Thursday, September 22, 2011

Will President Obama Finally Stand Up to Congress (and their Ultra-Rich Sponsors)?

Lately, President Obama has been calling for increased taxes on the filthy rich to help balance our nation's ridiculously unbalanced budget, a legacy of ten years of tax cuts for the wealthy and two lengthy wars (not to mention the worst recession since the Great Depression).  In fact, he had wanted to let the Bush tax cuts expire for the two highest brackets at the end of 2010, but the greedy Republicans in Congress (showing who they really care about) threatened to filibuster the extension of unemployment benefits and leave millions of struggling Americans high and dry.  So Obama capitulated and reluctantly extended the tax cuts for two more years, making the deficit so high that we exceeded the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling a few months ago and we almost defaulted before he was able to persuade Congress to finally raise the ceiling at the eleventh hour.

And now Obama is back to talking tough.  But will he finally walk the walk?  Let's hope he does, for the sake of over 99% of Americans.