Congressman No
How I learned to stop worrying and love the austerity bomb
© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
December 5th 2012
It looks like Obama is going to stand his ground. He has said, on several occasions over the past few days, that the ending of the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2% is not open for negotiation. Come January 1st, one way or another, the top income bracket on incomes over $250,000 goes from 36.5% to 39.5%. Someone who makes $251 thousand in 2013 will have to pay an additional $30 in federal taxes. Oh, the humanity.
The real battle isn’t between Obama and the GOP, despite appearances. That battle ended before it began, when Obama racked up 323 electoral votes on election night. He became only the fourth president since 1900 to get re-elected with more than 50% of the popular vote. And he ran on a platform of ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Even Faux News is finding it difficult to claim he deceived anyone on that.
No, the real battle is between the moderates that remain in the GOP, and what one Guardian blogger called “the more swivel-eyed” elements of the far right. The ones that House Speaker Boehner is busily running out of the more important committees in an effort to bring the party back to something approaching sanity. As the wise man said, “The longest journey begins with a single step.” Boehner has taken that first step, and not surprisingly, the party has erupted into full scale war.
