Those who were wondering at the truculent tone exhibited by President Obama yesterday afternoon during remarks delivered at a White House event got their answer today. Negotiations between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had already produced a deal by the time the president spoke. That should have meant at least a temporary cessation of partisan warfare, but Obama was having none of it. As I wrote yesterday, though the deal was very much on his terms–including a tax increase on those making $400,000 or more a year and had nothing in it about the spending cuts or entitlement reform that is necessary to fix the country’s budget problems–the president was not in a conciliatory mood. He made it clear that subsequent negotiations about the debt ceiling and the budget would focus on even more tax increases rather than address the nation’s spending problem. He spoke contemptuously of the Republican position. Rather than uniting the nation just at the moment when it appeared a bipartisan compromise (albeit one that was far closer to his demands than anything proposed by the GOP) had been achieved, he seemed intent on goading House Republicans into rejecting the deal.
One day later, it looks like he got his wish. Though the Tea Partiers in the GOP caucus might have opposed the deal anyway, as did presidential hopefuls Rand Paul and Marco Rubio in the Senate, Obama’s remarks had to have pushed many Republicans over the edge into opposition. Though the alternative to passing the deal, which would entail sending the country over the fiscal cliff and generate ruinous tax increases for all Americans, is unthinkable, it is hard to blame House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and other Republicans for thinking they are dealing with a negotiating partner in the president who is only interested in raising taxes and not in dealing with the nation’s problems. Though it can be argued that the GOP will be in a stronger position to fight the Democrats on entitlement reforms once taxes on the wealthy have already been raised, Cantor and his colleagues understand that Obama will not negotiate in good faith two months later on the debt ceiling any more than he has this time. That’s exactly the message the president wanted to send, and his intended audience responded just as he wished. Read More
