Our Centrist President

The 2011 State of the Union speech was well received and it struck a good note of unity, which we sorely need.  On the whole, it was a bipartisan, centrist speech with a slight nod to progressive convictions (let's make health care better rather than refighting the battles of 2010, the country cannot afford to make permanent the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the sacrifices need to be shared and not just demanded from our most vulnerable).

Politics has been described as the "art of the possible".  Given President Obama's pragmatic nature and the reality of Republican control of the House, I guess there was not much more we should have expected in his State of the Union speech.   It struck a conciliatory note with Republicans and left the Left standing in the cold.  The atmosphere of "bipartisanship" was symbolically represented  by the seating wherein the Elephants and the Donkeys sat with each other.  Whether the Elephants will compromise at all on their extremist agenda is yet to be seen.  Even Obama's concession to extend to 5 years the discretionary domestic spending freeze while making job-creating and forward-looking investments in technology, clean energy, education and infrastructure did not satisfy the Mastodons of the Right. 

One can only imagine what the Party of No will do in 112th Congress.   They effectively control the purse strings by virtue of their control of the House of Representatives.  And I foresee no meaningful change on the Senate filibuster rules so they effectively can block anything in that chamber.  Who will blink first - Republicans or Obama?  The Republicans have no problem shutting down the government if their demands aren't met - after all they don't believe the Federal government does any good.   (Given their record in the GWB years, the Republicans clearly demonstrated their ineptitude at governing, sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy isn't it?) And with his track record on health care and Democrats' inability to effectively counter lies and control the issues, my money is on Obama caving in before the Republicans. 

The deficit is a serious issue that must be addressed and addressed by something other than the backs of the poor and middle class.  Approximately $400 billion was added to the deficit by the year-end tax cut compromise.  Taxes must be raised on the richest Americans.  No profitable corporation should be able to get away with zero taxes.  And the rest of us need to get back to work to pay our fair share of taxes for necessary services. 

The country is not yet out of the woods of the recession with official unemployment well above 9%.  So before we destroy the safety social net or institute regressive taxes (national sales tax, VAT) as part of an extremist agenda, we may want to look at other sources of revenue.  It's not just the most vulnerable who need to be asked to sacrifice.