Friday opinion.
By the way, while the East Coast slept
Congress at midnight Thursday approved an $801 billion package of tax cuts and $57 billion for extended unemployment insurance. The vote sealed the first major deal between President Obama and Congressional Republicans as Democrats put aside their objections and bowed to the realignment of power brought about by their crushing election losses.
Steven Pearlstein:
That said, a lot of the explanations given by Republicans themselves don't quite explain their fetish about taxes on the wealthy.
While Republicans have argued recently that it would be an economic catastrophe to raise taxes on anyone now, in the midst of a jobs recession, the truth is that they don't believe there is ever a good time to raise taxes on anyone.
Equally unconvincing is the argument that they are primarily concerned about small-business job creation. Surely there are other ways to encourage small businesses to expand their payrolls without giving tax breaks to movie stars, professional athletes, law firm partners and hedge fund billionaires.
It's about fairness. And...
For years now, liberals have taken comfort in the work of behavioral economists that shows human beings aren't the rational, income-maximizing stick figures they're assumed to be in classical economic models. According to this research, one of the things we care about is fairness, even when the fair thing may not be in our economic self-interest. Democrats have used these findings to bolster their argument that a healthy economy over the long term must be both efficient and fair. What they are only now coming to recognize is that people's views on fairness can be complex and don't always point in the same policy direction.
Paul Krugman:
How naïve we were. We should have realized that the modern Republican Party is utterly dedicated to the Reaganite slogan that government is always the problem, never the solution. And, therefore, we should have realized that party loyalists, confronted with facts that don’t fit the slogan, would adjust the facts.
Which brings me to the case of the collapsing crisis commission.
Matt Bai:
Perhaps Mr. Obama could have won a more progressive resolution to the tax-cut debate had he and Congressional Democrats taken up the issue earlier this year, when the deadline wasn’t so close and when the president could have mounted a sustained public campaign. But as it stands, the deal Mr. Obama got, while no one’s idea of perfect, will pump hundreds of billions of dollars in consumer and business tax breaks into a languishing economy, while also aiding the unemployed and easing the tax burden on a strained middle class.
On the other hand, had Mr. Obama held the line on principle and allowed all the cuts to expire, as some Democrats would have preferred, the public debate in January would most likely have come down to which of the two parties was responsible for letting middle-class taxes rise during a recession. It’s an argument that Democrats, historically vulnerable on taxes and already fending off charges of expanding government, would probably have lost.
Such compromises, ideal or not, are the building blocks of responsible governance. If that makes Mr. Obama some kind of triangulator, then it could also make him a successful president.
Reuters on government funding:
Lacking the votes to advance the measure, Reid said he would agree to a Republican proposal to temporarily extend government funding beyond the Saturday deadline.
Aides said they expected the measure to pass easily when it comes up for a vote on Friday or Saturday.
Like President Barack Obama's $858 billion tax deal that is poised to clear Congress, the tentative spending deal reflects the new clout Republicans enjoy in Washington after a sweeping victory in November's congressional elections.
An ad from AIDS advocacy groups that appeared in Politico Thursday:
Mr. President, we need your leadership on global AIDS in the 2012 budget
...
Please request a substantial increase in global AIDS and health funding in your budget. In doing so you will send the unequivocal message that America will not retreat from our leadership on global AIDS; we will not abandon the millions of poor men, women and children in Africa and elsewhere who are living with or at risk for HIV infection. Rather, we will continue to make progress in saving lives and ensuring that the scientific breakthroughs made possible by American ingenuity and U.S. taxpayers’ hard earned dollars benefit those who need them the most in the U.S. and around the world.
Michael Gerson:
In the tax debate, Obama has proved a quarrelsome ally and a dismissive foe, generally dismayed by the grubby realities of politics. He doesn't suffer fools gladly. Unfortunately, he seems to put just about everyone who disagrees with him in that category.
Especially former Bush speechwriters, whose gig is to rehab 43.
See irmaly's diary on Obama and the blogger activsts.