Obama's next abject surrender is only months away, if that. When the trigger in the plan comes due, he will agree with the Republicans that there can't be big defense cuts, and they will get their way on the rest once again. Meanwhile, there will presumably be a government shutdown surrender on his part before the end of the year.
Even if he wins the 2012 election, it seems obvious that he will capitulate again on the Bush tax cuts (and of course he ostensibly wants to extend all but the top bracket cuts, although that too I take simply to be timorous advance surrender dating all the way back to 2008).
Two points on which Krugman is clearly right: it will hurt the economy, which now will be viewed as entirely Obama's fault; and rewarding blackmail like this is exceptionally dangerous. Sometimes you need to bite the bullet or it will only get worse (even leaving aside the clear alternatives to surrender or default that he ruled out from the start). That would take courage, however, a quality that (along with foresight) Obama appears entirely to lack.
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Unfair but balanced commentary on tax and budget policy, contemporary U.S. politics and culture, and whatever else happens to come up
My books and articles
- Bonfires of the American Dream
- Literature and Inequality
- Fixing U.S. International Taxation
- Getting It
- Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax
- Taxes, Spending, and the U.S. Government's March Toward Bankruptcy
- Do Deficits Matter?
- Making Sense of Social Security Reform
- Who Should Pay for Medicare?
- When Rules Change
- Corporate Tax Shelters in a Global Economy
- Federalism in Taxation: The Case for Greater Uniformity
- My articles on SSRN
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About Me
- Daniel Shaviro
- New York, New York, United States
- I am the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at New York University Law School. My research mainly emphasizes tax policy, government transfers, budgetary measures, social insurance, and entitlements reform. My most recent books are (1) Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax (2009) and (2) Taxes, Spending, and the U.S. Government's March Toward Bankruptcy (2006). My other books include Do Deficits Matter? (1997), When Rules Change: An Economic and Political Analysis of Transition Relief and Retroactivity (2000), Making Sense of Social Security Reform (2000), Who Should Pay for Medicare? (2004), Taxes, Spending, and the U.S. Government's March Towards Bankruptcy (2006), Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax (2009), and Fixing the U.S. International Tax Rules (forthcoming). I am also the author of a novel, Getting It. I am married with two children (boys aged 24 and 21) as well as three cats. For my wife Pat's quilting blog, see Patwig’s Blog.
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