Tuesday, January 01, 2013

What I don't get

I was a little shocked by the two-month sequester postponement in last night's fiscal cliff deal. That sounds to me like debt ceiling squared.  Where does Obama think he's going to get the leverage to demand that spending cuts be paired with further tax hikes?  Yesterday he was talking like a man with platinum coins in his pocket. Is there something we don't know, or is he just blowing Choon smoke?

P.S. tweets like this set me thinking/remembering a little:
House R demands for cuts now MIGHT suggest a smidgen of awareness that debt-ceiling hijack won't fly as well the 2nd time.
Last time around, in summer 2011, perhaps even the GOP House would have backed off the brink if Obama had not embraced the debt ceiling deadline as a "unique opportunity to do something big."  Perhaps this time, simply insisting that he won't treat it as a deadline will be enough.  But I can also imagine stories leaking out as the deadline approaches that he's offered this and that in exchange for that and this...making it impossible to step back and insist, "no, I want a clean raise."

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