It's Not The Dems Who Will Kill The Tax Cut Deal

I've been saying this for a couple days now:  there is no way the Tea Party is going to accept a $900 billion (by some measures) increase the deficit that allows President Obama to take Sensible Centrist credit for saving the economy and working across the aisle with the Republicans.  Jim Pethokoukis finds that the Tea Party wing of Senate Republicans headed by Sen. Jim DeMint are absolutely against this.

For many conservatives, the thumbs-up from Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is reason enough to support the Obama-GOP tax deal — well, that and the fact so many liberals are in a purple rage about it. And certainly there is nothing wrong about letting individuals and businesses keep more of their money — even for a little while. But Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, another lover of tax cuts and hater of bloated big government, says he will oppose the ginormous stimulus package. Here is DeMint on the Hugh Hewitt radio show:

I’m glad the President recognizes that tax increases hurt the economy. I mean, I guess that’s progress. But frankly, Hugh, most of us who ran this election said we were not going to vote for anything that increased the deficit. This does. It raises taxes, it raises the death tax. I don’t think we needed to negotiate that aspect of this thing away. I don’t think we need to extend unemployment any further without paying for it, and without making some modifications such as turning it into a loan at some point. It then encourages people to go back to work. So there’s a lot of problems with it. I mean, and frankly, the biggest problem I have, Hugh, is we don’t need a temporary economy, which means we don’t need a temporary tax rate. A permanent extension of our current tax rates would allow businesses to plan five and ten years in advance, and that’s how you build an economy.

DeMint might have a point, several actually – and the implications are huge. The perceived failure of the 2009 Obama stimulus plan has again discredited the idea that government can spend America back into prosperity. But liberals, including many in the White House, protest that conclusion. They argue that the $900 billion package was both clumsily designed and too small given the depth of the Great Recession. But sorry big spenders, you only get one chance to fire a trillion-dollar bullet.

Jimbo here's got it figured out that Obama got the far better end of this deal, as has DeMint.  Republicans get the tax cuts for the wealthy, sure.  But Obama really did get a second stimulus package out of this and said as much at the press conference yesterday.

DeMint's argument that the tax cuts need to be made permanent aside, he's got Obama pegged on this one.  This is a major win for the President and he knows it.  The only folks that haven't figured this out yet are on the left.

So it's a race to see who will figure out Obama won here first, the left or the right.  I'm hoping it's the left, because this deal will be far, far better than anything else we're going to get out of the Republicans at this time.  If it's the right, they will completely kill this.

Luckily the outrage from the left, as Pethokoukis mentioned above, really is making it easier for Obama to sell this.  Fair or not.

[UPDATE]  Club For Growth wants this deal dead as well.  That should tell you everything.