Team Obama is Making Too Much About Tax Agreement

Since the tax agreement between President Obama and the Republicans was announced the White House has been trying to claim that the agreement is a good deal. Yesterday, on the Dylan Ratigan Show Austan Goolsbee, from President Obama's White House Council of Economic Advisors claimed that President Obama was able to get more in this agreement than many people thought he would get.

I do not see anything in this tax agreement that President Obama was able to get that anyone would have thought he would not get. It seems the Republicans would have been willing to give a 2% payroll tax cut to employees. Yes, the Republicans claimed to be against unemployment insurance, but they get two years of the Bush tax cuts for high end earners for only a years and one month in unemployment benefits. Were other items like the child tax credit and other items going to working families ever on the Republican Party's chopping block? So, it seems that the only thing President Obama actually got in the deal, that the Republicans were not already willing to give, was unemployment benefits.

In exchange for a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits, they got a potentially permanent extension of ALL the Bush tax cuts (including the 15% rate on capital gains, dividends and carried interest, a tax break exclusively for hedge fund managers), AND the $5 million exclusion/35% rate on the estate tax. They also got a campaign issue for 2012. You know it's a bad deal when even Rush Limbaugh likes it. Obama gave away the store.