Over a Barrel Over the Fiscal Cliff

The fiscal cliff on Capitol Hill is still at a standstill, according to major media reports.

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been rattling sabers, and all that noise has rattled markets. He and Speaker of the House John Boehner know how things work in Washington, yet Boehner has overseen a productive caucus which has offered budgets, tax cuts, and long-term solutions. Reid and his caucus have not even passed a budget in nearly four years.

The fiscal cliff is looming. Pundits from "Townhall.com" have suggested that letting the country go over the cliff would be better than caving on core principles. The tax hikes that will hit this country will hurt the large majority of wealthy and elite liberal bastions along the coasts. On NBC-4's "News Conference", Joel Kotkin of Chapman University submits that if Republicans in Congress were smart, they would just call President Obama's bluff and let the federal government go over the fiscal cliff. The 2001 and 2003 Bush Tax cuts will expire, the military sequestration will slash defense spending across the board. Those tax increases "will drastically impact the Democratic strongholds, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, densely populated regions with contain the highest concentrations of people who make more than $250,000.

While Democratic elements have touted the President's reelection as proof positive that the American people support him, Obama himself now has "legacy" as opposed to "reelection" on his mind. A second-term President presiding over a sharp recession will signal to voters that he is an unserious leader, one who refuses to tackle entitlement, take down spending, and tell our creditors that this government can take our financial matters seriously. Republicans are backed up against a wall, as well, but for them to give on their principles just to cobble together a compromise that spends more, taxes more, and cuts less will be an insult and injury to ourselves and our posterity.

President Obama offered a preliminary plan, an insult to Congressional Republicans, which will push for tax hikes on the rich, with stimulus spending on the housing market and unspecified cuts. Reagan fell for this wishy-washy politicking before, with taxes up, but no spending cuts. The conservative commentator Pat Buchanan viewed the President's preliminary proposal as a "contemptuous" offer.

Speaker of the House Boehner continues to press the reelected chief executive for leadership. The Republicans then countered with a plan based on Simpson-Bowles, the same commission which the President had requested, whose plan the President also rejected.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie berated Obama the previous year: "What the hell are we paying you for?" This country is still paying dearly for the weak leaderhship and lack of direction that the former Chicago community organizer and isolate Constitutional Law professor has yet to demonstrate.

The Republican Party may have lost the White House, but they gained supermajorities and one-party rule in twenty-five states across the union. The GOP's biggest problem for the 2012 Presidential election, which Prof. Kotkin also discussed on News Conference, is that the Republicans field a "Bush-lite" plutocrat to a country that was still smarting over the Bush years, made much worse with more of the same from President Obama, and a growing "anti-Wall Street" animus, thanks to Big Banks taking Big Risks with Big Government's money, in reality our taxpayer dollars.

The GOP needs to send a populist message which skewers corporate "crapitalism". David Stockman, the former Michigan House Rep and Budget Director in under the Reagan Administration, thrashed the Clinton, Bush II, and Obama administrations for fostering and expanding a corporate bailout culture. The rules of the free market must work precisely when firms and institutions are failing. Progressive Bill Moyers was impressed with Stockman's analysis of the situation.

House Majority whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) has released a commercial highlighting the pain that a tax hike on the $250k crowd will do to his bottom line. Small business owners have gone from concerned to raging about the tax hikes, the regulatory burdens, and the red tape growing redder and longer, strangling entrepreneurship and killing profits. Even extremely liberal comedian Jon Lovitz has taken President Obama to task for his tax policy in a profanity-laden monologue which ingratiated audience members.

The Republicans have just offered a sound compromise based on the Simpson-Bowles plan: bipartisan in substance and form. The Democrats have rejected it, of course. Someone has to stand up and point out the painful obvious: the Democrats are not interest in governing; they are merely interest in controlling the reins of power, even if the ship of state sinks into the red sea of bankruptcy. Forget the economic treatises, forget the frequent yet accurate musings of Thomas Sowell and other syndicated columnists. Just ask the business owner down the street how he or she feels about tax increases, and how these burdens hurt their bottom line. Ask them also about the crushing burden of deficit spending and national debt which frightens foreign investors and discourages investment and innovation. Then look at the platform of the Democrats and the Republicans -- who has advanced policies inimical to theirnterests? The Democratic leadership time and again, with Harry Reid refusing to offer a budget, with President Obama pushing health insurance mandates instead of business-friendly policies, and of course Nancy Pelosi, or Ms. "We have to pass it so that you can know what's in it."

All the Republicans in Congress need to do is point out the plight of the man or woman who has a job or has a business, and no matter how loud the media howls, your neighbors' plight in the. How much longer will we have to wait before they too take a plunge off their own fiscal cliffs?