Obama's 2012 Theme: Republican Spending Cuts Didn't Work,
So We Must Ask the Rich to Sacrifice MoreAugust 1, 2011
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RUSH: I went to the WhiteHouse.gov, and their headline: "Bipartisan Debt Deal: A Win for the Economy and Budget Discipline." It's a very long piece, I'm not going to read the whole thing to you. But it is the most straightforward and complete outline of the deal from the White House perspective that there is, and at WhiteHouse.gov they are beside themselves with joy. This post crows about how this debt deal locks in Obama's runaway spending. They're ecstatic about how it slashes the military and protects entitlements, even locks in the end of the Bush tax cuts. All of which should disabuse anyone of the notion that the Republicans pulled off a tremendous victory here. Note, too, there will be no spending cuts until after the 2012 elections. That's part of the deal.
So Obama will get his $2.4 trillion of walking-around money with no strings attached, a slush fund, spend it, give it to his union buddies just like he did the stimulus. Give it to people who pay union dues which come back to the Democrat Party. Just another, potentially here, $2.4 trillion of money laundering, which is what he wanted in the first place. And notice, too, by the way, that the bipartisan committee is scheduled to make their spending cut decisions on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Where now is the outrage? There was outrage last week about this. Now nobody's uttering a peep. The bottom line is that this deal increases spending by only eight trillion instead of ten trillion. It lets the politicians claim to have cut spending by two trillion. On top of that, it includes a trigger for more tax increases. It does nothing about Obamacare, which is yet another whopping tax increase.
So where is the great victory for the Republicans here? This is the Plan C that I told you about last week. The full name of this bill should be plan "See, I told you so." So, any way you slice it, we're gonna get tax increases. Bush tax cuts. If they expire we get a tax increase. If they're extended according to the deal they're going to have to offset by new taxes. And before we get to the deadline, if Obama's not happy with what his new debt commission comes up with in November, he has said on the White House website that he will kill the Bush tax extensions for additional revenue. Here's what it says, from WhiteHouse.gov: "To Meet This Target, the Committee Will Consider Responsible Entitlement and Tax Reform. This means putting all the priorities of both parties on the table -- including both entitlement reform and revenue-raising tax reform. And the President will demand that the Committee pursue a balanced deficit reduction package, where any entitlement reforms are coupled with revenue-raising tax reform that asks for the most fortunate Americans to sacrifice."
This is the White House explanation of the deal to their followers on the website. "Absent a balanced deal, it would enable the President to use his veto pen to ensure nearly $1 trillion in additional deficit reduction by not extending the high-income tax cuts." That really spells out the inevitability of the end of the Bush tax cuts. They are going to sunset. It's inevitable. Maybe ten to 20% chance they get extended. Either way, though, it doesn't matter the result is a tax increase. Now, when the economy still falters, as it will, Obama's going to say during the campaign that he worked hard and that he sacrificed and that he compromised and he went along with all these budget cuts, and he went along with entitlement reform. Didn't work. The economy is still gonna be mired in recession. There will not be gazillions of new jobs being created. That's where Obama's Plan B surfaces. Raising taxes on everybody.
Now, many of his constituents of course don't pay anything. But the Bush tax extensions for the rich are dead in the water. When the economy continues to tank, Obama will call for more skin in the game. He's gotta go where the rest of the money is. That's his point. He's gonna raise taxes on the only people who have any money left. His point is to get it. He's gonna come after the middle class, too. Those making less than $200,000 a year, you watch. That $200,000, it's gonna be so dire that even more are going to be asked to sacrifice, to help out. Anyone who now pays taxes will be asked to pay more, and that will be part of his reelection narrative. An important point, this deal doesn't talk about Bush tax cuts for the rich. Obama has already acknowledged that the Bush tax cuts affected everybody, middle class. He did that last December when he said the average American family would see a tax increase of $3,000 a year if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire.
So everybody is gonna lose their Bush tax cuts. Obama will blame the Republicans for it, as he always does. This debt deal doesn't specify Bush tax cuts for the rich so maybe everybody's gonna lose their Bush tax cuts. For those of you out there who are being bought off by thinking only the rich are gonna be affected by whatever tax increases, I am telling you it's going to hit everyone. And he's gonna try to blame the Republicans for having to do this because of their slashes in the budget, because their Draconian cuts in the budget, which will not even have occurred, but they will be there on paper. Now, remember, Obama wanted to kill the Bush tax cuts back in December, but he was forced to change that to just ending the extensions for the rich. What if he hopes to use this deal, or this new super commission to do away with all of them? That would be a hell of a note. And I think that that is his objective.
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