I'm Totally Ready To Be A Democrat Now That I Have To Run As One

Yesterday, President Obama released his deficit reduction package.  From the ABC News article:

Obama Outlines Deficit-Reduction Plan: "This Is Not Class Warfare"

Some specifics:

• Cutting Medicare and Medicaid by a combined $320 billion ($248 billion from Medicare, $72 billion from Medicaid).  This is in addition to cuts already part of Obama's health care reform.
• An additional $260 billion in cuts from other entitlement programs.
• Eligibility age for Social Security and Medicaid/care remains at 65 (instead of 67 that had been flirted with during earlier negotiations).
• $1.5 trillion in new revenue from consisting of closed loopholes and a tax increase on people making more than $1 million a year (called the Buffet rule after Warren Buffet and his raise my taxes speech).
• Counting savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

The obvious goal of that Buffet rule is to make sure that high-income tax payers actually pay the same tax rates as the middle class instead of finding ways to get around our tax laws.  We go to all of this effort to create a progressive tax system and then undermine it back into a regressive system through tax breaks and loopholes.  

Obama also rightly calls out the regressive nature of the one idea Republicans have put forward regarding the economy, like Chuck E Cheese animatrons on a loop.  Cut spending, lower taxes.  From the NY Times:

Obama Draws New Hard Line On Long-Term Debt Reduction

Obama states:

I will not support — I will not support — any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans. And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share,” Mr. Obama said. “We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable.

Obama also backed his proposal with the full weight of his constitutional presidential stones:

The president made clear today that he will veto any plan that seeks to cut the deficit through spending cuts alone and does not include tax increases as well.

“I am ready, I am eager to work with Democrats and Republicans to reform the tax code to make it simpler, to make it fairer and make America more competitive,” Obama said. ”But any reform plan will have to raise revenue to help close our deficit.  That has to be part of the formula.” 

The Veto... something Obama has only done twice during his presidency, and one of those times was to kill a bill with the most boring name in the universe: The Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010.  You know, if my job dealt with things as mind-numbing as that title and the actual text of the bill, I might tweet pictures of my own junk, too, just to remind myself there was still joy to be had in this world.

Actually, that bill was a pretty underhanded attempt by banks to make it easier to foreclose on homes.  From the CNBC Wayback Machine:

Obama Rejects Foreclosure Gate Bailout Bill

From the CNBC article:

Ordinarily, banks are able to get a quickie foreclosure through the courts by having officers swear out statements claiming they have personal knowledge of the details of the loans and the delinquencies of borrowers. But it has now emerged that loan officers at some banks were just signing the statements kicked out by a computer without having reviewed the loan materials.

Hey, it only seems fair that the review process used for so many home loans that should never have been approved be applied to the foreclosure process, right?  So the vetoed legislation would have made it possible for banks to get notarized foreclosure statements in a state with loose foreclosure standards and use them to kick people out of homes in states with stricter standards.  One favorite quote from the CNBC article:

Proponents of the bill most likely argued that it would help avert a nation-wide slowdown to the foreclosure process that could serve simply to delay a housing recovery by leaving more houses in mortgage limbo.

I get the need to move foreclosures along if a house needs foreclosing on when you hear that some people just stop paying their mortgages after the value of their home tanked.

An 81 Year-Old Man With A Dog Named Muffin

But it feels cold to see this kind of cry for action about foreclosing without some urgency to helping people refinance and keep their homes.

Regardless, the bill seemed like a good one to veto in retrospect.  In this case, hearing the veto threat getting dropped gives me some hope that Obama's upcoming attempts to help right this country won't follow what seems like his typical cave-first-then-start-negotiating approach to getting things done.  As it has been said before, I think this is what a lot of people thought they were going to get from Obama based on his 2008 campaign.  I guess now that he's quasi-officially campaigning again, it's time to bust out that approach to work its magic a second time.

Or maybe he's sincere in his stance now that the reach-across-the-aisle-to-find-common-ground-like-rational-adults-running-a-country approach has been demonstrated, proven, re-proven, etched on stone tablets, smashed, and re-etched into new stone tablets to not work and it just sunk in.  What I like about this stance is that it could force the republican hand a little bit.

The nice thing about being a bleeding-heart liberal is that it can be easy to couch the opposition's side as cold or evil, even if it's not always fair.  The core of Obama's plan, if you cut from the poor, you have to take from the rich, does just that while actually feeling fair.  Sure, republicans will attempt to parry with their usual blurbs like (from the ABC News article):

Class warfare will simply divide this country more. It will attack job creators, divide people and it doesn’t grow the economy.  Class warfare may make for really good politics, but it makes for rotten economics.” Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

"If he’s (Warren Buffet) feeling guilty about it, I think he should send in a check. … But we don’t want to stagnate this economy by raising taxes."  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

 and from the NY Times article:

“The administration’s insistence on raising taxes on job creators and its reluctance to take the steps necessary to strengthen our entitlement programs are the reasons the president and I were not able to reach an agreement previously,” Mr. Boehner said. “And it is evident today that these barriers remain.”

Specifically to the Buffet rule, it seems like the distinction between a job-creator and someone who gets paid a lot of money still hasn't broken through to some congressional leaders.

But the Christian Science Monitor offers this interesting insight into the Obama plan:

Obama's Deficit Reduction Plan: Worse Than Nothing

The article points out that while Obama's efforts should be commended, they actually accomplish less than if the Bush Tax Cuts had been allowed to expire.  So if Congress had done nothing, meaning if they had not actively pushed to extend those cuts, the economy would be better off than under what Obama has proposed.

We could have avoided the incoming drama months ago and be in a better place, but apparently that's not how America rolls in the Jersey Shore Era.

Regardless of why Obama had some backbone surgically installed over the weekend, I take some satisfaction in knowing that Boehner et al may actually experience some resistance to the bully tactics they have relied on for the last few years.