Peter Wehner of Commentary magazine examines President Obama’s fiscal cliff negotiating position in a short online piece.
President Obama’s proposal to Republicans to avoid going over the so-called fiscal cliff — huge tax increases, huge spending increases, and no serious entitlement reform — is risible. What the president is offering up is essentially his last budget, which didn’t win a single vote of support from any member of Congress.
It may be that this proposal was simply an extreme negotiating position that will be dramatically reshaped over the next 27 days. Or it may be that the president is, for political reasons, happy to have us go over the cliff. The calculation would be that he’s confident he can pin blame on Republicans for this having happened, portraying them as willing to increase taxes on the middle class and wreck the economy in order to keep taxes on the richest 1 percent from going up to Clinton-era rates.
The president, fresh off his re-election victory, does have a strong hand to play. But I agree with those (like Keith Hennessey and Charles Krauthammer) who believe Mr. Obama may well over-reach and in the process severely injure his second term. Because if we go over the fiscal cliff, and as a result unemployment rises to above 9 percent and we go into another recession, there is no way the president escapes responsibility for that.
