Sometimes I wish Obama would take a moment and explain how Congress works. I think the problem is most people don't understand how filibusters and votes work. They don't understand that if you've got 57 democrats and you need 60 votes to block a filibuster in the Senate, then you need to have three republicans on board (assuming that all democrats are unified, which they aren't) and when you have the republican body united against you, then what you want doesn't matter. Since Americans voted in all those new republicans for next year, it might get even tougher.
Transcript:
INSKEEP: Let me ask you about something that we heard from one of our listeners.
We told our listeners we were going to have this conversation today. We got many questions for you. One came from a man named Tom Pluck of Montclair, New Jersey — a man who describes himself as a supporter.
The question that we got was: "Please ask him how keeping the tax rate for the richest the same as it has been for a decade creates one single job."
OBAMA: It doesn't, which is why I was opposed to it — and I'm still opposed to it.
The issue here is not whether I think that the tax cuts for the wealthy are a good or smart thing to do. I've said repeatedly that I think they're not a smart thing to do, particularly because we've got to borrow money, essentially, to pay for them.
The problem is, is that this is the single issue that the Republicans are willing to scotch the entire deal for. And in that circumstances — in that circumstance, we've got, basically, a very simple choice: Either I allow 2 million people who are currently getting unemployment insurance not to get it, either I allow the recovery that we're on to be endangered or we make a compromise now, understanding that for the next two years this is going to be a central battle as part of a larger discussion about how do we reform our tax code so that it’s fair and how do we make sure that we actually are dealing with the deficit and debt in an intelligent way?
