The latest Republican gimmick is to split the
difference on income-tax rates between the current rate of 35 percent
and the Clinton-era rate of 39.6 – and with substantial cuts in
government spending. This is the solution the pilots of an earlier
generation might call “coming home on a wing and a prayer.”
There’s no indication that President Obama will bite, nor is there
any reason why, from his point of view, he should. He has read the fear
in Republican eyes and he’s willing – maybe eager – to jump off the
cliff in the sure and certain confidence that with the compliant
mainstream media at his back, he can successfully pin the blame on the
Republicans for the consequences.
He can even promise spending cuts, secure in the knowledge that he
won’t have to actually make them. Promises are a sucker’s game, and
there’s no shortage of suckers. Mr. Obama clearly wants to humiliate the
Republicans – re-election was not enough – and he and his Democratic
allies think his victory on Nov. 6 arms him with a mandate to do as he
pleases.
There’s no longer an argument over whether to raise taxes, only by
how much. Some of the Republicans eager to cave now and get the details
of surrender out of the way talk bravely of demanding spending cuts as
the price of higher taxes to finance the president’s big-spending
schemes, but they know in their hearts that actual spending cuts are a
pipe dream. Raising taxes first, cut spending later, is a scheme that
has never worked. Republican presidents played that shell game, too.
But Rep. David Camp of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the
tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, tells Politico, the political
daily, that he is “reserving judgment” on such a scheme. “It depends on
the entire package,” he says. “What are the spending [cuts] going to
be? You can’t consider that on its own without looking at all the other
factors that might go into it.” We can take that as a probable yes, as
soon as everybody indulges in a little more big talk.
Rep. Nan Hayworth of New York sounds ready to quit now, with a few
goodbye clichés. “There’s certainly a movement among us to accept that
we indeed may have to not let perfect be the enemy of the good. If we
can truly get a visionary plan, then I think we will certainly be happy
to give that the most thoughtful consideration.”
The Republicans, including the speaker, are negotiating as if they
actually believe that President Obama is negotiating in good faith. The
speaker’s offer of $800 billion in new taxes sank without a salute. The
president insists on soaking “the rich,” even though the most thorough
soaking wouldn’t yield enough to make a sizable dent in either debt or
deficit. But it satisfies Mr. Obama’s cult of covetousness, cupidity and
spite, which dreams of a scorched-earth class war, and would redeem all
his speeches from the president’s community-organizing days.
Mr. Obama called in the Business Roundtable this week for a little
charm offensive. He told them that he’s rooting for the success of big
business because when big business does well, “then small businesses and
medium-sized businesses up and down the chain are doing well.” Someone
should explain to the president that a strong economy is based on the
jobs generated by small business, not big.
He repeated his mantra that only he holds the key to recovery.
“What’s holding us back right now,” he told the assembled CEOs, “is a
lot of stuff that is going on in this town. And I know that many of you
have come here to try to see, is there any way we can break through this
logjam. Nobody wants to get this done more than me.”
Just do it his way. Rep. Eric Cantor, the House majority leader,
seems unimpressed. “An obsession to raise taxes isn’t going to solve the
problem. We can’t just keep borrowing money and raising taxes and
expecting the problem to go away. That is our point to the president.”
Eric Cantor. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
That’s precisely beside the president’s point. He has bigger plans at Fiscal Cliff.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
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