Balance of Opinion: Obama's tax-cut compromise

Barack Obama is taking flak from his left flank for supporting continued upper-income tax cuts over the next two years. Pundits, though, are inclined to consider the president a pragmatist for the compromise he struck with Republicans.

"Liberals want President Obama to fight, and he is - against them," John Dickerson writes in Slate. "He doesn't get why they don't see the political reality of the situation: Taxes will go up for everyone if he doesn't make this deal. The economy will buckle. Families will suffer. He can't gamble that Republicans will make any last-minute concessions."

In a quit-your-bellyaching mood, Gail Collins asks liberal Democrats: "If you really wanted the American people to rally around no-tax-cuts-for-richies, shouldn't we have had this conversation before the election? ...

"No," the New York Times columnist writes, "we waited until now because the Senate leaders left the timing up to their members who were running for re-election, and the Democrats in question said they'd rather not have to go on the record."

Rich Lowry also ridicules congressional Democrats, blaming their weakened hand on a missed opportunity.

"Democrats could have gotten this partial extension easily if they had acted earlier this year, before moderate Democrats sensed the brewing anti-Democratic tide ... ," the National Review columnist writes. "Now their tactical fecklessness is forcing a liberal president to accept, for the time being, one of the most hated domestic initiatives of his predecessor."

Michael Barone, as well, believes congressional Democrats should own up to sharing "some of the blame" for the White House deal.

"Obama had to abandon his goal of raising taxes on high earners not because Republicans opposed it but because not enough Democrats supported it," the Creators Syndicate columnist writes. "[Nancy] Pelosi couldn't summon up a majority on the issue back in September, and Harry Reid could get only 53 of the needed 60 votes this month."

Doyle McManus characterizes the agreement with Republican congressional leaders as "a Clintonian exercise in practical politics: He abandoned one of his most fervently argued positions, but the result was that he probably improved his own political standing in both the short term and the long term.

"In the short term, Obama had few good alternatives ... ," the Los Angeles Times columnist writes. "More important, Obama's economic advisers warned him that a chaotic tax deadlock could cost the economy as many as a million jobs if businesses put hiring on hold until Congress resolved the issue. The last thing Obama needs right now is a slower economic recovery."

But Obama also has vowed to keep working to end the tax cuts, and because of that, Daniel Henninger wonders how much economic impact a two-year extension can make.

The Wall Street Journal columnist asks wealthy Americans: "If an angry, let-me-be-clear Barack Obama just looked into the cameras and said he's coming to get you in two years, what rational economic choice would you make? Spend the profit or gains 2011 might produce on new workers, or bury any new income in the back yard until the 2012 presidential clouds clear?"

Harold Meyerson finds no evidence that "enriching the rich" will help the economy at all.

"The best we can say of the deal is that it largely perpetuates, and only occasionally worsens, the status quo ... ," the Washington Post columnist writes. "Obama vowed ... to take on that status quo over the next two years, but his inability thus far to frame that debate - even though most Americans share his opposition to extending tax cuts for the rich - is maddening."


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