Turnaround is Fair Play

Senator Patty Murray of Washington has a good plan to counter Republican obstinacy when it comes to the Bush tax cuts. Instead of fighting for a more equitable plan of extending the cuts for those making less than $250k per year and canceling the recession causing cuts for the very wealthy, her idea is to allow ALL the cuts to expire as they are written to law. After January 1, the cuts for the middle class could then be reinstated apart from those of the wealthy. This, after all, is essentially what the Republicans used to extend all the cuts previously. Now, of course, they are whining about class warfare and punishing the middle class. The use bloviations of the champion bloviators. When the Demos use their own tactics the babies cry "FOWL" that you do what we did!

This coupled with the mandated cuts put into law by the Republicans last year because they refused any compromise that was mature on the debt ceiling, will automatically decrease spending, much of it in non-social welfare programs; and increase revenue that should never have been cut in the first place. Remember that when Bush and the R/Cs made their budget breaking tax cuts? The treasury had a surplus for the preceding several years. Then came the cuts. Then came Bush's wars which were not included in any budget/revenue plan. These two ill conceived peccadillos were financed "off the books" which immediately led to massive deficits. After eight years of fiscal stupidity and budgetary dogma that continued to degrade the finances of the US, Obama was elected to right the situation.

Before he was even installed in office, R/Cs in the senate and house were focused on one thing only: make Obama a one term president no matter what. That no matter what included sandbagging ANY proposal that was put forward by the Democrats, regardless of merit. This intransigence and obstinacy prevented andy meaningful legislative action for the last two years. The single minded focus of making Obama look bad no matter what happened to the country, is largely responsible for the less than ideal economic situation we are in now. The stimulus, which was quite successful in preserving existing jobs, and the bailout of Chrysler and GM which allowed thousands of good paying jobs to be kept from being exterminated by R/C indifference to the struggling middle class, was really too small to generate a large number of jobs; jobs that would have gone a long way towards improving the economy of the country.

Obama's lack of leadership in the health care fight and indifference to the mid-term elections were disastrous for the American people. Hopefully, he learned his lesson: That a person cannot reason with zealots. Overwhelming force is the only tactic that will work with closed minded people who hate based on a persons name and skin color.