So says Ralph Benko, rightly, for Forbes, here, quoting Boehner and commenting:
"Who would have ever guessed that we could make 99% of the Bush tax cuts permanent? When we had a Republican House and Senate and a Republican in the White House, we couldn’t get that. And so, not bad."
“Not bad” is a resounding understatement. Dealt a weak hand, Boehner managed to 99% outfox, on tax policy, a president who had the massive apparatus of the executive branch, the Senate majority, and a left-leaning national elite media whooping it up for a whopping tax increase. Even more impressively, Boehner pulled it off with steady nerves while under heavy pressure from the anti-spending hawks in his own caucus.
Republicans and especially conservatives still don't appreciate the magnitude of Boehner's achievement, the most important part of which, as Benko says, will turn out to be the new baseline resulting from the permanent fix to the AMT. As The New York Times reported but nobody's talking about, wink wink, the permanent fix to the AMT is going to cost the feds $1.8 trillion over the next ten years. Well, guess who won't be paying that?! And Rush Limbaugh and other dunderheads are complaining that Republicans caved on the principle of tax increases. Methinks thou dost protest too much.
Lay down boys, take a little nap. It's 14 miles to the Cumberland Gap.
