President Obama Makes a Bad Deal

President Obama defends his compromise on tax cuts. Photo: The New York Times.

A lot of people are angry at President Obama for giving in to Republican blackmail on tax cuts.

The tax cut bill passed by the Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives would have given a tax cut to everyone on the first $250,000 of income. But that wasn’t good enough for Senate Republicans, who vowed to block all legislation until they got extra tax cuts for their friends making over $250,000 a year.

Under the Democratic tax cut bills, people making $20,000 a year would get a tax cut on all of it. So would people making $200,000 a year. So would families making $250,000 a year. They’d get a tax cut on all their income. All of it.

People making billions of dollars a year would get a tax cut on their first $250,000 of income. All of it. But they wouldn’t get a tax cut on on income over that amount.

Of course, people who make that much money pay lower taxes anyway because a lot of their income is taxed as capital gains at a rate of 10 to 15 percent. So hedge fund managers who make a billion dollars a year pay lower tax rates than their assistants who make only $30,000 a year. Somehow, Republicans think that’s just wonderful and totally fair.

I don’t know if I’m angry at President Obama. If that really was the best deal he could make for the American people, then okay. Even he said that he didn’t like parts of the deal.

What bothers me is that I don’t think it was the best deal that the president could make for the American people.

A majority of Americans in both major parties supported a tax cut on the first $250,000 of income and not over that amount. Corporate profits are through the roof. Wall Street never had it so good.

So we’re supposed to believe that with wars and unemployment and crumbling infrastructure and deficits as far as the eye can see, Wall Street needs another tax cut? And that Republicans were justified to block unemployment benefits, middle class tax cuts, and nuclear missile treaties just to help their friends on Wall Street?

President Obama got the best deal he could get without having to fight very hard for it. That’s what disappoints me. He wouldn’t fight. We need a president who will fight for us.

Yes, you can say it’s easy for me to support tax increases because I’m a student and won’t have to pay them. But my family would have a tax increase. Even my Dad, who’s a Republican, supports extending tax cuts only up to $250,000. He knows what’s good for this country. It’s not a matter of how much money you make or which political party you support. It’s a matter of what’s right.

But instead of what’s right, we got “the best deal that President Obama could get.”

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Copyright 2010 by Rinth de Shadley.