Bruce Mirken of the Greenlining Institute applauds Committee members who refused to accept a bad deal:
Ordinary Americans should breathe a sigh of relief because we dodged a bullet,” said Greenlining Institute General Counsel Samuel S. Kang. “The committee was looking at cuts to vital programs for the elderly and other vulnerable Americans while doing next to nothing about the unfairness in our tax code. Any deal they could have reached would have been bad for everyone but the super-rich.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that Tucker’s cartoon above includes only six turkeys whereas the committee has 12 members. Perhaps the voices shouting “but what about the deficit?” and “what about jobs?” come from the other 6 who held the high ground … OK, relatively high ground … well at least the other six weren’t digging deeper.
– Iron Filing
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Senator Patty Murray, the Dem groundswell mascot/sneaker wearing high-profile liberal from Oregon, backed the first suggestion from the super committee – cutting corporate taxes – with this explanation: ‘Higher taxes scare corporations and seem unfriendly.’ Don’t even try to tell me that it was the Republicans who were the problem. It is the *CONGRESSCRITTERS* in the pay of corporations who are the problem.
Oregonbird – when I first wrote this post, I ended it at “the other 6 who held the high ground.” That was clearly wrong so I added “OK, relatively high ground” but that still gave the Democrats too much credit so I added “well at least the other six weren’t digging deeper”. Maybe I should have said “four weren’t digging deeper”. My point in distinguishing between the Republicans and the Democrats is that there is a very real qualitative difference between the corporate ownership of virtually all Republicans and the pandering of many Democrats to Corporate interests. You’re right that it’s not just Republicans that are a problem but I believe it is a false equivalence to imply the problem is equal across the board. I fault mainly Republicans for initiating bad policy. I fault Democrats, most of whom know better, mainly for being spineless.
That said, one of my biggest disappointments with Obama is his reliance on Wall Street insiders for economic advice. Geithner, Summers … really!!!