If the job proposal, presented by the president last night, were the proposal we would end up with, instead of the initial proposal, I probably could reluctantly endorse it. But we have seen the same thing over and over and over again. The President constantly puts what should be the final proposal, on the table as the beginning proposal.
Like the 1st stimulus, like health care reform, the budget negotiations..., in the end after the negotiations, the Democrats end up with a very bad bill. It's sad that we have to constantly go through this. And just because the White House claims they want the entire bill passed, there is absolutely nothing that can stop the Republicans from amending the bill to fit their political needs. I say political needs, since they have absolutely no interest whatsoever in helping the unemployed and Americans in need.
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to see how this is going to play out.
1) The Republicans will accept a good deal of the plan, since most of it is some form of tax cuts. They will then try to add additional tax cuts, and cut out any deficit increasing spending. By proposing the majority of the bill as tax cuts, the President has caved into the false Republican meme that "tax cuts create jobs". Right out of the starting block the administration has opened the door for Republicans. And since the administration has adopted the Republican cry for austerity, it'll be very difficult to fight against the inevitable proposal of Republicans to pay for additional "job creating" tax cuts with cuts in other government programs.
2) The Republicans can now claim they are not obstructionists since they have agreed to compromise and accept a good portion of the administration's proposals. Now they will claim the Democrats are the obstructionists since they won't accept the additional tax cut proposals of the Republicans.
3) This puts the Democrats in a very difficult position. What can they do? Will they refuse to compromise with the Republicans on further tax cut proposals? If they do, there goes the Republicans are obstructionists issue. If the Democrats accept more tax cuts without cuts in the spending part of the bill, the proposal will be a very expensive and very ineffective stimulus that will probably create very few jobs. Now, the Republicans get to run on, "we tried twice the Democratic stimulus programs and they both failed".
President Obama gave a great speech last night, but his jobs proposal was not very well thought out politically. Instead of asking for a huge government jobs spending proposal, and then compromising to what he proposed last night, he once again started at the end instead of the beginning, and we may end up with a very bad bill that will cost us dearly at next years election.
The administration has no choice but to ABSOLUTELY accept nothing less than a clean bill. But this has never happened in this administration, and I don't expect it to happen with this legislation. So, as sad as it is, we could very easily end up with a large tax cut bill that will be disguised as a jobs bill.
But the saddest part of all, every penny that we offer in tax cuts will be a penny that will be cut from the government in a couple of years. And another disappointing compromise by the Democrats will lessen the chances of an Obama 2nd term and the Democrats holding on to either house in congress.
So the Republicans can easily maneuver this bill to their advantage, at a cost to the Democrats. This was not a good position to start from and we are faced with some rather limited moves to make this bill a political advantage for the Democrats. We have to take to the phones and tell the W.H. and our representatives that we will ABSOLUTELY accept nothing less than a clean up or down vote on the Presidents job proposal. Of course, this is exactly what the W.H. will say, just as they did with every major piece of legislation for the past 2 1/2 years, so don't let the W.H. fool us again! If the W.H. pulls another last minute "compromise", like they did with HCR, Bush tax cuts, budget proposals, debt ceiling..., I'm afraid we will lose the Independents who vote D, and we'll lose them for good. The W.H. left a lot of doors open for the Republicans to win on this, so this has to be an ALL or NOTHING fight.
We can't let them come back and give us the same story about how we have to pass this compromise for the unemployed, because if this gets as bad as I expect it might get, it won't help the unemployed, it won't help America, and it will most definitely crush the Democrats in 2012.
UPDATE: just read Robert Reich:
The President would have done better with a plan that was big enough to make a real difference. And then, when Republicans rejected it, campaign on it.
Couldn't agree more!