Forum Post: Dont play chess with Br. Bartlet or this man.

When is the last time some of you obama voters stood up and cheered for the president? well, tonight's your night.
president obama has mastered the politics, the policy and the strategy of budget legislation better than any president in history. and he proved that tonight. with his brilliant veto threat after the supercommittee announced the inevitable that it could not agree on future budget cuts. thereby, setting the clock ticking on the automatic budget cuts that have been written into law in the event the supercommittee failed.

BHO: "Already some in congress are trying to undo these automatic spending cuts. my message to them is simple. no. I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts, domestic and defense spending. there will be no easy off ramps on this one."
Did you watch that? how surprised did the president look? that the supercommittee failed to reach an agreement? not a bit surprised.

That's right. this committee was designed to fail and the president knew it. An equal number of members, from each party, an equal number of members from the house and the senate. no tie breaking representative from the obama administration involved. every republican member of the supercommittee had signed a pledge not to raise taxes in any way. every democratic member wanted to raise taxes in some way. failure was built into that design. Cuts that will go into effect automatically will hit defense heavily. something many democrats have long wanted to do but it will protect medicare, medicaid and social security. the most important programs created by and constantly defended by democrats. but most importantly, none of the automatic cuts triggered by the supercommittee's failure will take place until the january 1st that occurs after the next presidential and congressional election. the deal that created the supercommittee in the alternative automatic cuts was part of a package which included immediate spending cuts reported at $900 billion.
In order to raise the debt ceiling. something that had previously never been a difficult or controversial thing to do because congress always knew that failure to raise the debt ceiling was not an option. at the outset of the debt ceiling saga, the president's announced position was that he would like to raise the debt ceiling in one simple, one-sentence bill with nothing attached to it. in other words, the president was in favor of exactly zero, zero in deficit reduction in order to raise the debt ceiling. His stagecraft at various times involved dramatic exits. first by eric cantor, then by jon kyl, then by john boehner. as the president's offer on deficit reduction skyrocketed to a peak of $4 trillion. an offer that horrified some democrats afraid of the spending cuts but was, of course, reject rejected by house republicans as the president knew it would be because it included tax increases on the top tax bracket. the president then feigned disappointment over the final boehner walkout, but the president knew that to voters, he appeared to be the reasonable man looking for a solution while he was actually painting republicans into the absurdest corner of standing for nothing but low taxes for the rich. and so the supercommittee will cut no spending. the automatic cuts will not take place until the beginning of the next presidential term which should leave you wondering exactly how much spending will be cut during president obama's first term in exchanged for raising the debt ceiling?

THE ANSWER IS $21 billion.

that's right. not $4 trillion. not $900 billion. not some giant, horrible, onerous amount of spending cuts. just $21 billion.
That was the price. that is what the president actually did to increase the debt ceiling. so the president will go into his re- election campaign having enacted no cuts that are painful to his party or his political base. with the image of a president who has worked harder than any other only to be stymied by an ins transgent republican congress that pledged its soul to a republican anti-tax lobbyist. barack obama, the best budget strategist in presidential history?

Mitch, you said, "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for president obama to be a one-term president." and so president obama's mastery of the do-nothing congress moves us ever closer to fiscal sanity, as long as congress continues to do nothing. because if congress continues to do absolutely nothing, on january 1st, 2013, after the next presidential and congressional election, all income tax rates will increase to the clinton income tax rates which this country fondly remembers as the tax structure that delivered the golden decade of the 1990s. and on that same day, $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts will go into effect landing largely on defense and leaving untouched democrats' most important programs. and fiscal sanity will be restored in washington. thanks to a do-nothing congress being outsmarted by a president who mastered the budget