by Jules Witcover

President Obama, by ordering a freeze on federal salaries, has already made a down payment on hoped-for Republican cooperation in the debate over how to slash the budget deficit. The operative question is: Will he continue to hold his breath waiting for GOP reciprocation?

The current lame-duck session of Congress may be his best chance to get something more out of his first two years in office, and he may be voluntarily surrendering by continuing to harbor the notion that the opposition party may yet be prevailed upon to play ball.

If the Republicans' performance over the last two years has not been a sufficient eye-opener to political reality, a letter from 42 Senate Republicans to Majority Leader Harry Reid should certainly do the trick. It says, among other declarations, that "we will not agree to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers."

The shot across the bow continues:

"With little time left in this Congressional session, legislative scheduling should be focused on these critical priorities. While there are other items that might ultimately be worthy of the Senate's attention, we cannot agree to prioritize any matters above the critical issues of funding the government and preventing a job-killing tax hike."

The fear of congressional Republicans holding hostage Obama's singular lame-duck priority of extending the Bush middle-class cuts has always been present, but letter to Reid removes doubt. It reinforces the GOP insistence that the cuts for the wealthiest Americans be continued as well -- about the best ammunition Obama could hope for in a showdown debate.

Indeed, the president has repeatedly sought to put the Republicans on the spot by pointing out that such an extension for the rich would add a whopping $700 billion to the federal deficit that the opposition party so consistently and loudly demands be addressed, along with the public.

If ever there was a litmus test of Obama's commitment as protector of the middle class, and at the same time concern over the gross and growing disproportion in income between the middle class and the wealthy in the current struggling economy, this surely is it.

Failing to take on the challenge squarely now, out of some hopeful anticipation of future bipartisanship that the opposition has denied over the last two years, will only add fuel to a damaging Obama image among too many voters -- that he is all too willing to turn the other cheek when rebuffed by his political foes.

A similar litmus test for him is the lame-duck push to extend unemployment benefits to millions of Americans before the legislation authorizing them expires at year's end. The late liberal icon Hubert Humphrey would rotate in his resting place if word somehow could get through to him that a Democratic president would permit such a hardship to occur.

All this plays into Republican plans in this lame-duck session, as well as in the approaching new session of increased GOP strength, to cast Obama as an out-of-step bleeding-heart liberal -- even as the liberal Democrats wail over his seeming reluctance to fight for basic Democratic allegiances.

In the end, if Obama can salvage the middle-class tax cuts, either as permanent or part of deal to extend them temporarily along with the so-called billionaire cuts from the Bush years, he will be able to say he got what was most important to him out of the lame-duck session.

But if the Republicans also salvage the cuts for the rich, they undoubtedly will crow that the president when stared down blinked. They will be further emboldened to play hostage politics against him by threatening to block his other major initiatives as he brings them up next month in the new session.

If this is the way it's going to be the next years of Obama's presidency, it could mean his last two years. So he'll be better off fighting now on a position that so clearly sustains Democratic ideals and in the process gives heart to his own faithful.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

Decision Points

Winner-Take-All Politics, How Washington Made the Rich Richer -- And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class

Jimmy Carter: The American Presidents Series: The 39th President, 1977-81

White House Diary

The Feminine Mystique

The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy

The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics

Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House

Renegade: The Making of a President

Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War

Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

 

Receive our political analysis by email by subscribing here



 

Will Obama Fight or Fold on Tax Cuts? | Politics

© Tribune Media Services