Has Poker Power Player Obama deceived the Republicans. ??? - Are they going to be the Coyote once again ?? - Coyote and Road Runner Politics !! -
New York Mag : Very Clever Jonathan Chait tells us why Obama is in a strong position if reelected and the Fiscal Cliff Bullshit is a Hoax in which many good intentioned but naive Democrats have fallen
Super Conservative Charles Krauthammer was right in saying that Obama was the winner of the debt-ceiling Showdown and Skirmish.
Jonathan Chait is always a superb writer and Analyst. Hard to surpass ! --- But don't blame him for the Coyote and Road Runner, that is my foolish addition.
New York Magazine
November 7th
Though their agendas are hidden, both Romney and Obama have plans to dramatically remake the size and character of American government. Very, very quickly.
By Jonathan Chait
October 14, 2012
November 7th
Some Excerpts of a Very Long Article of Many Pages :
The odd thing about the debt-ceiling debacle is that the deal Obama tried to cut with Republicans may have been absurdly generous, but the deal he actually got was pretty favorable. It required the establishment of a bipartisan commission that had to agree to $1.5 trillion worth of reductions—which, of course, it could not, for the same reason every other bipartisan deficit negotiation failed—or else automatic cuts would take place in 2013. Because Republicans refused to allow higher revenue to make up any part of those cuts, and insisted all the automatic deficit reduction consist of lower spending, Obama made his own demand: that he have a greater say in what kind of spending would suffer cuts. Social Security and Medicare benefits were exempted, though cuts to Medicare providers were not. Programs that benefit the poor were likewise spared, but defense absorbed a huge proportion of the automatic cuts.
The idea was to turn the Republican coalition against itself. As the clock ticked toward January, doctors, hospitals, and—most especially—defense contractors would be confronted with terrifyingly large reductions in their income stream. Voiding those cuts would require convincing Obama to sign a law undoing them, which he would not do unless the replacement plan met his definition of fairness, which meant including higher tax revenue from the rich. This has had precisely its intended effect. Executives and lobbyists have begun to beseech Republicans to accept a budget deal that includes higher revenue along with lower spending. Republican defense hawks like John McCain and Lindsey Graham have signed a letter calling for a “balanced bipartisan deficit reduction package,” which is Beltway code for a deal mixing taxes and spending.
What really lured Republicans into a trap was the timing of the arrangement. The beginning of 2013, when the automatic spending cuts take effect, coincides with the expiration of every penny of the Bush tax cuts. And so, by postponing the fiscal reckoning, Republicans inadvertently scheduled it for the very moment when Obama (should he win reelection) will hold his maximum leverage. Last summer, Obama was pleading with Boehner to give him $800 billion in additional revenue. Come January, he’ll have $5 trillion in higher revenue without doing anything. Since Obama’s own budget proposes to raise only $1.5 trillion in new revenue and trim entitlement spending, he could then offer Republicans a deal that cuts taxes (by, say, a couple trillion dollars), increases military spending, and reduces entitlement spending. In other words, he could offer a right-wing bill—and the end result would be a mix of policies to the left of his own budget, and to the left of the Simpson-Bowles proposal.
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This is not the story you have heard about the budget. You have probably heard a terrifying tale of dysfunction and impending doom, with the catchphrase “the fiscal cliff” used by budget wonks to describe all the automatic changes scheduled for January 1. It’s a story of disaster that could arrive by accident and must be prevented at all costs. Every aspect of this narrative is inaccurate.
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This is all utterly wrong. Bipartisan agreement is not necessary to fix the debt. Nothing is necessary to fix the debt. It is as if the network of activists, wonks, business leaders, and Beltway elder statesmen who have devoted themselves to building cross-party support for a deficit deal have grown more attached to the means of bipartisanship than to the ends for which it was intended. The budget deficit is a legislatively solved problem. It is, indeed, an oversolved problem. In the absence of any agreement between the president and Congress, the deficit will shrink to less than one percent of the economy by 2018, and remain below that level through 2022. The budget deficit declines so sharply and so drastically, and in ways that neither party is entirely comfortable with, that the task for Washington is to pull back on deficit reduction.
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The economic damage is cumulative. It is the opposite of the debt ceiling, when the doomsday clock ticked down to a moment of sudden calamity. A full year of inaction would do a lot of damage, but a week, a month, or even a couple of months would not. The president would have enough control over the mechanics of the budget to delay the effects of higher taxes and spending cuts in order to cushion the blow to the economy. Even if the tax hikes and spending cuts go into effect, any deal that gets signed later could be retroactive. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve could also take emergency action to keep the recovery afloat.
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What’s more, there are strong legal arguments that the president can ignore Congress and essentially moot the debt ceiling on his own. Obama ignored these tools in 2011 and submitted to a shakedown because he believed he could cut a deal. Members of the administration aren’t brandishing this weapon, but, somewhat like the Israeli nuclear program, they are happy to have its existence known, if not acknowledged.
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