I can't possibly know this to be true. I readily admit that it is just a prediction. But I feel like I'm doing pretty well with predicting Obama's betrayal of our party and slavering Republican ascendancy so far this summer, so I'm going with it: The Bush Tax Cuts Will Be Permanent By Christmas.
Any of you who are betting otherwise are fooling yourselves. Here's how it will play out.
Republicans have two sorts of opportunities to hold the federal government hostage with the threat of default: the debt limit (the technicality) and the budget approval process (the real one.) Obama has now cleverly (and I use that word advisedly) given away most of the store over the fake crisis, the debt limit, making Boehner and Cantor and McConnell into prophets and heroes.
The worst of it is that that is not the worst of it.
What do the Republicans really want? Low marginal tax rates, particularly on the wealthy. Everything else is subsidiary to that. Well, we now will have cut away the brambles around that goal. All that is left, really, is for Republicans to hone in on the goal that they proved last December that they want more than anything else: making the Bush Tax Cuts permanent. This is the weapon -- powerful as a plastic sword, firm and inflexible as a fish -- that we are holding over them. This is their fight.
And ... Obama is going to stop them? I can barely write that without laughing.
The Republicans journeyed into Traitor Land last month and got away with it. The story line is no longer that they were willing to see the economy collapse over nothing. The story line is that they won. Everything that Boehner promised came true.
So: comes the fight over the Fiscal Year 2012 budget, the Republicans are going to have one major objective: make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent.
And Obama -- hell, I don't even know what he and his deluded minions are thinking anymore. Maybe they want it too. It gives them an issue to campaign on in the future, or something. Whatever they're thinking, it's almost assuredly stupid. But whatever they're thinking doesn't matter.
The Republicans are going to hold out. They will hold out past the Sept. 30 deadline for passing a budget. That happens sometimes. They will hold out past Halloween. They will hold out past Thanksgiving. And Obama will be bleating about the danger, danger, danger to the economy unless we get a resolution.
And then the Republicans will get their way, just like last year, at the time of year when people are paying the least attention. Here, my magic radio has picked up a broadcast from late-mid December:
"Sadly, making the tax cuts permanent is necessary to prevent a default. They'll do it, after all, you know; they'll topple the government itself, the irresponsible scoundrels. Full faith and credit -- poof! Someone has to give way, and we are the adults in the room. But we promise that we'll stop them next time."
Frankly, I'm not sure why House Democrats should even show up for work anymore.
All I can say is this: any House Democrat who votes for this compromise -- who votes with our enemy on this issue, the Democratic President of the United States -- had better give up their ambitions for national office. This is one of the votes -- like the Iraq War Authorization -- that we will never forget.