End game - Extending the Bush Tax Cuts and the power of NO

The game changes now: Congress must act to avert the wreck of an Obama promise: no tax increases for the "middle class"  on the rocks of the Party of No's "no tax increases for anyone".   Obama needs to learn (but probably won't) that he too can say NO.  He has the veto power.  

If Congress does nothing taxes go up.  If Congress does something he does not like he can say NO.  Raising taxes on the those under $200K/$250 for families is a bluff he can call.  He can suspend penalties and interest, direct the IRS to permit payroll deductions at the current rates for those up to 200/250,000, veto any meausre Congress proposes until it meets his terms.  If he can figure out what they are.

And Obama must now contend with a minority of Democrats who can filibuster to block any tax measure that does not tax the rich!   Or Deficit reduction hawks this is your chance!  Raise taxes, cut spending!


from the Times:

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, said he would benefit personally from a tax cut on income above $1 million. “I had a good business career, and I would be entitled to a tax cut for those over the million-dollar mark” he said. “But I don’t want it. I don’t need it. What I am looking at today, I think, is a great American travesty.”

Mr. Obama’s preferred plan fell 7 votes short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster and advance to a simple majority vote. The vote was 53 to 36, on a bill adopted by the House on Thursday to end the cuts on income above $250,000 a year for couples and $200,000 for individuals.

Republicans voted unanimously against the House-passed bill, and they were joined by four Democrats — Senators Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia,Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jim Webb of Virginia — as well as by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut.

HERE is the Times account 

What makes Democrats vote against such a measure?


First: Obama's lack of skill at knife fighting and trash talk.


As William Butler Yeats wrote "the best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity".  I feel like I am watching Barack Obama morph into Jimmy Carter who was held hostage by Ayatollah Khomeini's devotees who took the U.S. Embassy and held it until Ronald Reagan walked into the White House.   Obama's finds himself held hostage by Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and the trolls who inhabit Fox News.


As to how the end game pans out, check out master number cruncher Nate Silver in the Times HERE on the Democrats' tax cut dilemma.  Silver observes:

But the Democrats’ leverage, ultimately, stems from their willingness to allow everyone’s taxes to increase, if necessary, since that is what happens if no deal is reached. If President Obama were to begin noting, for instance, that raising everyone’s taxes would have about three times the deficit-reduction power than raising just some of them, this could make his threat more credible. But it would also make his position less popular, since it would change the debate from being one about taxes on the rich to being one about the proper level of taxation over all.