Stand-Up Time for Obama
Jules Witcover

With President Obama finally joining the negotiations with Republican leaders on the impasse over raising the federal debt limit, he's also made his most forceful statement yet on fair sharing of the burden.

In his news conference Wednesday, the president picked up the gauntlet tossed by House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who insisted any tax cuts must be off the table. It's a challenge the president can no longer afford to ignore. The issue of continued cuts to the rich goes to the heart of the difference between the two major parties, both ideologically and morally, and his fellow Democrats know it.

Many of them had become tired of Obama's willingness to let the Republican leaders take the offensive on the fiscal and economic crises, as he played the pragmatic conciliator. He did show a tougher side in the bitter 2010 midterm congressional campaign, only to lose Democratic control of the House. He then resumed his resilient nature, acknowledging he had taken a "shellacking" and promising to try harder to do business with the Republicans.

In the post-election budget deal he struck with them, Obama surrendered to the GOP blackmail on retaining the tax cuts for the rich as the price of saving his cherished middle-class cuts. Many fellow Democrats still have not forgiven him for what they saw as a cave-in on the best issue they had against the Republicans.

Now the president has a second shot at it, and in the latest news conference he signaled that he intends to play his hand with more fervor than previously. Doing so surely will invite the familiar Republican cry of class warfare -- pitting the middle-class and the poor against the wealthiest Americans.

There is no earthly reason for Obama to avoid this debate. The Republicans do control the House, but Obama's party still holds the Senate and he remains in the Oval Office. With that occupancy, however, goes the responsibility of keeping the government going, and he and the country can't allow the opposition party to continue to the blackmail on tax cuts without a bigger fight.

He made a good start on it in his news conference, declaring that ending or trimming the tax cuts and tax breaks for the rich are essential and fair. "The revenue we're talking about isn't coming out of the pockets of middle-class families that are struggling," he said. "It's coming out of folks who are doing extraordinarily well and are enjoying the lowest rates since before I was born. If you are a wealthy CEO or a hedge fund manager in America right now, your taxes are lower than they have ever been. ... And you can afford it. You'll still be able to ride on your corporate jet. You're just going to have to pay a little more."

In the argument on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, the Republicans continue to ignore the fact they were created in the first place for only ten years as part of the bounty handed to them by President George W. Bush in 2001, after inheriting a surplus from Bill Clinton.

The cuts' defenders characterize their lapse as a "tax increase" rather than the law's original intent, which they want to overturn by making the taxes permanent. In the compromise at the end of 2010, Obama agreed to a two-year extension.

In the new conference, Obama also assailed the members of Congress for their work routine, noting "they're in one week, they're out one week," compared to his own heavy schedule. "You stay here; let's get it done," he demanded, regarding the debt-limit crisis facing an Aug. 2 deadline. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid quickly announced he would be calling the Senate back early from its July 4 recess, but it's the leaders who need to be in town.

Whether Obama will sustain this more commanding posture in the heated debate and negotiations in the critical month ahead will be watched with particular interest by fellow Democrats of wavering enthusiasm, if not yet disillusionment. Party liberals especially have waited a long time for him to come out swinging, and wonder whether it will last.

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