Obama Sets GOP Trap With Fiscal Cliff Strategy
IBDEditorials.com
Fiscal Cliff: President Obama is back in fifth-gear campaign mode, in an around-the-country push to get Republicans to cave in on taxes. But his "My2K" strategy offers no concessions of his own.
It can't be stressed strongly enough: What President Obama is now up to seeks to destroy the Republican Party as it has existed since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
That revitalized political institution became a party of ideas based on economic freedom, such as fighting for fiscal safeguards through which the people could "permanently control government's power to tax and spend," as Reagan said in his second inaugural address.
The 40th president sought "to protect future generations from government's desire to spend its citizens' money and tax them into servitude when the bills come due."
If Obama succeeds, the GOP will be the Party of Reagan no more, returning to the intellectual barrenness of the Nixon-Ford presidencies — its excuse for economic policies back then being wage-and-price controls and asking people to discipline their own personal spending habits while wearing ridiculous "Whip Inflation Now!" buttons.
Republicans will return to their perpetual minority status in Congress — the kind of party that held control of the U.S. Senate for only four years from 1933 to 1981, and could gain a majority in the House of Representatives for only four years from 1931 to 1995.
A majority of Americans will never vote for the 21st century version of Tom Dewey "Dime Store Democrat" Republicans.
But that is what they'll become if they let themselves be ensnared in the web Obama is weaving for them.
Erskine Bowles, White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, has been delivering messages between the White House and congressional Republicans.
On Wednesday, he said Obama's position on new revenues from the upper incomes is: "the only way you can make it real is to have it come in the form of higher rates," as opposed to scrapping upper-income deductions and broadening the base, as Republicans propose.
The White House and the Democrats' Senate leader, Harry Reid, say Social Security cuts are off the table, while Obama's Chicago pal, Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, said on Tuesday that a fiscal cliff deal shouldn't touch Medicare or Medicaid either.
But these out-of-control entitlements, with their automatic spending hikes, are the real cause of our fiscal mess — not too little taxes, which at all levels currently swipe nearly 30% of taxpayers' hard-earned money.
Obama on Wednesday unveiled "#My2k," a new Twitter hashtag based on the estimated $2,200 those making under $250,000 will see their taxes go up if the Bush tax cuts expire. He wants people to use it to push Republicans to cave in.
But the jobs that the middle class will lose if tax rates on their employers go up will cost them a lot more than $2,200. That is what Republicans must point out as they resist this attack on their party's economic soul.