When Dealing With Terrorists, Expect Time Bombs

And the rethuglican trap snaps shut on Barack Obama, who is about to go down in history as the president who destroyed Social Security.

Digby:

Following up on my post of this morning, I suppose it's one thing for them to not be astute enough to defuse the bombs the Bush people set when they had the chance but when they show you that they are setting a new one you'd think they'd resist the temptation to hand them the fuse:

Obama, as part of the Democratic package, secured a roughly 30 percent cut in the payroll tax, from 6.2 to 4.2 percent. Allowing it to expire in a year will mean that workers will see a nearly 50 percent jump in payroll taxes as the rate reverts back -- an event that will surely be described as a tax hike. The cut is estimated to cost $120 billion per year.

Democrats have never allowed the rate to be cut, even temporarily, in the history of the program, because payroll taxes feed the Social Security trust fund and create the political base of support for the program, said Nancy Altman, author of "The Battle For Social Security", a history of the program, and head of the advocacy group Social Security Works. Republicans have won a long-sought victory, even as President Obama hails it as a win for his party.

Republicans acknowledged that the expiration of the tax holiday will be treated as a tax increase. "Once something like this goes into place, a year from now, when it expires, it'll be portrayed as a tax increase," said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). So in a body like Congress, precedents matter and this is setting a precedent. I think that certainly is going to create some problems down the road if it passes."
[...]

Lamar Alexander, the Senate's number-three Republican, also said that reform of Social Security should be tied to moving that tax rate back up. "My personal hope is that it doesn't become permanent unless we deal with a way to make Social Security solvent over the long term," he told HuffPost. "You have to remember, the payroll tax funds Social Security and I like the idea of a lower payroll tax contribution, but we've got to make sure Social Security is solvent, which we should be doing this next year as the first order of business." The way to make the program "solvent" and keep taxes low, of course, is to reduce benefits.

Are we supposed to believe that the President and the Democrats who are voting for the tax cut aren't aware of all this?

There is no possibility of Democratic victory here. Tax cut deal or no tax cut deal, rethuglicans have ensured that there is no chance of economic recovery before the 2012 elections, no chance of achieving any Democratic policy, no chance of any accomplishments for Barack Obama.

The only opportunity is to use the lessons of this catastrophe to build a new, liberal Democratic Party from the ground up.

A liberal Democratic Party that will take as its founding motto Gandhi's advice: “All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.”

No more trusting centrists or moderates, no more doing anything corporations or Wall Street want, no more dealing with republicans.