Tax Deal Cruises Through Senate

The Post's headline on this article this morning. It just makes me sick.

All those bills that attempted to help the entire country get help up (to say nothing of the judicial appointment blockade that has gotten so bad that the (Republican-appointed) judiciary itself has requested that the Senate lift it), but if you promise a huge giveaway to the top two percent of the nation, no problem.

And the Post apparently has no trouble with this, as they comment

lawmakers rushed to prevent a New Year's tax hike from striking virtually every American household

Obama has now given up all pretense of being a liberal, or a progressive, and actually seems to go with the media's BS narrative of the US being a "center-right" nation. He certainly seems to be governing from the right. That point might be debatable, but it's unquestionably much further to the right than he campaigned on. And he wonders why his base is upset at him.

And I know conservatives who were telling me, before he was elected, that he was the most liberal member of the Senate. Which was, even then, an absurd thing to say, but has become more and more ridiculous as time has gone on.

He said that we needed to do this to keep from hosing the long-term unemployed, and certainly, something needed to be done for them. But how much are the 99ers being helped by this compromise?

And what is this going to do for seniors, long-term, when this deal is used as a precedent to cut funding to Social Security? That'll cause Social Security to become insolvent a heck of a lot sooner than 2037 (the current projected date for problems). It'll also drive a large number of Senior Citizens into poverty. Before Social Security, a large percentage of seniors were below the poverty line. If Social Security truly is bankrupted, by disrupting funding, we'll go back to that situation. Is that what we want, as a nation? Is that how our nation keeps its promises?

What was so difficult about putting a bill in front of Congress to extend Social Security benefits? Make them filibuster it. Make Republicans own their "principled stand". How well would that go over with the majority of the population? The Tea Party would certainly love it, but I think not too much more of the country would.