Washington Post : "Obama begins 2012 with vastly more policy leverage than in 2011. What does Boehner have to show for the brinksmanship of the past year, save for the discretionary spending cuts from the debt deal ?"

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In Budgetary and Spending matters, 2011 wasn't so bad for Obama, Perhaps Historians will write that he was a winner in these matters.

Washington Post
Obama comes out ahead in 2011
By Ezra Klein - Columnist
December 23, 2011


Obama comes out ahead in 2011


Some excerpts :

The key here was that the supercommittee failed. That left two major events on the budgetary horizon: the spending trigger, which cuts $1 trillion from the budget, half of which comes from the Pentagon, and none of which comes from Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare beneficiaries, or assorted other programs for low-income Americans; and the scheduled expiration of the George W. Bush tax cuts, which would raise taxes by almost $4 trillion. Both events are scheduled to happen simultaneously and automatically on Jan. 1, 2013 — a dual-trigger nightmare for the GOP. And taken together, they are far to the left of anything that Democrats have suggested over the past year.

Finally, there was the scheduled expiration of the payroll tax cut and the expanded unemployment insurance benefits. On Friday, Congress extended both for two months — and the expectation is that, after another ugly round of negotiations, both will be extended through the rest of 2012. If that holds true, then in the 2010 tax deal, Democrats got about $4 of stimulus for every $1 of upper-income tax cuts — rather than, as it seemed at the time, $2 in stimulus for every $1 in upper-income tax cuts.

So, in 2011, there was no government shutdown, no default on the debt and no contractionary spending cuts passed for this year or next year. In addition, 2010’s stimulus measures were extended into the beginning of 2012, and unless Congress and the White House come to an alternative deficit-reduction solution over the next year, the dual triggers will go off and we’ll see a deficit “deal” consisting of a bit less than $4 in tax increases for every $1 in spending cuts — and half of those spending cuts will fall on the Pentagon.

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