Why is President Obama so unmovable on about tax rates increases on high earners?<\/p>\n
Oh, I know what he says. \u00a0Fairness. \u00a0The rich \u2013 whoever they are \u2013 must pay their fair share (I\u2019m not going to get into whether they already do or maybe even pay more than their fair share).<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s no longer the question.<\/p>\n
House Republicans have already conceded the point. \u00a0They have offered up reduced deductions that will raise as much as the administration claims increased tax rates will raise. \u00a0They are clear. \u00a0They want to keep tax rates low so as not stifle new business creation and growth, which is for a variety of reasons is highly sensitive to personal tax rates. These products of the entrepreneurial renaissance that started in the last 1970s or early 1980s have created all the net new jobs in the U.S. over the past three decades.<\/p>\n
If today\u2019s were a normal White House, administration officials would have grabbed the GOP plan in a DC minute. \u00a0Never heard of a DC minute? \u00a0It is like a New York minute, only a New York minute looks fast and is fast. \u00a0A DC minute looks slow \u2013 as if you are thinking it over \u2013 but is almost instant, because whatever has been put on the table solves your problem and saves face all around. It is similar to, but not to be confused with, a Hollywood minute, which looks fast (\u201clove you, Baby\u201d) but never happens at all (\u201cDon\u2019t call us. \u00a0We\u2019ll call you\u201d). \u00a0The key is, like everything else in this town, a DC minute isn\u2019t what it seems, but it works for everyone. \u00a0But the Obama White House is not a normal White House.<\/p>\n
Here is another Washington rule. \u00a0When someone says 1) he wants something, and 2) please, deliver it in a blue package, but 3) you deliver it in a red package and 4) he says, take it back, then 5) he wanted something different all along, or, at least, what he asked for is not all that he wanted.<\/p>\n
So what more is behind the president\u2019s demand?<\/p>\n
Some believe it is political. \u00a0They contend the president wants to take the government over the cliff, which, thanks to media protection, he can get away. \u00a0He can blame Republicans for the financial chaos and universal tax hikes that follow, force a complete GOP surrender and take back the House at the next election.<\/p>\n
How about this as an explanation though? \u00a0He wants exactly the opposite of what Republicans want \u2013 and does so not out of pride or economic ignorance, but for the simplest and most direct of political motives \u2013 a key constituency wants it.<\/p>\n
The constituency I have in mind is organized labor and the motive would be to put a break on the very entrepreneurial renaissance that Republicans so prize.<\/p>\n
During the George W. Bush years, I proposed to a senior administration official \u2013 a board member of a major regulatory agency \u2013 that labor\u2019s agenda was not all it seemed. I argued that labor was aggressively targeting the entrepreneur, small and medium-sized business sector, working to put them on the endangered species list. \u00a0To my surprise he responded that he had wondered why the unions had weighed in aggressively on an issue before his commission on which they had no apparent interest. \u00a0Desire to slowdown new business creation and expansion would explain it, he said.<\/p>\n
But why? \u00a0Why should labor go after the major source of American job creation? \u00a0It has to do with the simple, classic approach of unions to all competition: stop it.<\/p>\n
Here is the business problem, if you will, of the U.S. labor movement. \u00a0They are losing market share. \u00a0They talk a lot about jobs \u2013 meaning union jobs \u2013 moving overseas. But at least as big an issue for them is the American entrepreneurial renaissance. \u00a0By an large, its workers have rejected the movement\u2019s attempts to organize them. \u00a0And in industry after industry, these new and energetic non-union firms have been expanding at the expense of old unionized ones. \u00a0In other words, one of the president\u2019s major sources of support sees America\u2019s entrepreneurial renaissance as competition and wants to, if not stop it, slow it drastically down.<\/p>\n
Just to be clear, I am NOT saying this is the president\u2019s motivation. \u00a0I am suggesting it is the motive of key parts of the union movement. \u00a0Mr. Obama is just, as they say in this town, dancing with the one that brung him.<\/p>\n
If I\u2019m right, that\u2019s why he won\u2019t move on tax rates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why is President Obama so unmovable on about tax rates increases on high earners? Oh, I know what he says. \u00a0Fairness. \u00a0The rich \u2013 whoever they are \u2013 must pay their fair share (I\u2019m not going to get into whether they already do or maybe even pay more than their fair share). But that\u2019s no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[51,93,12],"class_list":["post-1449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-debt-crisis","tag-51","tag-fiscal-cliff","tag-hugh-hewitt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1449"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1451,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions\/1451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}