Obama to GOP: Save the middle class from me [Reader Post]

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Instead of negotiating with Congress for a deal, Barack Obama is out there campaigning for his tax increase plans.

President Barack Obama is urging Congress to pass an extension of tax cuts for middle class families, saying a tax increase for them would be like a “lump of coal” for Christmas.

In his first campaign-style event to sell his solution on the “fiscal cliff,” Obama says in the Philadelphia suburbs that Republicans should extend existing Bush-era tax rates for households earning $250,000 or less, while allowing increases to kick in for the wealthy.

He says both sides need to “get out of our comfort zones” to reach an agreement.

He toured a manufacturing facility that builds construction toys, joking that he’s keeping his own “naughty and nice list” for Congress and urging the public to pressure lawmakers to pass the tax cut extension for the middle class.

He doesn’t want the GOP to hold the middle class tax cuts “hostage”:

President Barack Obama says it’s unacceptable for some congressional Republicans to “hold middle-class tax cuts hostage” because they don’t want tax rates to rise on the wealthy.

In his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama says the average middle-class family of four could pay $2,200 more in taxes next year after the fiscal cliff. He says Republicans could give families “a sense of security going into the New Year” by extending tax cuts for the middle class.

Hold the hostage? To what?

On August 2, 2011 Barack Obama signed the debt limit bill into law.

The bill also creates a congressional committee charged with closing the deficit an additional $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion. If the panel deadlocks or Congress doesn’t accept its plan, a prearranged set of spending cuts would kick in, including steep cuts to defense and entitlement programs poised as a guillotine to prod the committee and Congress to act.

The law states that unless Congress averts the previous law, the Bush tax rates expire and some serious budget cuts take place. It was negotiated by the “Gang of Six.”

Then on August 7, 2012 Barack Obama signed the Sequestration/Transparency bill into law. It cleared the House 414-2 and the Senate by unanimous consent.

Thus what Obama is now demanding is that Congress not hold the middle class “hostage” to the bills he signed into law.

Obama owns the fiscal cliff. These are HIS laws. He signed them. The GOP needs to scream that loudly every single day.

Barack Obama is cynical, but could he really be so cynical as to sign into law something he knew would have to be reversed while blaming the GOP?

I am also cynical and I believe that that scenario is very possible. Now Obama is demanding that the GOP save America from Obama.

Don’t do it.

John Boehner and the GOP need to play pin the blame on the Obama. It’s his law. Stick it to him.

As H.L. Mencken said:

“Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

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the libs need to be reminded every day… they own it. They worked for it, they got it, they “won”. So they have zero room to bitch, they need to stfu and swallow it.

And the MSM sweeps in to defend Obama with opinion passed off as journalism:

Top story found first on Google News page:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/fiscal-cliff_b_2229352.html

Excerpt:
“The risk is that when the negotiations finally get to the end game, and Republicans are forced accept the tax deal, Obama may succumb to pressure to cut Social Security and Medicare, so that he can say that he, too, gave ground on issues that were difficult for his party. The risk is that he will listen to his inner bipartisan.

That would be a huge mistake. The Republicans have been unmasked for who they are. The best thing Obama can do is to continue to hold the high ground of this debate. The Republican position is entirely at odds with the vast majority of voters. If Obama doesn’t fold a winning hand, eventually the Republicans will have to come to him.”

Obama would be right in ramming yet another agenda item through congress, blaming them and allowing the MSM to propagate the lie that anyone against “The Won” should be dismissed, ignored, and otherwise marginalized.

Never saw so many people applaud tyranny.

He says both sides need to “get out of our comfort zones” to reach an agreement.

Yeah, I don’t think the GOP should fall for this one. Give them the tax increases and we won’t see one dime of cuts to anything other than Defense spending. Certainly not for programs like the one that pays off Reid’s cowboy poets.

President Barack Obama says it’s unacceptable for some congressional Republicans to “hold middle-class tax cuts hostage” because they don’t want tax rates to rise on the wealthy.

Isn’t it really Obama and the Democrats who are “holding the middle-class” hostage? Not to mention, the economy itself, and any hope of returning to a top credit rating. And they are doing so by insisting that only when tax hikes on the “rich” are in effect, then they will talk about spending “cuts”. Sorry. We’ve heard that promise before. It never gets fulfilled. Ever.

Logic should tell anyone with a brain that it’s the spending, not the revenue. When the proposed revenue hikes the Democrats favor only address $80 billion to $160 Billion of the $1 TRILLION PLUS deficits, then the rest of the deficit is the result of overspending, correct? Therefore, address the biggest issue facing the financial status of the US government first, the spending, and then we can start discussing any revenue shortfalls.

BTW, any financial advisor will tell you to address your spending habits first, and then start looking at new income sources, if you need it. The Democrats are proposing doing the exact opposite.

Great if I don’t get a tax increase. But if you increase the taxes on my Boss, who is a small business owner who makes more than $250,000 a year, then I will either be layed off or will not receive a pay raise. Money that would have gone into the economy and taxes that would have gone to assist the lazy class. Why can’t they just do what most of us do. Our income is fixed. We list our expenditures by priority. Whatever is at the bottom of the list when the money runs out gets lopped off the list. What’s so difficult about that?

I have often wondered how things would work if we actually got a say in how our taxes were used. Each year on our tax returns they listed all government expenditures with a checkbox. We could go down the list and put the percentage of our taxes that we wished to go for the items we wanted. Wouldn’t Congress and the president be surprised when they were paid what they were really worth to us? We would have great infrastructure and the best equiped military in the world. There would be no need for the IRS. (They wouldn’t be funded anyway.) People would be more willing to pay taxes if we got a say.

@johngalt: “What any financial adviser will tell you….”, in respect to a family budget? Family budgets are different from government budgets—families have limited means of increasing income, so it’s imperative that they cut expenses first. Governments are different than families, since they can raise taxed (and before you get your Ayn Rand panties in a wad about taxes—remember Reagan raised taxed 11 times—what a RINO). Most of the deficit is not because of over-spending (except possibly by the defense department)—it’s the result of under-taxation and to much unfunded war in the majority of the past decade.

@Liberal1 (Objectivity):

Most of the deficit is not because of over-spending

Proof that you can show a liberal/progressive an apple and they will still call it an orange.

Let’s see, the Bush tax cuts, across the board, “cost” the government around $1.7 Trillion over ten years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/revisiting-the-cost-of-the-bush-tax-cuts/2011/05/09/AFxTFtbG_blog.html

The ongoing cost of both Iraq and Afghanistan wars currently sits at just under $1.4 Trillion.
http://costofwar.com/

If you add both of those together, they total around $3.1 Trillion. At the beginning of 2001 the debt of the US stood at $5.5-6 Trillion.

Add those “costs” you mentioned, and we only come up to $8.6-9.1 Trillion. We’ll use the higher number, ok?

Currently the debt stands at $16.3 Trillion.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Using math, we come up with $7.2 Trillion. Attributed to spending. Over twice the amount of the “costs” you mentioned.

Please explain how “most of the deficit is not due to overspending.

@johngalt:

I wouldn’t expect a response to appear too soon on that one.
It’s probably on huffpo looking for a canned answer to respond with.