What this adds up to is that last December, with a Democratic House and Senate our president agreed to extend massive tax cuts for the richest Americans and then in March, with only a Democratic Senate he agreed to massive spending cuts. I'm not really sure why I should applaud such a thing, particularly in light of the fact that every economist I respect says that this is the opposite of what any pragmatic technocratic, common sense leader would do in our current economic situation, much less a transformational progressive Democrat. I'm sorry, no clapping from me. The idea that we are supposed to accept the nonsensical idea that massive tax cuts for the rich combined with massive spending cuts to essential programs for ordinary Americans is a "victory" under those circumstances just doesn't make sense.
I understand the politics, but it's simply not correct to say that the only possible way to govern is to slash spending, cut taxes and gush a lot of happy talk about "investments" and "winning the future" while hoping against hope that the economy improves enough (and the opposition is lame enough) to get reelected. Not when you have the presidency, the US Senate and a fractious, divided, opposition that should be easily leveraged against itself.
Last session I was told that the president was powerless without more than 60 votes in the Senate and even then there wasn't much he could do. Now, he's powerless in the face of a GOP majority in the House and the smaller majority in the Senate will save us all from the Teabag dystopia. At this point I would think that the executive branch is fairly useless and we ought to get rid of it except for the odd fact that it seems to be able to function quite efficiently when the GOP is in power.
I will add that as the general election heats up, we will likely hear the same empty message from OFA/DNC that we heard in the midterms that Obama's supporters will come home to roost eventually, the economy sucks but we just need a little more time because you people are impatient and expect everything over night, and there was that whole healthcare thing so we should all be really excited about that, and never mind that the administration spent the last two years shitting on liberalism, swallowing GOP ultimatums, and failing to take a decisive antithetical stance to the GOP's retarded, draconian, failed, disproven fiscal policies, in the end 2012 will probably turn out all right.
If Obama and the Democrats truly believed in something other than Republican-lite fiscal policies, maybe we would actually see them fighting for them. Sen. Jeff Merkley shows us what that might look like:
The GOP budget plan will destroy 700,000 jobs. The last thing our nation can afford right now is further job losses. We need to be creating jobs, not destroying jobs.
There are common-sense budget cuts that could reduce our deficits without wrecking the economy or attacking working families. We can start by cutting back on the bonus tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires that Republican leaders insisted on just ten weeks ago. We could end tax subsidies for oil companies and save tens of billions of dollars in the process.
Republican House Speaker John Boehner summarized his perspective on the Republican budget as follows: if people might lose their jobs, "so be it." You might think the House Republican leaders would show some humility after their failed agenda turned record surpluses into massive deficits in 2001, or after their policies reduced the wages of working Americans during the modest expansion in the middle of the decade, or after they burned down the economy with unregulated derivatives and predatory mortgage securities in 2008.
Apparently not. Their proposals are exactly the same: give massive tax cuts to the wealthiest, shred the safety net, and eliminate investments that would help restore American economic leadership.
But Obama won't say that because it might hurt the GOP's fee-fees, and we all know how terrified Obama is of doing that. And as Greg Sargent notes later in that post, imagine what the 2012 election landscape might look like if Dems actually united behind such a message.
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