Publicly the biggest demand from President Obama in the fiscal cliff was to increase tax rates on the wealthy while Republicans’ stated goal was to keep taxes on the rich at their current level. So it is not surprising a deal that ended up raising taxes on the rich was seen as a victory for [...]

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 [...]

At the stroke of midnight we officially went over the “fiscal cliff.” Amazingly the sky didn’t fall, crops haven’t failed and all law hasn’t been replaced by the Thunderdome. The one positive thing I can say about this new possible deal is that I’m glad it only came after the “cliff deadline” had passed, helping [...]

Obama could have used this revenue-increasing deal to finally pivot to immigration, education, climate change, gun control or any of a dozen other issues that have been completely neglected while Washington has been overwhelmed with deficit hysteria. There is no shortage of more pressing problems in America that need to be dealt with. Instead Obama seems to be signalling that much of his second term is also going to be consumed with his desire to get a balanced deal to reduce the deficit, and in Washington “balanced deficit reduction” is basically the code word for cutting entitlements.

Social Security is only safe in the very short term though. Now that President Obama has officially backed it giving the Republicans what they see as political cover, they are intent on getting it.

Today taxes are low but by tomorrow the Bush taxes cuts will have expired for everyone. Any deal reached today that only extends most of the Bush taxes cuts can be theoretically framed as a tax increase, since Congress would be voting for a tax rate higher than currently exists. By tomorrow, though, this entire issue goes away.

The big news story during this entire fight shouldn’t have been how the negotiations were going but what a shocking dereliction of duty both President Obama and Speaker John Beohner were committing. They should be fixing real problems instead of threatening to hurt the economy to trick their caucuses/bases into agreeing to an unnecessary deficit package

The extension of unemployment benefits and a small amount of infrastructure spending are the only things Obama would have gotten in his recent deal offer that he probably couldn’t force the GOP to agree to by simply waiting them out. Those are both relatively small items compared to a large and deeply unpopular Social Security benefit cut.

Probably the telling sign that we shouldn’t expect a deal regarding the fiscal cliff in the near future is that Speaker John Boehner is going back home to Ohio this weekend. While it is true that Boehner and President Obama can always talk on the phone, when you have a negotiation involving so many moving [...]

According to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), one of Obama’s closest allies in the Senate, raising the Medicare age from 65 to 67 is no longer on the table. From the Wall Street Journal: A top Senate Democrat said he was told that President Barack Obama is no longer open to an increase in the Medicare eligibility age [...]