Announcing a tentative tax cut deal late Monday, President Barack Obama declared that there's something in there for everyone to dislike.
He isn't kidding.
Liberal Democrats are up in arms, saying he caved to craven Republicans who just wanted to give huge tax breaks to their rich supporters.
He announced the compromise on national television just after meeting with annoyed Democratic leaders at the White House, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, who engineered a vote last week in the House to extend the tax cuts only for those individuals making $200,000 or less a year and married couples earning $250,000 or less.
Even Obama doesn't agree with extending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, even for another two years, but he said that was the price for preserving the tax cuts for the middle class and for continuing emergency aid to the unemployed.
He said he wasn't willing to have real Americans be "collateral damage" in trying to make a political point. Any deal probably wasn't going to get any better for the White House in the next Congress.
But with the compromise, he reneged on a campaign promise, and he could be emboldening Republicans, who take control of the House in January.
If this is Obama's first bid at Clinton-esque triangulation (Bill Clinton ducked and weaved between Democrats and Republicans after the GOP took the House in 1994), it's not going over well.
Some on the left even talking about a serious challenge to Obama in the 2012 Democratic presidential primary, pointing to his refusal to go to the mat for including the public option during health care reform and for repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" law that prevents openly gay Americans from serving in the military.
rest at http://blogs.sacbee.com/the_swarm/2010/12/liberals-find-obamas-tax-cut-d.html
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