Tax Breaks and the Comeback Kid

The report of Barack Obama's demise is a bit premature. In fact, I think he just needed to lower everyone's expectations. Nothing does that in politics quite as well as getting trounced in midterm elections and losing the House.

Few expected the lame-duck session in this environment to provide compelling results, and yet if you scratched below the surface, this is exactly what you should have expected.

The Dems were in the final weeks of having control of the House and will lose several voting seats in the Senate. There were also several items on the Dems to-do list still in the hopper and the President felt strongly about several of them.

As I mentioned in my post Stand or Deliver, the President began the lame-duck session needing to pass some legislation that provided tax cuts for the Middle Class. He had to give in to Republican desires to also provide them for marginal taxable income above $250,000 for families, but was able to negotiate several other key Dem benefits that would have been impossible come January. In fact, they should have been impossible in December since the Repubs could have just kept saying no and then passed something in January when they had a strong majority in the House.

The Senate passed the Tax Cuts by a resounding 81-19 and after some chest-pumping by House Dems attempting to modify the new Estate tax rate (35%) and exemption level ($5 million), the same legislation passed the House 277-148 just before midnight.

If this were it, I would say Obama may have paved his path to re-election, but in the waning hours of this session of Congress, he stands a good chance to get his desired repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell law, get additional health coverage for 9/11 responders and to a lesser extent may also have a shot to get the START treaty passed. Not only is Obama getting more Dem-centric legislation passed in his first 2 years than almost any previous president, he is starting to get Republican votes and moderate voters love a president who can do that.

For the second time this month, I am posting a link to an article written by Charles Krauthammer, this one on Obama's Comeback. If Mr. Krauthammer and I can see eye-to-eye on things, perhaps this bipartisan stuff has a chance.