And basically the whole GOP reason to bargain this time around was to avoid that situation from coming up...by accepting some increases they got a much better say on the cuts then they would have otherwise.
The thing is though, we didnt do the cuts this time around apparently. We seem to have kicked that down the road.
Now the public favors higher taxes and big cuts. So in a debate over just cuts the public will side with the party that wants the bigger cuts (the GOP), the only thing the dems had to stop this was wanting higher taxes....which they basically just took off the table.
Near as I can tell, that was the end result of all of this, taxes went up......slightly. But they didnt take any cuts off the table.
So now in two months the Dem's have to do this again...... except of course they voluntarily surrendered their leverage. They no longer have anything to counter the GOP cuts demands.
Which means that despite the fact that the taxes side of this actually does seem fair (payroll tax expire (GOP win) inheritance tax goes up (Dem win), Alt minimum tax fixed (dem win) deductions for the rich capped (GOP win...or both sides I guess) Unemployment extended (dems) small business tax credits extended (GOP), ect) what you have in the long run is very unfair Cut negotiations coming up, where the GOP is going to have most of the leverage.
So when you take the two parts together its going to be a GOP win, they win on cuts and got 50% on taxes.
All that from a party who imploded trying to pass their own plan so badly they had to return concessions they had already won, which just begs the question....what the hell is wrong with the democrats? I mean honestly this was a bit like the Black Knight from Monty Python claiming he can still win, except that the Democrat black knight seems to have cut his own limbs off.
On the upside John Boehner has actually NOT said he will pass this plan, he said he may instead pass a "republican alternative", so maybe since I have faith in the total dis functionality of the House Republican, the Dem's will get another crack at this.
And then maybe their black knight will cut their own arms off as well.....
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