President Barack Obama employed a masterful use of political rope-a-dope to lure the Republicans into a no-win position in the debt ceiling negotiations. President Obama seemed to be losing the debt ceiling battle. Republicans lunged forward demanding huge cuts to the budget. Obama suddenly peeked from behind his gloves and said I agree, just raise taxes on the wealthy.
Speaker of the House John Boehner knew he had been sucker punched and had to go to his members in the House of Representative and tell them that they got what they have been seeking. Social Security and Medicare were on the table, but there was one small hitch, they had to raise taxes on the rich.
Boehner already knew that the cause was lost. There was nothing that could be given to convince his Tea Party captors to increase taxes on the wealthy. So looking like a man given his marching orders he gave up the holy grail of reforming Social Security and Medicare in order to not raise taxes on the wealthy. John Boehner had to speak into a microphone that his party would pass up deep budget cuts in favor of smaller cuts in order to keep tax breaks in place for millionaires and billionaires.
During the last Presidential election, CSpan2 Book TV aired a program where the author discussed the results of his or her research, which suggested that something like 5-10% of Democrats , and 5-10% of Republicans, essentially debated and defined the ideological constructs of each party. The point was that the vast, vast, vast majority of the citizens of this country have their lives dictated by the most active and vocal members of society, who also happen to be more privileged .
ReplyDeleteI strongly suspect that the same thing is occurring with the debt ceiling debate. The debate is not really about the debt ceiling per se, but rather a very deep, long-standing debate about the role and size of government. It’s never been resolved, and never will be resolved in our representative democracy. However, in the mean time, the regular folks in our society run the risk of being irreparably damaged. The elites (the upper and upper middle socio-economic classes) on each side of the fence have theirs, their corporate contributions, decent jobs and income, and will fare just fine economically. It’s the ordinary citizens (lower middle socio-economic class) who will most likely get screwed, no matter which side ultimately prevails in the short term.