As I noted this morning, Obama plans to “pivot to jobs” by creating them in Korea. (This video came from his statement today after the deficit ceiling bill got through.)

But his call on Congress to pass trade deals with Korea, Panama, and Colombia just got even more cynical.

First, because he says these deals will “help displaced workers looking for new jobs.” That word–displaced–is often used to refer to those who have lost their manufacturing jobs because they got sent to, say, Mexico in an earlier trade deal. “Displaced” usually refers to just the kind of people devastated by these trade deals. It seems Obama is pretending that new trade deals will create jobs for the people who lost their jobs because of earlier trade deals. But of course, last we heard, the folks who just successfully held our economy hostage were refusing to pass these trade deals with Trade Adjustment Assistance attached. In other words, chances are good that if these trade deals pass, they’ll pass with nothing to help those who are displaced because of it.

And note Obama’s promise to export “products stamped, ‘Made in America’.” Aside from the fact that a lot of what we’ll be exporting will be American-style fraudulent finance, not manufactured goods, his use of the term is all the more cynical given the likely reason he used it: because of the polling showing near unanimity that the US should make things again–like the 94% of Americans polled who think creating manufacturing jobs here in America is important.That is, he’s trying to co-opt the almost complete opposition to this policy–which almost certainly wouldn’t create any new manufacturing jobs here in the US–as a way to try to claim that trade deals that will result in a net loss of jobs will instead create them.

The headline news about Mitt Romney’s new advisory committee of 63 lawyers is that Robert Bork is co-chairing it.

But even more troubling is that he has named two of the lawyers that okayed torture–Steven Bradbury and Tim Flanigan–to it.

Bradbury, of course, wrote the Combined Torture memo, which found, in part, that waterboarding someone 183 times in a month does not shock the conscience.

He also told DOD it could do whatever it wanted, so long as it called it “Appendix M.” Bradbury failed to mention that memo from Congress, too, when they asked for a list of all the torture memos he had been involved in.

Bradbury would have been investigated over the memos he wrote, had Michael Mukasey not intervened.

Flanigan was one of the three lawyers–along with David Addington and Alberto Gonzales–who told John Yoo to turn the Torture Memo into a “Get Out of Jail Free” card by saying that if the Commander-in-Chief ordered torture, then it couldn’t be prosecuted.

Now, why would Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney appoint two men who called torture legal to his Justice Advisory Committee?

A number of liberals are sitting around today puzzling through the deal that just happened yesterday. And one thing they’re asking is, “how will Obama pivot to jobs?” One of the many lame excuses the White House has offered for the urgency of this deal, after all, is that by clearing it off the table, it’ll allow the Administration to finally address jobs.

If the debt deal passed yesterday drastically cuts discretionary funding, they note, then there will be no funding for investments in jobs.

But that ignores one thing: Obama has told us how he plans to “pivot to jobs:” he plans to focus his attention on three trade deals–with Panama, Colombia, and Korea–as a central part of his program to address jobs.

Nevermind that these trade deals will send jobs overseas. Nevermind that these trade deals will result in fewer jobs.

Obama plans to, nevertheless, claim he wants these policies in the name of jobs.

Update: Obama made these comments on July 8, in response to last month’s crappy jobs report.

In the middle of the debt ceiling debate yesterday, Naomi Klein tweeted a link to this article, describing how the sovereign debt crisis in Europe is eroding democratic and labor rights.

The economic, and democratic, crisis in Europe raises questions. Why were policies that were bound to fail adopted and applied with exceptional ferocity in Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece? Are those responsible for pursuing these policies mad, doubling the dose every time their medicine predictably fails to work? How is it that in a democratic system, the people forced to accept cuts and austerity simply replace one failed government with another just as dedicated to the same shock treatment? Is there any alternative?

The answer to the first two questions is clear, once we forget the propaganda about the “public interest”, Europe’s “shared values” and being “all in this together”. The policies are rational and on the whole are achieving their objective. But that objective is not to end the economic and financial crisis but to reap its rich rewards.

[snip]

The troika (European Commission, ECB and IMF) has decided to improve the mechanisms designed to favour capital at the expense of labour, by adding coercion, blackmail and ultimatum. States bled by their over-generous efforts to rescue the banks, and begging for loans to balance their monthly accounts, are told to choose between a market-led clean-up and bankruptcy. A swathe of Europe, where the dictatorships of António de Oliveira Salazar, Francisco Franco and the Greek colonels ended, has been reduced to the rank of a protectorate run by Brussels, Frankfurt and Washington, the main aim being to defend the financial sector.

After which, we had this exchange:

Me: this entire year must feel like an awkward, sickening, “I told you so” for you.

Klein: if i had a magic riot wand, i would wave it now. #debtdeal

Klein: you did ask me how i felt earlier…

Because, after all, it’s not just in Europe where debt is being used as a cudgel to roll back workers’ and democratic rights. The big news of yesterday’s debt deal–one the Administration is crowing about–is an entity that will sidestep democratic processes so as to make it possible to cut back on Social Security and Medicare. (As I was watching the vote yesterday, probably more than half the calls coming into CSPAN were from people talking about how worried they were that this debt debate might interrupt disability or Social Security checks; I think CSPAN was confused that many of these came in on the Republican line.)

And that fact–the fact that this colossal stupidity is somehow happening on both sides of the Atlantic gets too little attention. As I noted the other night on BlogTalkRadio, we can’t attribute the debt deal just to the Tea Party. Not only has Obama been trying a variety of ways to set up a Catfood Commission that could cut Social Security since he got into office (as DDay points out, the Democrats were the first to try to hold the debt ceiling hostage to get a Catfood Commision), but Greece and France and the UK are all doing effectively the same thing, and they’ve got no Tea Party to blame. In fact, a week ago Saturday (July 23), in the middle of heated negotiations with the Republicans on the debt ceiling here, Obama checked in with Nicolas Sarkozy to see how austerity summer was going on his side of the pond.

The President and President Sarkozy of France spoke by phone today as part of their ongoing consultations on shared U.S.-French strategic priorities.  The two leaders reviewed the results of the July 21 meeting of the Heads of State or Government of the Euro area, agreeing that important steps had been taken to help ensure the stability of the Euro area and to sustain the economic recovery in Europe.

Obviously, there are international organizations where these conversations are designed to take place, all with a financial mandate that doesn’t care about democracy or workers rights. (Though to some degree, it would be churlish for those of us in the developed world to complain that the IMF subverts sovereignty, since we’ve been benefiting from the way it has subverted the sovereignty of developing nations for years.)

Now, you might attribute this seemingly magical obsession of the developed world with austerity to the financial crash: in Europe, these cuts arise directly from the banks’ unwillingness to eat the losses for the mistakes they made during the bubble. Except at the federal level, here in the US, that’s not the false urgency used to justify these cuts: it was two unfunded wars, a set of absurd tax cuts (cutting taxes beyond what governments needed to survive is also one of the main factors driving state-level cuts), and the refusal to institute some kind of national health care system. Ultimately, in the US we need to cut our social safety net because the cost of running a world empire has gotten to be too much to sustain.

But the effect is the same: the elite, particularly the financial elite, has used this crisis–a crisis that is either their own fault or artificially created–to roll back the social contract that has governed the developed world since World War II.

Our dying economy

Hendrik Hertzberg catches Louie Gohmert stealing Leon Trotsky’s dustbin.

HSBC is closing a bunch of branches in the US, apparently having decided the US is not longer the land of opportunity for profit.

Yves Smith argues that Liz Warren would be better of primarying Obama than running for Senate. I think her analysis is spot on.

Bruce Levine looks at the 8 ways our society has undermined the traditional rebelliousness of youth, from medications to No Child Left Behind to student loan debt.

Free birth control! At least we have some good news.

Surveillance Nation

The Senate Intelligence Authorization extends FISA past the 2012 election; if it passes, Obama will never be held responsibly for his past flip-flop on FISA and his promises to fix it.

The House Judiciary Committee passed their Internet-surveillance-posing-as-Porn-law on Tuesday, even managing to make it worse. I like John Cole’s approach to this: to make this into an issue about the DNC, since DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is one of the original co-sponsors. Next time the DNC hits you up for money, tell them no, and it’s DWS’ fault.

The Brits botched the redaction of a FOIA response, thereby revealing cooperation between Capita and ISPs.

The British torture inquiry is actually planning on going to Gitmo to interview detainees about events they may have witnessed. This is far more than I expected from this inquiry, though it’s still safe to assume it’ll be a whitewash.

Obama has finally found nominated someone (another Harvard JD) to replace Glenn Fine, who as DOJ Inspector General found a lot of the abuses the FBI committed under the PATRIOT Act. I’ll have to do more research, but I am skeptical about a former prosecutor taking this job.

The propaganda the Administration has put out to spin the debt capitulation as a win–“victory!” “bipartisan!” “compromise!”–would be amusing if the deal weren’t so dangerous. In addition to all the language claiming that cutting expenditures during a Depression–described here as “remov[ing] the cloud of uncertainty– will help the economy, there are these two bullets:

• Establishes a bipartisan process to seek a balanced approach to larger deficit reduction through entitlement and tax reform;
• Deploys an enforcement mechanism that gives all sides an incentive to reach bipartisan compromise on historic deficit reduction, while protecting Social Security, Medicare beneficiaries and low-income programs;

Bulllet 3 says this deal establishes a process to bring about entitlement reform. Bullet 4 claims the deal protected Social Security and Medicare. Both of these bullets can’t be true.

Which has set off a discussion about whether SuperCongress is only possibly going to cut Medicare and Social Security, or will almost certainly do so.

I wanted to look at how the membership of the predecessor committees to SuperCongress–the Catfood Commission and the Gang of Six–to suggest which is more likely.

As you recall, the Catfood Commission members voted 11-7 in favor of passing the Commission’s recommendations, which included raising the retirement age. The members of Congress on the Commission voted this way:

• Tom Coburn: Yes
• Judd Gregg: Yes*
• Mike Crapo: Yes
• Kent Conrad: Yes
• Dick Durbin: Yes
• Max Baucus: No
• Paul Ryan: No
• Jeb Hensarling: No
• Dave Camp: No
• Jan Schakowsky: No
• Xavier Becerra: No
• John Spratt: Yes*

Assuming for the sake of argument that the members who are still in Congress would be part of SuperCongress, that would make for a stalemate–though Republican opposition focused on Obama’s healthcare reform, not on the package of entitlement cuts and tax breaks for the rich that the commission recommended.

Both Judd Gregg and John Spratt are gone. Rather than replace Judd Gregg, the former Ranking Member of the Budget Committee with his functional equivalent, Jeff Sessions, Mitch McConnell will likely put Saxby Chambliss on SuperCongress, as Chambliss has been involved in the Gang of Six discussing a deficit reduction plan. John Spratt’s functional equivalent would be Chris Van Hollen, a not horrible addition for liberals. (Update: Or maybe he’s just like Durbin, a so-called liberal who will support this crap.)

But it’s not safe to assume Harry Reid will just pick the Senators who served on the Catfood Commission for SuperCongress. After Max Baucus voted no on the Catfood Commission, saying, “we cannot cut the deficit at the expense of veterans, seniors, ranchers, farmers and hard-working families,” he was replaced on the Gang of Six. Joe Biden and Harry Reid replaced him with Mark Warner, a man worth more than $200 million who has spent much of the tenure of the Gang of Six insisting that working Americans with whom he shares little in common won’t mind so much if they have to work another two years before they can retire.

In other words, one change we’ve already seen happen between the Catfood Commission and the Gang of Six is the replacement of Max Baucus, who proved unwilling to push through the $4 trillion deficit plan Obama has been chasing, with Mark Warner, who is all too willing to champion entitlement cuts for poor people.

If his newly central role in these discussions stands, we can be pretty sure we’ll see cuts to Social Security. And heck, if he won’t do the deed, then alleged liberal, Dick Durbin, and Kent Conrad seem prepared to do the work themselves.

The WaPo notes with some curiosity that the business community did almost nothing to get the debt ceiling passed. It’s a remarkable story: perhaps unintentionally noting that while our banana republic status was being confirmed, the Chamber of Commerce was lobbying not to prevent that, but to get a Panama trade deal; describing a betrayed Third Way executive pissed that business had not done more; describing two centrist Dems and Obama’s Chief of Staff imploring the business community to do more.

With the U.S. government on the verge of a historic default, the country’s largest business lobbying group took to the halls of Congress last week to press lawmakers to support the Panama Free-Trade Agreement.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sponsored a “door knock,” with 80 members handing out Panama hats to tout a trade deal with a country that has a smaller economy than Akron, Ohio. To critics, the Chamber event illustrates what has been a deafening silence from U.S. executive suites on the gridlock in Washington over raising the country’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling.

“They haven’t done nearly enough to sound the alarm,” said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy at Third Way, a Washington research group that describes itself as advocating “moderate policy” and has executives from Morgan Stanley (MS) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) on its board. Executives “think this is all Washington theater, and it will all get done in the end.”

[snip]

At a closed-door meeting with Chamber lobbyist Bruce Josten last month, Democratic Senators Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Warner of Virginia upbraided the group and its member companies for not twisting arms hard enough to get a compromise package worked out, according to two people familiar with the discussion whospoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private.

[snip]

“It’s unfortunate that the business interests have not stepped forward as loudly as they should have,” Bill Daley, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television July 26. “You’ve had a silence from the business community to the political establishment over the last number of years that’s been unfortunate.”

The article later offers the opinion of just one business professor, which attributed the inaction of businessmen to embarrassment that their party, the Republicans, were doing what they were doing, to explain the business community’s inaction on the debt ceiling.

“They’re caught,” [business professor Warren] Bennis said in an interview July 29. “They tend to be Republican and they are embarrassed by what they see from Republicans,” Bennis said. “It’s a real stalemate and CEOs want to stay clear of it.”

Yet nowhere does the article–or people like Kessler, Begich, Warner, or Daley–consider the possibility that the business community got just what it wanted with this debt fiasco.
They never consider the possibility that the business community might be thrilled with inane cuts to the federal government–probably, ultimately, targeted at the social safety net. They never consider the possibility that they business community might benefit from the chaos and uncertainty that this debate generated. They never consider the possibility that the business community might like how this legislative fight made our country even more of a banana republic.

I’d suggest it’s worth considering more seriously. After all, the business community has embraced (you could say, returned to) a model that relies on the insecurity of workers to demand compliance and cheap labor. The cuts this deal will ultimately bring about add to worker insecurity.

And just as importantly, most of these multinationals don’t much care for the US, except insofar as it has a big military to defend “US” business interests overseas. The ones describes that did lobby for a debt ceiling–banksters like JP Morgan or health care companies like Blue Cross or Pfizer–have been beneficiaries of big help from the federal government in recent years. They’re not done looting it yet! But the others are multinational companies; the US is just a convenient place to incorporate.

Moreover, businesses have been pushing an ideology for the last 30 years that the government is dysfunctional and therefore society must cede more control to businesses. Even as businessmen like Rick Snyder and Rick Scott prove failures at governance, the follies in DC still, at least, provide evidence that government is worse.

Of course these businessmen didn’t lobby for a reasonable solution to this false crisis. They liked the false crisis.

As about everyone knows by now, the great debate is still ongoing on the issue of the debt ceiling. The frustration of those on the left with the intransigence of the Republican Tea Party, coupled with the neutered Democratic Congress, has led many to call for President Obama to immediately “invoke the 14th”. The common rallying cry is that legal scholars (usually Jack Balkin is cited), Paul Krugman and various members of Congress have said it is the way to go. But neither Krugman nor the criers in Congress are lawyers, or to the extent they are have no Constitutional background. And Balkin’s discussion is relentlessly misrepresented as to what he really has said. “Using the 14th” is a bad meme and here is why.

The Founders, in creating and nurturing our system of governance by and through the Constitution provided separate and distinct branches of government, the Legislative, Executive and Judicial and, further, provided for intentional, established and delineated checks and balances so that power was balanced and not able to be usurped by any one branch tyrannically against the interest of the citizenry. It is summarized by James Madison in Federalist 51 thusly:

First. In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments.
….
We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other — that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State.

which must be read in conjunction with Madison in Federalist 47:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

This is the essence of the separation of powers and checks and balances thereon that is the very root foundation of our American governance. It may be an abstract thing, but it is very real and critical significance. And it is exactly what is at stake when people blithely clamor to “Use the 14th!”.

Specifically, one of the most fundamental powers given by the Founders to the Article I branch, Congress, was the “power of the purse”. That was accomplished via Article I, Section 8, which provides:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States…

and

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

The call to “Use the 14th” is a demand that the President, the embodiment of the Article II Executive Branch, usurp the assigned power of the Article I Congress in relation to “borrow money on the credit of the United States”. This power is what lays behind the debt ceiling law to begin with, and why it is presumptively Constitutional. It is Congress’ power, not the President’s, and “invoking the 14th” means usurping that power. Due to “case and controversy” and “standing” limitations, which would require another treatise to discuss fully, there is literally likely no party that could effectively challenge such a usurpation of power by the Executive Branch and an irretrievable standard set for the future. The fundamental separation and balance of powers between the branches will be altered with a significant shift of power to the Executive Branch.

This is not something to be done lightly or if there is any possible alternative available. Indeed, the only instance in which it could be rationally considered would be if all alternatives were exhausted. That does NOT mean because the GOPTeaers are being mean and selfish. It does NOT mean because you are worried about some etherial interest rate or stock market fluctuation that may, or may not, substantially occur. It does NOT mean because your party’s President and Congressional leadership are terminally lame. That, folks, is just not good enough to carve into the heart of Constitutional Separation of Powers. Sorry.

And for those that are thinking about throwing “experts” such as Jack Balkin in the face of what I have argued, go read them, notably Jack himself, who said before invoking the 14th, first the President would have to prioritize what was paid by existent resources, those that could be liberated and revenues that did still come in:

…certainly payments for future services — would not count and would have to be sacrificed. This might include, for example, Social Security payments.
….
Assume, however, that even a prolonged government shutdown does not move Congress to act. Eventually paying only interest and vested obligations will prove unsustainable — first because tax revenues will decrease as the economy sours, and second, because holders of government debt will conclude that a government that cannot act in a crisis is not trustworthy.

If the president reasonably believes that the public debt will be put in question for either reason, Section 4 comes into play once again. His predicament is caused by the combination of statutes that authorize and limit what he can do: He must pay appropriated monies, but he may not print new currency and he may not float new debt. If this combination of contradictory commands would cause him to violate Section 4, then he has a constitutional duty to treat at least one of the laws as unconstitutional as applied to the current circumstances.

So, contrary to those shouting and clamoring for Obama to “Use the 14th”, it is fraught with peril for long term government stability and function, and is not appropriate to consider until much further down the rabbit hole. It is NOT a quick fix panacea to the fact we, as citizens, have negligently, recklessly and wantonly elected blithering corrupt idiots to represent us. There is no such thing as a free lunch; and the “14th option” is not what you think it is.

As a parting thought for consideration, remember when invasion of privacy and civil liberties by the Executive Branch was just a “necessary and temporary response to emergency” to 9/11? Have you gotten any of your privacies and civil liberties back? Well have ya?

UPDATE: Joberly added this in comments, and a quick perusal of legislative intent materials and the limited case interpretation seems to indicate it is spot on:

Thanks to Bmaz for his post and for his Comments # 3 and # 34. I’m no lawyer, just a history teacher who has taught Civil War & Reconstruction for some time. This is not the time and place for a history essay on the context of Section 4 (“validity of the public debt” clause) of the 14th amendment; instead, let me just point to the so-far-ignored Section 5 of the amendment: “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” None of the first dozen amendments to the Constitution had anything like this clause; for the most part, the first dozen limited Congress in what it could enact (think “Congress shall make no law…”). The 13th Amendment, passed by Congress in March 1865 was the first to affirm that Congress had the power to enforce a constitutional right. The 14th amendment repeated that. In short, Section 5 put Congress specifically in charge of making sure of the “validity of the public debt,” and definitely not the president. That was no accident. The Congress that passed the 14th Amendment had zero confidence in the president (Andrew Johnson) in carrying out congressional policy. The last thing they wanted over the winter of 1865-66 was to give Pres. Johnson any more power that he could abuse. But abuse he did and the next House, elected in 1866, impeached him. I’m with Bmaz on this one.

[Note: I actually did this post at the request of our good friend Howie Klein at his blog Down With Tyranny and it is cross posted there as well]

My biggest complain about this statement from Raúl Grijalva is that he doesn’t say who threw Democrats and the people they champion under the bus: President Obama.

That said, his comments about the crossroads facing the Democratic Party are spot on.

This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it. Progressives have been organizing for months to oppose any scheme that cuts Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, and it now seems clear that even these bedrock pillars of the American success story are on the chopping block. Even if this deal were not as bad as it is, this would be enough for me to fight against its passage.

This deal does not even attempt to strike a balance between more cuts for the working people of America and a fairer contribution from millionaires and corporations. The very wealthy will continue to receive taxpayer handouts, and corporations will keep their expensive federal giveaways. Meanwhile, millions of families unfairly lose more in this deal than they have already lost. I will not be a part of it.

Republicans have succeeded in imposing their vision of a country without real economic hope. Their message has no public appeal, and Democrats have had every opportunity to stand firm in the face of their irrational demands. Progressives have been rallying support for the successful government programs that have meant health and economic security to generations of our people. Today we, and everyone we have worked to speak for and fight for, were thrown under the bus. We have made our bottom line clear for months: a final deal must strike a balance between cuts and revenue, and must not put all the burden on the working people of this country. This deal fails those tests and many more.

The Democratic Party, no less than the Republican Party, is at a very serious crossroads at this moment. For decades Democrats have stood for a capable, meaningful government – a government that works for the people, not just the powerful, and that represents everyone fairly and equally. This deal weakens the Democratic Party as badly as it weakens the country. We have given much and received nothing in return. The lesson today is that Republicans can hold their breath long enough to get what they want. While I believe the country will not reward them for this in the long run, the damage has already been done.

A clean debt ceiling vote was the obvious way out of this, and many House Democrats have been saying so. Had that vote failed, the president should have exercised his Fourteenth Amendment responsibilities and ended this manufactured crisis.

This deal is a cure as bad as the disease. I reject it, and the American people reject it. The only thing left to do now is repair the damage as soon as possible. [my emphasis]

Kudos to Ezra for admitting he was dead wrong last year when imagining the Republicans might allow a deal that would let Bush tax cuts lapse.

A year ago, I was less concerned about the Bush tax cuts. I assumed, as did many in Washington, that the Republicans’ antipathy to taxes was a negotiating stance. Eventually, we would strike a “grand bargain” that would reduce spending and raise revenue substantially. The past few months have proved me wrong.

But having recognized that the Republicans will not let those tax cuts expire, Ezra then imagines (apparently in an effort to spin this debt deal as less than catastrophic) that they will let the tax cuts expire in December 2012.

Democrats will have their turn. On Dec. 31, 2012, three weeks before the end of President Barack Obama’s current term in office, the Bush tax cuts expire. Income tax rates will return to their Clinton-era levels. That amounts to a $3.6 trillion tax increase over 10 years, three or four times the $800 billion to $1.2 trillion in revenue increases that Obama and Speaker John Boehner were kicking around. And all Democrats need to do to secure that deal is…nothing.

This scenario is the inverse of the current debt-ceiling debate, in which inaction will lead to an outcome — a government default — that Democrats can’t stomach and Republicans think they can. There is only one thing that could stand in the way of Democrats passing significant new revenues on the last day of 2012: the Obama administration.

Of course, the entire premise assumes that the tax cuts won’t already have been extended by then.

In a couple of months, after all, we’re going to see the next hostage crisis as Congress debates a continuing resolution to fund the government. There’ll be another one in 2012. And I’m sure the GOP will find another several opportunities to stage a hostage crisis.

And why not? Obama has proven, over and over, that he will not take on the hostage-takers. Instead, with every hostage-taking, he just hands over one more thing for the Republicans to take hostage. The Republicans are perfecting a strategy that gives them complete control of a government while controlling just one of two houses of Congress. And each time they stage a hostage taking, Democrats allow outcomes that make the economy worse, all in the name of saving the economy.

But even without another hostage-taking, Ezra’s take assumes that Obama would let the tax cuts expire, even while he admits that the Administration doesn’t want that to happen.

The White House’s strategy in the debt-ceiling negotiations has reflected its ambivalence, with Obama trying to extract either as much revenue as Republicans would allow or as little as Democrats would accept. Obama even offered Boehner a deal in which the Bush tax cuts would be extended right now, so Republicans wouldn’t have to fear a subsequent negotiation in which they lacked leverage. Boehner rejected that deal and, in doing, might have saved the safety net.

But the Obama administration doesn’t want to take its second chance. They argue that the economy will still be recovering in 2013, and so it’s not an ideal time for a large tax increase. True. But what happens in 2012 is not simply setting tax policy for 2013. It’s setting tax policy for decades to come.

Frankly, I agree with Ezra, that if these tax cuts don’t expire–if we don’t start making the rich pay their share to support this country–our country is sunk. I agree that we need to pressure the White House to get serious about revenue.

But think about how the Obama Administration is using this tax cut. He talked about it during the election, he has talked about it repeatedly since then. Yet every single time Obama has an opportunity to do something about it, he manages to cave.

It is serving the same function as abortion does for the Republicans: the promised policy used to get people to vote, even while delivering on that promise always remains in the future.

The problem is, as important as abortion is, having or not having choice won’t collapse the country. Obama’s refusal to do anything to tax the rich will.