Yesterday, the White House bowed to reality and signaled that it would accept a two-year extension of all the Bush tax cuts. The plain fact is that the President had no other choice following our "shellacking" last week. But it is worth pointing out that it did not have to work out this way. We arrived at this point because of sheer political incompetence with perhaps a dash of arrogance thrown in.
I'm, of course, not arguing some new position that no one's raised before. I mean, DKos was flooded with similar diaries and comments yesterday when the Huffington Post piece was first published. But I remember when I wrote an earlier diary before the election pointing out the likelihood of this happening when it appeared that Congress was about to adjourn, I got plenty of comments telling me that I had completely misread the situation and that Speaker Pelosi would never let the House adjourn without passing a good tax bill. So I apologize in advance if you find this repetitive with other diaries here but this issue is important enough, I think, to deserve a little repetition. And, perhaps the White House and the Democratic leaders will notice the volume of comments and begin to realize that they've touched a raw nerve with the base of the party.
The Huffington Post reported yesterday that "the administration is ready to accept an across-the-board, temporary continuation of steep Bush-era tax cuts, including those for the wealthiest taxpayers." White House senior advisor David Axelrod explained the President's position:
"We have to deal with the world as we find it," Axelrod said during an unusually candid and reflective 90-minute interview in his office, steps away from the Oval Office. "The world of what it takes to get this done."
There are concerns," he added, that Congress will continue to kick the can down the road in the future by passing temporary extensions for the wealthy time and time again. "But I don't want to trade away security for the middle class in order to make that point."
I'm not surprised or angered by the the White House's post-election surrender. Given the current political landscape, the President had no practical choice but to accept the tax cut extensions. But while the current surrender is not a surprise, we should be angry at the fact that the Democratic leadership did not pass the President's tax plan during the first 18 months of the session when they had the votes and a fair amount of popular support. It's not like they didn't know that the Bush cuts were set to expire. But no, they had to be oh-so-clever and wait until the session was over so they could use this issue against the Republicans in the election. No one among the Congressional brain trust seemed to realize that they could have much more effectively used it as an issue if they had passed it back in 2009 with (almost certainly) minimal Republican support.
So, again, apologies to those who have already had their fill of this discussion and double apologies to those who get angered when some negative comments are said about the President and the leadership. I write this in disappointment but always in hope that the President will regain the initiative and truly bring us an era of progressive change that will make us all proud to say that we were foot soldiers in a great American revolution.