When a deal is bad beyond all pretext, the only thing left to do is spin. Democrats, including Senate lackeys and Administration lummoxes, spin the Senate version of the Fiscal Crap Sandwich to mean absolute victory over Republicans who have "finally" raised revenue (read "taxes.") Republicans spin that they moved to give even more people a tax break in 2013. Both obscure the reality; President Obama sold out the Middle Class for the wealthy.
Obama ran for re-election with a near exclusive message of "millionaires and billionaires" paying their "fair share." While some might have seen this as pure pandering, meant solely to gin up class warfare resentment against the 1% that the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-backed Occupy movement had started a year earlier, many of those in the middle class believed Obama.
College students, wondering where their employment will come from in a shrinking economy with even fewer prospects for job creation than in 2012 (thanks to Obamacare) believed him. They thought taxing the millionaires and billionaires would make things fairer. Somehow, they concluded, this would lead to more maneuvered wealth, and more opportunities. Why else would Obama take 18-29 year olds by 24 points over Gov. Mitt Romney?
The unemployment rate has remained around 8% for over a year. Yet Obama promised those middle class people without a job, or who were underemployed (a whopping 14.4% in November 2012, while 350,000 people left the labor force) that the tax revenue from the millionaires and billionaires would rectify their situation. What else could someone paying their "fair share" possibly mean? It means that when they pay, everything will be ok.
Yet, the McConnell/Biden plan that came out of the US Senate in the early hours of New Year's Day was not what the president promised. Obama said that millionaires start at $250,000 per year. (For the sake of this article, we will not begin to comprehend the president's "arithmetic" that makes $250,000 equal to $1,000,000. One simplistic commentary at a time, please.)
But this plan, led by his go-to guy, the Scrapper from Scranton, Vice President Joe Biden, gives a plan that raises tax rates on those making over $450,000 per year. This reduces the amount that would be raised over a decade from $800 billion to $600 billion.
That's a difference of $200 billion! That's the middle-class' money! President Obama promised! How can anyone think that a difference of $200 billion could possibly represent "fair share?" Why would President Obama sign off on this deal? Why did he lie to the same people he promised to help?
The answer is unfortunate, even for his most ardent supporters. President Obama, through his own actions and most trusted henchmen, obviously doesn't care about the middle class, and thinks nothing of lying to get what he wants. And what he wants is to embarrass Republicans at every turn. What he wants is to crush his political opponents more than he wants to, in his lying words, help middle class folks.
Middle class Americans should mark this day as a very dark day in history. Today, President Obama showed he is more about politics than he is about people. The science is in. The proof is conclusive. The case is closed. Don't say you weren't warned.