Obama's Cliff Dive
The New Year's "fiscal cliff" deal represents another Obama "victory." For whom? As pointed out in Holland's article below, the Bush tax cuts had already expired when this deal was done. This means that, after allowing the FICA tax cut to expire for all working people, Obama made a deal to give new, permanent tax cuts to the wealthy, and paved the way for Social Security and Medicare to be put on the chopping block. As I've said a number of times before (here, here, here), "the next Obama administration, claiming to be standing on the high ground of principle, will be, and will be proud to be, the first administration to cut Social Security. Guaranteed. And they’ll sell it as a 'save.' Obama and the Democratic Party really think it’s the right thing to do."
Anyone who's waiting to see whether Obama and the Democrats will finally take a stand when the Republicans hold the country hostage to the debt ceiling is showing a truly delirious capacity to ignore what has been said, done, and established before their eyes repeatedly. Obama and the Democrats will make sure this gets done. With very few, if any, principled exceptions from the left, all Democrats who need to -- including Pelosi, Reid, and, yes, Bernie Sanders, all of whom voted for this mess -- will vote to save reform undermine Social Security and Medicare, because, well, they just have to.
Can it be said, with a straight face, that there is anything left of Democratic-party welfare-state American liberalism than an ever more vacuous nostalgia?
President Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act in 1935
Gone, baby, gone.
Some recent articles worth reading:
Right-Wingers Who Think They Got 'Rolled' by Obama In Cliff Deal Are Totally Crazy
Either they get everything they want, or they scream bloody murder.
By Joshua Holland
I thought that by this point, I was beyond the capacity to be shocked by the delusions held by the American Right. But my jaw dropped when I read that a number of high-profile conservatives are outraged about the fiscal slope deal, and believe they have been “rolled” by Obama. The very notion is wildly delusional....{Read on}