On the Deal

Needless to say, I don’t have much to add to Krugman and Rortybomb.    The deal, once you accept that the cave-in on extending the Bush tax cuts was inevitable, was better than expected.   But the caveat pretty much swallows the good news.     The die on this cast in September, and while I would have preferred that Obama put the better long-term policy of letting all the tax cuts expire above his political self-interest, I’m not naive enough to think there was any chance of this happening.   But let’s be clear — this isn’t a “temporary” extension of the Bush upper-class tax cuts.   The chance to let them expire has vanished.   The political context certainly won’t be better in 2012.

In a very related point, Unequal Democracy is indeed a fantastic book.