Obama Caved

Obama caved. I have no defense for this president I voted for. I have no sympathy for a party I support. Since I am very unlikely to vote for any Republican candidate, I need to focus my criticism, my venting, my frustration, to the people who I voted for to defend my viewpoint. They really, really screwed things up.

Let’s be clear about what just happened during the last few weeks. The “debt ceiling crisis” was utterly and completely avoidable. This “crisis” is in fact not about future spending, but about paying for things that we already bought. The Medicare Drug plan, The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. (Even if you are a supporter of the Iraq war, a completely avoidable war of choice, you should be in support of PAYING for it.) The Bush tax cuts. The next Bush tax cuts. The Bush tax cuts extended by Obama. The Obama stimulus (mostly tax cuts). The bank bailouts (a literal and massive bank robbery, folks). The list goes on.

I understand completely the need for deficit reduction. We shouldn’t spend more than we take in. But the Republican Party, damn the torpedoes, with feckless resistance from Democrats, ran up the deficit for the last eleven years, and when the check showed up, Republicans wouldn’t even leave a tip. And Obama did not put up a fight at all. He completely caved.

Now let’s talk about how Obama caved on the revenue part, again and again. Most polls show that Americans support tax fairness for the wealthy and the kablooey-wealthy. But against this obvious upper hand, Obama gained not one dollar of ground on increasing revenue to the government.

Some of my friends and neighbors would say, “Good, the government doesn’t need more money.” Folks, YOU are the government. Your schools, your bridges, your research, your infrastructure is crumbling because of these nincompoops. This is why I feel like it is important to be having this debate on the Patch, because this will affect us locally. This is not some abstract “spending reduction.” This is more like an O. Henry short story where someone is given a bargain for a million dollars in exchange for “someone” dying “somewhere” in the world. Then the person closest to them dies. That story always haunted me and it is now playing out on a national scale. These cuts will hit us for the next decade, because Obama would not ask even one loophole to be closed to millionaires and billionaires in exchange for devastating cuts.

Let’s talk about the types of services likely to be cut or severely compromised: food inspections, highway construction, hurricane tracking, border security, money for education (list source: CNN), and if you imagine the myriad ways government spending is involved in your life you will begin to see that these yet-to-be-detailed cuts in spending may end up deeply affecting us locally. Have you tried to get off of Long Island recently on one of our stunningly decrepit and overcrowded bridges and highways? And lets not talk about “entitlements,” which is a code word for “poor people who don’t deserve our help.” Morgan Stanley doesn’t deserve my help.

Now let’s be clear about something else–the government can’t create jobs, can it? The government is a huge employer of people, and was just forced to look at massive layoffs because of this deal. In this economy when we have millions of people out of work, it is guaranteed that the government will need to fire hundreds of thousands more people, leaving more unemployed people in an already depressed job market.

But have no fear folks, because the Bush tax cuts will create jobs! Wait, they didn’t? Well certainly Obama won’t extend those tax cuts…wait he did already? Right. That’s how he governs. He caves. And it’s usually before the negotiations start.

To my friends and neighbors who oppose Avalon Bay, let’s look at the situation this way: a local government that cannot possibly collect enough tax revenue to overcome the infrastructure challenges Avalon Bay would cause, approves the project because it needs the economic stimulus to help our local economy recover. Basically, big business forces government to do its bidding without returning any benefit to infrastructure. This is the type of “free-market” madness that keeps our government in its thrall. This is what is controlling the Congress.

But the most maddening thing is that Obama caved.