Throughout the liberal media's ceaseless coverage of the impending fiscal cliff debacle, they have fixated on hiking taxes on the "rich," even though doing so would come nowhere close to solving America's fiscal woes. Whatever short term gain in revenue from tax hikes will not last the federal government for very long, and another credit downgrade is inevitable if entitlement reform continues to be ignored.
Nowhere is this 'tax the rich' and 'fair share' obsession more blatant than on MSNBC, where the Obama administration's message is amplified on a daily basis. Take Tuesday's Jansing & Co for instance. Host Chris Jansing set up Huffington Post contributor Ryan Grim to advise President Obama and Democrats on the Hill, which amounted to him reiterating that going over the fiscal cliff may not be such a bad thing after all. Democrats can appear to be the tax cutters as a result, by reinstating the Bush tax cuts on all but the top income earners. [ video below, MP3 audio here ]
CHRIS JANSING: Well, there are also people who argue and I know you know this, Ryan. That this really isn't a cliff, it's more of a slope. And if we go off the fiscal cliff, than it's not like on January 1st, everything is going to get bad. And so maybe there is time to -- I don't know if you want to say play that game or use that strategy, but to hold firm and decide that then when the pressure is really on you might be playing with even a stronger hand and obviously a new Congress, as well, potentially.
[ ... ]
RYAN GRIM: Democrats are better off negotiating from the Clinton rates and then they're saying, okay, look, here are the rates, we're going to bring this down, we're going to bring this down. We're going to leave these how they are. Now, how would you like to vote for this? Are you going to oppose this? And people didn't really vote for compromise necessarily this election. They overwhelmingly elected the president, they gave the senate to Democrats, and they voted for more Democrats in the House. Now, just because they're gerrymandered and a Tea Party House doesn't reflect what voters said on election day. So, you know, and as Obama keeps pointing out, more people support higher taxes on the rich than even supported Obama himself. So the mandate here is clear. It's for higher taxes on the rich and it's not for messing around with entitlements right now.
Of course, failing to rein in spending now will merely delay the inevitable spending cuts temporarily and middle-class tax hikes would be necessary to meet the spending obligations and debt the federal government incurs. Republicans opposing tax hikes and demanding meaningful entitlement reform are looking to the long-term, while Obama's acolytes at MSNBC and the Huffington Post are fixated on seizing the short-term advantage, milking the "mandate" from the president's re-election for all its worth to push left-wing policy priorities.
