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.”
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.