http://www.truth-out.org/praising-hostage-takers-will-obama-ever-hold-republicans-accountable/1311341987Praising the Hostage Takers: Will Obama Ever Hold the Republicans Accountable?
Friday 22 July 2011
by: Paul Rogat Loeb, Truthout | Op-Ed
Will Obama ever hold the Republicans accountable for their reckless and destructive actions? No matter how outrageous their demands, he keeps giving them legitimacy, first resisting, then compromising, then praising the result as bipartisanship. He's forgotten the basic lesson of negotiation - you don't hand everything over before you start, particularly to people who have utter contempt for your values and goals. He's also forgotten the importance of fighting for your principles, so people have a reason to support you.
Obama's almost pathological devotion to compromise started early in his presidency. Republicans and a handful of corporate-funded Democrats used the Senate filibuster to block action on issue after critical issue. Instead of calling them to account and marshalling public pressure against them, Obama responded as if their intransigence was reasonable, giving them instant political cover. He did this on health care, financial regulation and attempts to pass a sufficiently large economic stimulus. On climate change, he tried to prove his reasonableness by allowing offshore oil drilling (just before the BP oil disaster) while securing not a single vote in return. Republican Lindsay Graham was planning to offer precisely this enticement to convince borderline senators to support at least some price on carbon and said Obama effectively killed the bill by leaving him with nothing to offer people. Obama similarly refused to take a firm stand on ending the Bush tax cuts, which he could have simply let expire. He's now retreating on the debt ceiling battle, saying he might have to sign off on a deal that cuts spending, now a vague promise of reforming taxes later.
Each retreat has left him in more difficult circumstances for the next round. The deficit would be $70 billion a year smaller, had Obama not agreed to extend the Bush cuts last December, after the demoralized withdrawal of once engaged Democratic voters and volunteers allowed the Republicans to sweep to victory. Obama briefly condemned those who threatened to block routine unemployment extensions unless the top-bracket tax cuts were renewed, saying, accurately enough, that they were holding unemployed Americans "hostage." Then he caved and renewed the cuts in return for extending unemployment benefits and giving some modest tax breaks to middle-class citizens. Had he stood firm, Republican talk of an urgent deficit crisis would have rung far more hollow.
Obama next followed this by caving again, on a budget deal where he accepted $39 billion dollars in cuts to programs from community health centers to the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program and assistance to state and local law enforcement. In return, he got nothing, just a temporary waiver of the Republicans' stated intent to throttle the government by making it grind to a halt - an intent they're now exercising again. Obama could have spoken forcefully about the cost of these cuts and the greed of those who insisted on them to confer ever more tax breaks and subsidies on their wealthy backers. He could have highlighted the $144 billion a year that could be saved by ending loopholes that permit companies to ship their profits overseas, ending subsidies to the massively flush oil and gas industry and canceling orders for obsolete military equipment. He could have made clear that while the deficit's a long-term issue, our current priority had to be finding or creating jobs for the one in six Americans who are unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking for work altogether, and investing to get the economy back on its feet. With poll respondents solidly opposing Republican policies, he could have at least made clear that our deficit is overwhelmingly attributable to Bush tax cuts, Bush's entrance into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and a recession caused by exactly the kind of financial speculation that the Republicans have been fighting to prevent being regulated.
..more..
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
