I get nervous too.

Even paying more taxes is NOT a sacrifice for the rich.

I guarantee all those who vote for me I will not touch Medicare , Medicaid and Social Security.

Then people would have him outright lying.

You notice he never said it once.
Sadly I think he's going to cave in to avoid the fiscal cliff.

explicitly made the claim about not cutting Medicare, when Romney claimed he did. Not only that, Mr Obama claimed he shored it up by cutting out costs to insurance companies. He never said anything about cutting those programs or he would have loss period.

What he did say was that he had a plan to cut four trillion dollars from the deficit. He said the Bush taxcuts, ending the two Wars and closing loop holes. He claimed that there was more waste that he could cut in those programs but not Social Security. He said that he would not cut benefits or the programs that help the people who needed it the most. You cut Medicare,Medicaid and raise the age for Social Secirity, then you will create more poverty. It will make him look weak and stupid. People did not give this man their votes for nothing. Too many people like Plouffe, think voters are dumb and like sheep. We are not sheep. What did Frank say about using weasel words? We know what he implied. You might think the Republican Party is in trouble, but Mr Obama better worry about his successors. What I'm tired of is people in the Democratic establishment, asking me for my vote and then dissing me as some Leftie, when they get around their millionaire buddies in Congress. The person you are talking about hurting going off some cliff are people like me. I don't care about a cliff and it is about time Mr Obama show some spine. It was people like me, had to tell him to show some spine after that first Debate after listening to idiots like Mr Plouffe.

so it is up to the top 10% to do their share

I vote for a top rate of 70%

I just don't think the President does.

Quit pushing this bullshit qualification. The middle and poverty class have paid thru a fair amount of austerity as it is already, much of it on the state and local level through sales and property tax, as well as diminished benefits, as well as reduced income, hours, and employment.

It's time to balance the scale a bit, not to pretend we need balanced ideas in the current rounds.

We have one effed-up country and after that last election tax fairness should be the last thing we should have to worry about, but here we are again. Yea screw the population over with some more taxes so they can forget about all of the money the government is wasting already. We don't need cloak rooms, robes or any other kind of government ceremony. What we need a population that wants and needs politicians to answer some serious questions.

Some reform is needed and if we don't believe that we are no better than the people who refuse to budge on tax reform and increases.

keep reaping our productivity for as little as possible.

Anything that doesn't fuck us over is moonbeam. Real and beneficial to the people ideas need not apply. We'll just label them "unreasonable" and keep gunning for cuts to our benefits.

They get a head full of the beltway bullshit and the stupid gets hard to overcome.

for that, and I also signed the petition. I think a lot of people in the middleclass and poor already know this. People believe we are stupid and act like sheep to get our votes. That would be kinda condescending to tell us we didn't. Obama's legacy depends on what we think of his Administration. If he thinks that his legacy depends on the other side, then he is more gullible than I thought. He needs to listen to Bernie Sanders and the female senator from Oregon or whatever. And I will definately lead a campaign against these Blue Dog Democrats in the Black community. They have taken our votes for granted too long. I'm really getting tired of these people calling us some Lefties because many of us agree with people like Sanders. I think he needs to keep his promise to get out of Afghanistan too.

only that, the American people that voted Mr Obama to office, did not put him in to cut any dam entitlements. The last I looked, every job that have done, Congress took money out of my paycheck for Social Security and Medicare. I consider it a contract and I didn't give them any permission to change the terms. I don't think, that you can compare entitlements, something that people are paying into, to people paying unfair taxes. Can you explain just what reform these entitlements people paid into is needed, other than those on Wall Street are making? I've heard the one excuse about baby boomers like me, who have been paying into the system for years. I'm all ears?

I'm with Bernie as usual.

Seems pretty early. I thought there had been some indication that Obama finally figured out how to negotiate with Republicans. I fear the only "early" thing was my anticipation that he had, I shall wait the outcome with less hope and get prepared to be disappointed yet again.

help the President put the pressure on House PUKES and him going outside of Washington, etc. Those hopes still may come to fruition but I sense them dimming.

a lot of people don't seem to realize that it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the debt or the deficit.

problem

someone who pays FICA on $2million/yr. deserves a bigger monthly SS check than the guy who paid in on $60K/yr.

I'm as hell.

They have been treated like royalty for 30+ years, shielded from any sacrifice, and handed the entire world.

in two years, we will be told that Obama did not really cave on entitlement reforms, that it was all just a masterful trojan horse, and besides caving is really just "governing".

I read that somewhere.

Oh yeah, in that great warrior for the working people - Mother Jones.

Yeah, money's REAL tight.

How about "Entitlement" cuts to the Defense budget?

Medicare, Medicaid, these are people' lives. Taxing the rich at about 40% means maybe one less beach house for them. But the rich have more money to bribe...err lobby them.

Where we are now in the revenue/expenditure equation is a result of a 40 year strategy by the right to influence the conversation and the political baseline in the US. The baseline has obviously moved considerably to the right. Republicans made little or no noise about a 91% top rate in the 50s, now they see it as outrageous to raise it to 39.6.

Possibly still granting early retirement, but receiving less monthly.

SSI, Medicare & Medicaid ARE not on the table!


http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/taxes/tax-cuts

From tonight:

Until the exact reforms are known, speculation about them being damaging is conjecture.

an intelligent, educated, cultured man. He is an adept political campaigner. He believes in women's reproductive rights and women's right to equal pay under the law. His position on gay rights has evolved - propitiously.

Other than that there's not much evidence that Brarack Obama is interested in returning power to the American citizens who have long since been relieved of their status as particpants in a Democratic Republic and relegated to the status of ignorant consumers.

Barack Obama believes he is an ethical man and he is, to the degree that the corrupt capitalist system he buys into allows him to be.

Barack Obama is not a liberal. Don't hold your breath. Start the revolution.

Right on, brother.

as I can be without slipping down a rabbit hole, but by god I think I could make a fortune developing a wearable hair fire extinguisher for those prone to taking a slide down said hole.

been shirking the last 30 years.

There are technically two major roadblocks: Republican control of the US House and lack of a filibuster-proof majority in the US Senate.

There are only 55 members in the Democratic Caucus in the Senate for the upcoming year. They are shy five seats necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster.

Even if 60 seats are achieved, another hidden road block emerges here. That is, you would be forced to fight down right-wing Democrats in your own caucus who could easily bolt and vote with the Republicans to stall progress or water left-wing legislation down into a Pyrrhic victory.

When people like Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson felt uneasy about the idea of a Public Option in the health insurance bill, the Democrats basically caved on that front and junked that idea entirely. Thus, we have a private health insurance mandate with no public option. Otherwise, we'd lose the 60 seat consensus necessary to defeat a certain Republican filibuster. I call the Affordable Care Act a Pyrrhic victory because I thought loss of the Public Option was a devastating defeat in the name of cost containment.

Obama could be called a lot of things, but the fact of the matter is even if Obama was the reincarnation of Franklin Roosevelt, he lacks the powerful majorities that Roosevelt had. Further, he lacks the sheer depth of Roosevelt's New Deal Coalition. There were so many Democrats in the US House and Senate who were on board with things like Social Security and the WPA that he had a relatively easy time passing those things into law despite the opposition of the fragmented right-wing Democrats. By Roosevelt's standards, the power of the Democratic Party is a pale shadow of its former self.

Of all the options left to Obama, the most realistic is this: Since we can't pass progressive legislation, the least damaging option left on the table is total expiration of all the Bush Tax Cuts. Republicans won't play any ball unless the rich are given a free pass, and if they can't get that, then they're going to make sure the working class won't get a pass either.

Here's hoping that I'm wrong.