Will Even One Republican Vote For Obama's Rescue Plans Or Is It All Limbaughesque Obstructionism All The Way?

The TV's on in the other room and I'm not paying close attention. But I just heard some Republican talking head predicting that not a single Republican in the House would vote for Obama's budget and that even the 3 mainstream Republicans in the Senate would vote no too. Well, Obama doesn't need them in the House and if Harry Reid invokes budget reconciliation, Republicans can't filibuster it and not only will they not need Specter, Collins and Snowe, they also won't need Ben Nelson and the two Arkansas reactionaries.

But I have a suggestion. Six of the ten biggest Senate earmarkers are Republicans. Surprised? Thad Cochran (R-MS) was the #1 ear mark whore of the omnibus spending bill he voted against last week. Miss McConnell (R-KY), Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Kit Bond (R-MO) also added tons of ear marks-- and then voted against the bill. There were 8,570 earmarks worth $7.7 billion. How about if those who vote no, get their earmarks excised? It's fair and it makes sense.

Obama's budget isn't just a delineation of how to spend some money. It's the embodiment of the platform he ran on-- the change that will reverse the well-planned rightist project to redistribute wealth upward. There will be a small effective increase (from 35-39,6%) for people earning over $250,000 year by allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to expire in 2011. And capital gains taxes will increase from 15% to 20% (when it should be taxed as regular income).

Increasing the top tax rates and the capital gains tax rate and making the tax credits permanent would increase average effective tax rates on upper income Americans and lower them for middle and lower income families.

It should be no surprise that President Obama seeks to reduce income inequality in the United States.

OMB Director Peter Orszag: "...basically what's happened over the past twenty years is that, uh, income at the very top of the income distribution has increased very rapidly. According to data from the congressional budget office, the top one percent of income distribution between 1979 and 1997 increased their income by over a hundred and fifty percent, in real, inflation adjusted terms. The bottom twenty percent witnessed a decline in income of about three or four percent... [T]he problem has to do with the social fabric of society. As the rich get much richer and the poor get only a little bit richer, you-- you pull at the social fabric that holds together society, part of which is irrational or psychological. People just-- if you look at surveys, they don't like-- they would prefer not to have an income gain, than to have a little income gain and have someone else get a much larger income gain.”

Tonight at dinner I finished reading Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew-- How Conservatives Rule. His conclusion is pretty pessimistic.

Throwing the rascals out is no longer enough. The problem is structural... it is built into the systems og governance themselves.

...A century ago, in the classic period of business government, an epidemic of public theft persisted despite a long string of reformers in the White House, Republicans and Democrats, each one promising to clean the place up. Nothing worked, and for this simple reason: democracy cannot work when wealth is distributed as lopsidedly as theirs was-- and as ours is. The inevitable consequence of plutocracy, then and now, is bought government, As Justice Louis Brandeis said at the time, "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." It is a bitter lesson that we will have to re-learn all over again.

Rachel Maddow and Peter Orszag try making it all comprehesible: