Is Obama selling us out -- again?

By Frank Moraes 

Ezra Klein reported yesterday afternoon and then again in the evening on The Rachel Maddow Show, that a debt ceiling deal is all but done: the president will take a top marginal tax rate of 37% and raise the retirement age to 67. It sounds outrageous, but Klein makes a compelling case, even though it is very much akin to tea-leaf reading. Basically, he's saying that Obama used to always say the top marginal tax rate must go back up to the Clinton levels and now he is signaling that he would take less. But this isn't new. I noticed right after the election that Obama had started saying that income over a quarter million must be taxed more -- specifically neglecting to mention how much more. So this isn't some sudden change.

Also note that Ezra Klein was completely wrong a couple of weeks ago when he said that fiscal cliff negotiations were all but done -- right before the Republicans made a week long show of how there was no progress on the negotiations. So I'm not at all certain that he is right. But as I said, he makes a compelling case. And if he is right, this is really bad.

Paul Krugman wrote exactly what I think:

First, raising the Medicare age is terrible policy. It would be terrible policy even if the Affordable Care Act were going to be there in full force for 65 and 66 year olds, because it would cost the public $2 for every dollar in federal funds saved. And in case you haven't noticed, Republican governors are still fighting the ACA tooth and nail; if they block the Medicaid expansion, as some will, lower-income seniors will just be pitched into the abyss.

Second, why on earth would Obama be selling Medicare away to raise top tax rates when he gets a big rate rise on January 1 just by doing nothing? And no, vague promises about closing loopholes won't do it: a rate rise is the real deal, no questions, and should not be traded away for who knows what.

So this looks crazy to me; it looks like a deal that makes no sense either substantively or in terms of the actual bargaining strength of the parties. And if it does happen, the disillusionment on the Democratic side would be huge. All that effort to reelect Obama, and the first thing he does is give away two years of Medicare? How's that going to play in future attempts to get out the vote?

He's completely right. If Obama does this, it will indicate that he's been playing us all along. He talks pretty, but he is nothing close to liberal. I wish I weren't so cynical that I didn't believe it entirely possible.
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Quote of the Day: Peter Orszag on the health-care reform obstructionists in Congress

By Michael J.W. Stickings

On CNN earlier today, Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director, said this:

We have to remember: there are some who are advocating delay simply because they don't have anything to put on the table. The typical Washington bureaucratic game of — "if you don't have a better alternative, just delay in the hope that that kills something" is partly what's playing out here.

He added: "[T]there are those who are advocating delay just as a desperation move to try to kill this."

He claimed that he wasn't referring specifically to Blue Dog Democrats or otherwise to "members of Congress and Senators who are actually actively participating in the debate," but it's pretty clear that he was targeting not anti-reform Republicans, those who are ideologically opposed to reform and who will never support any effort that includes a public option (and that challenges the supremacy of the market, or of the various private interests, such as the HMOs and Big Pharma, that dominate the market at the expense of adequate care for millions upon millions of Americans), but rather self-styled centrists in both parties, and even more directly those in his own -- the various centrist and conservative Democrats who in some cases are pandering to ignorance and in others are seeking merely to position themselves in the middle no matter what. These aren't the ideologues, they're the ego-driven opportunists. And they're the problem, not the right-wing extremists who are decidedly in the minority in Congress.

However, I would add that it's not just that they don't have a "better alternative," as Orszag suggested, but that they are, like their extremist right-wing colleagues in the GOP, fundamentally opposed to genuine reform, that is, to the wholesale reform of the system that even the cautious Obama seems to support, reform that would ensure universal, or at last near-universal coverage, of all Americans while/by taking the power away from profit-driven private interets and controlling the escalating costs that are sinking health care in America. They may want some compromise to be worked out, with themselves as the ultimate deciders of what passes and what doesn't -- and of what the new system will look like -- but any such compromise would be inadequate.

Furthermore, what they are doing is not so much laying the groundwork for a compromise but enabling the anti-reform elements that have lined up, within Congress and without, to try to defeat any reform initiative that comes forward, bipartisan or not. In other words, if they get what they want, the reform bill won't nearly be enough. And if they don't, their current opposition to Democratic reform efforts will only help the Republicans in their ongoing efforts to defeat whatever bill does end up coming forward.

And therein lies the key question: Would the Democrats among these centrists prefer a Democratic bill with elements they oppose, such as a robust public option, or Republican opposition to reform altogether?

I suspect it's the latter. Whatever the motivation, they'll delay and delay and delay, until reform is finally killed, perhaps, or until Obama and the Democrats are able to pass a robust bill in spite of their opposition. Perhaps some of them will come around, perhaps some of them will ultimately do what is right, and what their country needs, but, given their appalling me-first opportunism, I'm hardly optimistic.