Tax Proposal and Compromise

I have read a lot in the media (mostly left-wing media, and I am including the official White House press release) about how President Obama offended everyone with his press conference regarding the tax cut deal he struck on Tues. night. I agreed that a lot of his comments were pretty offensive all around. He obviously was going into it with a very defensive mind set and took it too far in my opinion. However, most of the liberal media were emphasizing the Republicans staunch defense of the affluent income tax and talking about how President Obama gave up too much (most insinuated that he gave up quite a bit of his soul to have the audacity to allow the wealthy keep more of their earned wealth, but one or two didn’t go that far). I would suggest you read the transcript of his speech (you can get a copy by going here.), but there is something he said that I did like. It wasn’t necessarily how he said it, especially since I don’t agree with what the health care bill did (which is kind of his point here), but it was that he said it. It was in defense of striking a deal. He said:

“So this notion that somehow we are willing to compromise too much reminds me of the debate that we had during health care. This is the public option debate all over again. So I pass a signature piece of legislation where we finally get health care for all Americans, something that Democrats had been fighting for for a hundred years, but because there was a provision in there that they didn’t get that would have affected maybe a couple of million people, even though we got health insurance for 30 million people and the potential for lower premiums for 100 million people, that somehow that was a sign of weakness and compromise.

“Now, if that’s the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let’s face it, we will never get anything done. People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position and no victories for the American people. And we will be able to feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are, and in the meantime, the American people are still seeing themselves not able to get health insurance because of preexisting conditions or not being able to pay their bills because their unemployment insurance ran out.”

“That can’t be the measure of how we think about our public service. That can’t be the measure of what it means to be a Democrat. This is a big, diverse country. Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people. The New York Times editorial page does not permeate across all of America. Neither does The Wall Street Journal editorial page. Most Americans, they’re just trying to figure out how to go about their lives and how can we make sure that our elected officials are looking out for us. And that means because it’s a big, diverse country and people have a lot of complicated positions, it means that in order to get stuff done, we’re going to compromise.”

Personally I don’t think it would be a big deal to allow the tax cuts for the “affluent” only to expire. It would affect things but not as greatly as many think. I also don’t think that with it in place it really affects the bottom line significantly (at the very least not enough to warrant such vehement backlash). This opinion piece agrees with me. I think it is far more important that we focus on the education system in the country and get out of the way (removing the red tape and lowering the taxes) of companies.