Advertisement

Opinion: Is the Obama tax cut deal with Republicans fraying out of control already?

Share

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Some folks may remember last winter when a rude Republican representative exclaimed ‘You lie!’ during President Obama’s State of the Union address. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was particularly perturbed.

Emotions now seem to be running high on the other side of the aisle. The target is the same president, but the exclaimer is a fellow Democrat.

During one of Pelosi’s House party caucuses Thursday, Nevada’s Rep. Shelley Berkley was making a fervent, if lonely, pitch to support the tax cut/unemployment extensions negotiated with Republicans by President Obama.

Advertisement

She was interrupted by a colleague exclaiming, ‘F___ the president!’ Only, he said three more letters after the F.

The angry Democrat remains unidentified because, of course, the....

...party session was closed in the interests of government transparency. Berkley tried to brush off the incident, saying she didn’t think the curse word was directed at her. Following the outburst, the assembled Democrats, who remain a lopsided chamber majority until the new Congress takes over on Jan. 4 under a returning Republican speaker, John Boehner, held a nonbinding vote to reject the deal and demand more concessions from the GOP before agreeing to a vote.

Wednesday, as The Ticket reported here, VP Joe ‘Effing Big Deal’ Biden spent two hours apparently unsuccessfully trying to persuade the caucus to support the pact.

He left members with the impression that what the president had agreed on with GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (photo, left) was not to be changed.

Having turned the Obama-McConnell deal into legislative language, the Democratic leader Harry Reid’s disciplined Senate is close to voting on it.

It better hurry.

Because after a few days of chuckling and gloating over taking the Obama White House to the cleaners with the deal to extend, among other things, the Bush era tax cuts of eight years of failed policies fame, a number of prominent conservative voices are now awakening in opposition.

They’ve added up the costs of all the provisions, including 56 more weeks of unemployment insurance for millions.

Advertisement

And they realize that the total bill of the bill is larger than the original Pelosi-Reid stimulus bill’s bill that accomplished so little. And they realize now that nearly a trillion new dollars will be added to the deficit that the newly elected GOP folks are coming to town to tame.

Charles Krauthammer has his take here, titled ‘Swindle of the Year.’ He writes: ‘Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 -- and House Democrats don’t have a clue that he did.’

Melissa Clouthier has hers here at LibertyPundits.com titled ‘America is getting rolled. Again.’ She writes: The deal ‘had to be done NOW though, because the party is over for the Republicans and Democrats. Come January, the American people will be angered if they see Republicans spend like this.’

According to a new Bloomberg News Poll out this morning, Americans are increasingly worried about the mushrooming size of the deficit and they’d really, truly like somebody to do something about it, maybe cut it way back or something like that, but without touching any entitlements, of course.

So good luck with that Santa list.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Click here to join more than 55,000 global readers who follow The Ticket with Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. Our Facebook Like page is over here. We’re also available here on Kindle now.

Advertisement