This is rich, FDL reporting on Americans for Tax Fairness poll in which a whopping 61% agree with the President's position on the cuts and would blame the frigging GOP for ending the Bush Tax Cuts!
Most Voters Would Blame GOP if All Bush Tax Cuts Expire
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This closely mirrors the result from a Pew Research/Washington Post poll earlier this week. It found that if government fails to reach a deal regarding all aspects of the “fiscal cliff,” 53 percent will blame Congressional Republicans and just 29 percent will blame Obama.
President Obama has strong political incentives to not reach a deal until after the new year. To begin with, the new Congress will be slightly more Democratic. Secondly, allowing all the Bush tax cuts to expire will make it easier for Republicans to get around their tax pledge. Finally, the polling makes it clear that if Obama chooses to drag out negotiations until he is in a better position it is actually the Republicans who will be blamed.
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Too funny, and wonderful support opportunity for the President to leave this behind and move FORWARD with a on huge direct hire jobs bill repairing and transforming our decaying infrastructure and providing hope for the millions of unemployed! YES!
'Crisis' is a Fake
Alan Grayson spoke recently about the fake crisis that's all the rage:
Alan Grayson on : Fiscal Cliff is "Artificial Crisis"
As Grayson says, this is a situation where all Democrats can come together and push back attempts to cut the safety net.
We do need to retask spending, but not for the 1% as the Republicans and some Dems apparently want to. Our military contractor welfare is obscene, missing revenue from deductions and other tax fail for Big Oil, Gas, and Coal is sickening.
Over the last two years we have had around 20 plus huge weather caused disasters which cost over a billion and much remains to be done.
Jeff Masters, Wunderground Blog
Devastating Hurricane Sandy was the eleventh billion-dollar weather-related disaster in the U.S. so far this year, and the most expensive, said insurance broker AON Benfield in their November 8, 2012 Catastrophe Report. This puts 2012 in second place for most U.S. billion-dollar weather disasters behind 2011, when NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) counted fourteen such disasters.
There are many many families suffering from losing their homes to foreclosure and their jobs to Teabagger Republican caused state level cuts who need a new deal. Many now getting help from unemployment benefits stand to lose their benefits soon if the Republicans have their way.
No Deal But A New Deal
We need action on all of the above, and we need our social safety net protected and expanded from any bargain deal.
James Galbraith, economist and Democrat, in Salon:
The coming debt battle
Citing a phony "crisis," the GOP wants to gut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Democrats can't let them
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Do we have budget problems? Yes: We spend too much on military hardware and wars; the talent, materials and technologies that go into that are wasted and cannot be used, say, to protect New York from storm surge. Our rich build too many mansions, thanks to their CEO incomes and their low tax rates; letting the Bush tax cuts expire will usefully dent that purchasing power.
But Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid impose no such future burdens. They are transfers in current time. They meet today’s commitments to seniors, survivors, dependents, the disabled and the ill – commitments they have earned through work – providing them with income and services at the expense of others also currently alive. This any community can always do, to the full extent of its will and resources. The future has nothing to do with it. Except that, from a moral point of view, it’s useful for the young to learn that we are a community, in which working people take care of those who can’t.
And that is what the Objectivists in Congress cannot stand. Our sense of community is an obstacle to their power. And what they are determined to destroy, we must defend. There is much more to be said, about disaster relief, food assistance, housing and other threatened programs. But to begin, Congress should leave Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alone.
We can do this.
Please join the broad coalition working to let Congress know where we stand...
TELL CONGRESS: PROTECT OUR FUTURE
We only have a few weeks to make sure President Obama and Congress do everything they can to rebuild the middle class. The stakes are huge and we're up against millions of dollars from the same corporations and right-wing billionaires that spent record amounts trying to elect Mitt Romney. It’s up to us to fight like hell for working families.