According to this report by Sam Stein and Howard Fineman of Huffington Post, the Obama administration has decided that hostage taking works:
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's top adviser suggested to The Huffington Post late Wednesday 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.
That appears to be the only way, said David Axelrod, that middle-class taxpayers can keep their tax cuts, given the legislative and political realities facing Obama in the aftermath of last week's electoral defeat.
"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."
In statements to Greg Sargent, the White House denies that the HuffPost article is anything new, but as Greg points out, their denials don't get at the central question: is the White House going to insist on permanent tax cuts for the middle-class, or will they go along with the GOP's hostage taking plan to keep both the middle-class and upper-income tax cuts temporary?
It would be one thing if the tax rates were decoupled, with a permanent extension of the middle-class tax cuts and a temporary extension of tax cuts for the wealthy. But keeping them linked is a huge victory for the hostage takers -- and a crushing defeat for the President's tax cut plan which appears to have gone down without much of a fight. It reeks of weakness -- and it's a sign that the next two years are going to be very rough indeed.