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Today, from Hawaii President Obama used an autopen to sign into law the American Taxpayer Relief Act, which is the legislation to advert the fiscal cliff. From the Washington Post:
The hard-fought legislation that allowed the United States to avoid the “fiscal cliff” was signed into law Wednesday by “autopen,” the White House said, less than a day after being approved in a contentious vote in the House of Representatives.
President Obama, who interrupted a family vacation here to oversee the cliff negotiations in Washington, returned to Hawaii on an overnight flight that arrived early Wednesday. He spent the day working out a local gym, golfing and dining with first lady Michelle Obama and some friends at a favorite Honolulu restaurant, Alan Wong’s.
It should be noted that this bill was signed into law a full three days after we went over the so called “fiscal cliff.” The President didn’t even bother to sign it into law until two days after the bill was approved by Congress, which passed it on January 1st.
If there was some truly urgent deadline the bill would have been taken directly to the President to sign. Instead the President flew back to his vacation, enjoyed a round of golf and only later got around to signing it. This behavior by the President is perfectly acceptable because there was never a real cliff or a true crisis deadline, despite the many attempts to pretend otherwise.
There were several policies that started around the first of the year that if allowed to remain in effect permanently would have hurt the economy, but all that mattered is that they would be dealt with eventually using retroactive legislation, if necessary.
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It is fascinating how stating obvious truth has become such a critically important function in our society. Please tell me that at least quietly Democrats do understand you? Please?
If the bill hadn’t passed, the Market Gnomes would have gone crazy on 1/2/13. Which is all this was really all about after all, keeping the Confidence Fairy happy and aloft.
Thanks a lot…now I have a mental picture of Obama, Biden, and the entire 112th Congress clapping their hands and declaring that they do believe in fairies.
The sequester bill was each party in Congress holding hostages to ensure that they “made the tough decisions”. When the dust settled, they kicked the can down the road and upped the stakes by adding the debt ceiling, another phony limit btw.
Likely federal agencies have delayed expenditures over the last year such that they have the budget authority to operate for a period of time after a sequester goes into effect. So they now have two more months to squirrel away some more contingency savings.
It was the media that went into hyperdrive about the fiscal cliff. It’s the showdown at the OK corral for them.
As the year wears on, there is less of the FY 2013 budget to sequester and the focus shifts to the FY 2014 budget. All the stuff in succeeding fiscal years is vaporware anyway. You know, “No Congress can bind a succeeding Congress.”
That’s what I love about the Media calling the Bush tax cuts being made ‘permanent.’ I don’t think so.
This was all done for our entertainment. Another episode in the long running soap opera of DC, or Kabuki as it is normally referred to.
Money talks and bullshit walks. This bullshit runs like the wind.
The “confidence fairy” is really a financial android created by Big Money financial engineers in the wake of the 2008-09 stock market crash. It has a limited lifespan, and when its hi-tech parts wear out (my estimate is the summer of 2014) we will all see that the “bull market” that has been with us since March 2009 was really the mother of all bear market rallies.
Creating false suspense to entertain the masses. Keep their minds off the overall failures of this government.
How do you know what would have happened?
And so what if the market did some kabuki, too?
There is law and then there is political reality.
The Bush tax cuts had their own expiration date, but Obama, Geithner and the rest of Obama’s financial advisors wanted the tax cuts renewed because the recession was still very deep.
Then, the Obama tax cuts of 2010 also had their own expiration date. However, Obama never campaigned on letting all tax cuts expire, only those for incomes over $250K.
With no expiration date for the remainder of the Obama tax cuts of 2010, raising taxes will become a lot more difficult and a lot less likely.
The dust has not begun to settle and the can has been kicked only for two months.
However, tax cuts on income over $400K (not $250K) is law; the rest of the tax cuts have no built-in expiration date and Obama has signed a bloated “defense” budget.
Guess what is left of the “Grand Bargain” that has not yet been addressed, but soon will be.
The hand-wringing over the impending doom of the cliff was fueled by both people in government–both Democrats and Republicans–and by the propaganda arm of the right and the establishment, mass media.
Because it went on so long, it far exceeded the hand-wringing over the likelihood that Saddam Hussein would attack the U.S. and the hand-wringing over the dire consequences of failure to enact TARP unconditionally.
Whoever believed it has very different views of reality, manipulation, etc. than I do.
On a much lesser point, why couldn’t Obama have signed by auto pen right after the bill passed, instead of creating potential issues with respect to the time gap?
Reminds me of his taking the oath of office over “just to make sure there were no questions”, but only after he had taken a bunch of Executive actions.
but wait a minute! Do I hear the sound of the 2 trillion dollars that have been sitting on the sidelines being spent on hiring more workers! Well no that is the sound of Wall st Executives getting ready to screw us some more in a few months!
Thank you for pointing this out. I could not believe my eyes when I read that President Obama was still in Hawaii when the bill passed. So much for a fiscal cliff.