|
GOP Faces Dilemma on Obama's Tax Credit and Infrastructure Plan
In chess, a fork is a tactic that attacks two or more pieces at the same time, and it means that the party on the receiving end will lose a piece no matter what happens. It's a damned if one does, damned if one doesn't situation. President Obama has just stuck the Congressional Republicans with a fork over his $50 billion plan on revenue neutral infrastructure spending and a 100% tax write-off for new capital investments through 2011. If they resist, the Democrats can use that resistance in the November mid-term elections. If they cooperate, it's a win for the White House.
In his speech yesterday to the AFL-CIO as part of Labor Day celebrations, the president set down the marker by reinforcing the Republicans as the "Party of No."
When it comes to just about everything we've done to strengthen our middle class, to rebuild our economy, almost every Republican in Congress says no. Even on things we usually agree on, they say no. If I said the sky was blue, they say no. If I said fish live in the sea, they'd say no. They just think it's better to score political points before an election than to solve problems. So they said no to help for small businesses, even when the small businesses said we desperately need this. This used to be their key constituency, they said. They said no. No to middle-class tax cuts. They say they're for tax cuts; I say, okay, let's give tax cuts to the middle class. No. No to clean energy jobs. No to making college more affordable. No to reforming Wall Street. They're saying right now, no to cutting more taxes for small business owners and helping them get financing.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came out sort of against the new plan. He said the "latest plan for another stimulus should be met with justifiable skepticism," and "Americans are rightly skeptical about Washington Democrats asking for more money." When it comes to economics, two things are significant here. First, Mr. McConnell is a trained lawyer and hence knows nothing about the subject. And second, the amount mentioned by the president won't jumpstart the economy as it is too little.
However, seeing this announcement as an economic one is to miss the point entirely. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and a former adviser to the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator John McCain, said, "The ratio of politics to substance in this effort is infinite." While one might quibble with his choice of words, the substance truly is politics. Mr. Obama has decided that the time has come to run against the GOP's obstructionism. The tax credit is simply an effort to force them to vote against their core constituency, small businesses. The $50 billion in infrastructure spending is designed to rally the working class voters who are toying with voting Republican and to force the GOP to vote against the interests of those people.
The "professional left" has whined about Mr. Obama all summer for not fighting Mr. McConnell and his minions. However, he knew no one was paying any attention during the summer. The election is 8 weeks away yet. This is when the public starts to realize they have a vote to cast soon. Now is the time to start the fight. And Mr. Obama has started well with this fork. Whether it holds up is impossible to say, but the battle is now truly engaged.
© Copyright 2010 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
Kensington Review Home
|
|
|