Chess, caution and refusing to threaten Tax-Cut Extension veto

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Here is a case where both sides of the Obama-divide at DU are right.

On the one hand, it is getting a little old that the President will not fix positions. From the stimulus to healthcare to whatever it always gets down to, "Here are my reasoned, principled opinions, but in practice I'll sign whatever gets passed."

On the other hand, what would the tactical benefit be of promising to veto any extension of the tax-cuts for the rich? The president is cautious and recognizes that if Congress were to pass a two year extension of the entirety of the tax cuts and he vetoed it he would be acting in a way that would raise everybody's taxes and would be quite unpopular, and very bad policy.

Hell... he could find himself acting to, in effective terms, raise everyone's taxes next year right before an election. When the politics is that bad then pragamatism has its place.

So he's in a bind. Do you promise to do something when in the big picture the other side may want you to do exactly what you're promising?

Just thought I'd give the prez the benefit of the doubt on this one. It's not quite as clear-cut as the HuffPost coverage suggests.

President Obama on Thursday refused to commit himself to vetoing legislation that would temporarily extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, even as he and his administration have steadfastly argued that such an extension would waste hundreds of billions of dollars.

Here is the relevant transcript from Obama's interview:

STEPHANOPOULOS: How deep is your commitment to this fight? Are you saying that if Congress passes a short term extension of all the tax cuts, you're gonna veto it?

OBAMA: George, here's what ... I'm saying is that we've got a fundamental choice about this economy. You can't have Republicans running on fiscal discipline that we're gonna reduce our deficit, that the debt's out of control, and then borrow tens, hundreds of billions of dollars to give tax cuts to people who don't need them. (crosstalk)

STEPHANOPOULOS: --everyone else, though. You don't propose a way to pay for those.

OBAMA: Look, the reason is because those folks, as I said over the last decade, at the time when the Republicans were in charge, didn't see a wage increase. Did not see their incomes go up at a time when their costs for health care, for college tuition, for everything else was going up. So, they are just barely keeping their heads above water. The one group that actually saw their incomes increase substantially when ... Republicans were in charge, were the top two percent of Americans. The folks who saw the biggest jump were the top one tenth of one percent of Americans.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Does that mean you will veto an extension of tax cuts to the wealthy?

OBAMA: What I am saying is that if we are going to add to our deficit by $35 billion, $95 billion, $100 billion, $700 billion, if that's the Republican agenda, then I've got a whole bunch of better ways to spend that money.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you're not saying you're gonna veto it.

OBAMA: I, there are a whole bunch better ways to spend the money.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How come you don't want to say veto?

OBAMA: There are a whole bunch better ways to spend the money.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/09/obama-refuses-to-say-hed-_n_710279.html

[Better Today]

1. He's not in a bind. He vetoes the bill extension, then Dems submit a

middle class tax cut separately and Obama dares anyone of any flavor to vote against it. Simple solution, surely he's smart enough to figure this out. So are you by the way.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. If it is that simple then no veto threat is required

If we are to consider the possibility of congress voting to extend all the cuts then what is our basis for assuming congress will then turn around and do something sensible?

If the pugs were able to block the sensible bill they would pay no political price for it, and they know it.

Presumably Pelosi will manage to have only a middle-class extension put forward. Are the votes there to amend it over her wishes? Depends on how many Dems are afraid of "raised taxes" ads. It is, at this point, unknown to me.

The point is that *most* of the people who favor a rich-taxcut extension would prefer a veto.

And if we are able to pass a bill without rich-taxcut extension then the issue is moot.

In terms of the small set of possibilities where a veto-threat comes into play it is probably a poor tactical position.

In terms of the more numerous scenarios where a veto-threat is irrelevant it is irrelevant.

A veto-threat has almost no power to shape legislation for the better and some power to encourage passing a bad bill so that it will be vetoed.

The problem requires that we imagine a legislator whose behavior will be changed for the better by a veto threat. (I don't see the blue dogs as loyal enough that they would care whether their actions would end up making the party or president look foolish.)

[Better Today]

3. Duh, then you go into the election asking middle class if they want

middle class tax cuts then vote for Dems instead of republicans. Again, he has the pulpit, he just refuses to do anything concrete with it.

[TheKentuckian]

4. The whole debate has been allowed to go in the wrong direction

The narrative since the crash should have always been to kill the cuts and to use that money to reinvest in our country for renewal.

When things were just crappy before the bottom fell out retaining the bottom 98% cuts made a little more sense but certainly now those resources need to be redistributed in much more targeted and effective ways that gets us the best multiplier.

Real pragmatisim would be to admit where we are including the dangerous state of our infrastructure and how we are lagging behind the world, admit that we are digging a hole with tax cuts just the same way spending does with less stimultive impact, communicate that we have been on a foolish trajectory long before Bush came and hammered the last nails, and lie out a much more realistic path forward being honest and calling on the need for both a change in policy orientation and need for shared sacrifice.

Frame it as doing everything we can to avoid the perils of "new" debt by redirecting these resources into our stimulus, recovery, and reinvestment program.
We do that and though we might take some drag by reducing paychecks a few bucks a week we more than make up for both it and the stimulus we passed. We are talking around 3 trillion dollars here. Three trillion gives us options and puts enough money into the pipeline to impact a 14 trillion dollar economy and we leave the door open that more could be needed but every effort would be made to avoid it.

Then once the crisis has been corrected that money would cover the service on the debt and if you've done it right then less services will be required from the previous crap normal and we can long term pay down, giving us the ability to respond to emergencies in the future when they arise.

The only priority I would see with retaining cuts is to maintaining or even further reducing the bottom bracket and I'd be willing to raise on top earner or capital gains to protect that or find creative ways to offset that like expanded food stamps and HUD assistance or something.

Our strategy and approach are not even a good faith effort to the problems we face. There are a lot of moving parts but by looking at our problems holistically we give ourselves better odds of having positive impact.