“Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 – and House Democrats don’t have a clue that he did. In the deal struck this week, the president negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than his $814 billion 2009 stimulus package. It will pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years – which just happen to be the two years of the run-up to the next presidential election. This is a defeat?…

“Some Republicans are crowing that Stimulus II is the Republican way – mostly tax cuts – rather than the Democrats’ spending orgy of Stimulus I. That’s consolation? This just means that Republicans are two years too late. Stimulus II will still blow another near-$1 trillion hole in the budget…

“Obama is no fool. While getting Republicans to boost his own reelection chances, he gets them to make a mockery of their newfound, second-chance, post-Bush, Tea-Party, this-time-we’re-serious persona of debt-averse fiscal responsibility…

“Not even Democrats are that stupid. The remaining question is whether they are just stupid enough to not understand – and therefore vote down – the swindle of the year just pulled off by their own president. ”

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“Another thing to think about regarding Dr. Krauthammer’s take: Whether or not this is a ‘swindle’ will depend on the next two years — and well beyond. If House Republicans go-along-to-get-along in the 112th, ignore the warnings of the Tea Parties, and do little or nothing on spending, then sure, this could shake out bad for conservatives both politically and policy-wise. You’d get a ‘sugar high’ recovery that might benefit Obama 2012, and another dollop of debt on this hot fiscal sundae.

“But Speaker-designate Boehner has said the next House will vote on one spending-cut measure a week for the first three months of 2011. These may prove symbolic or they may prove substantial — we won’t know until we see what’s in them. But if they’re followed up with a serious commitment to tackling entitlements and reforming the tax code, for instance, then it’s at least conceivable that the Republicans will have won lower taxes in advance of lower spending, with a conservative-friendly bit of Keynesian stimulus as an added bonus.”

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“To start with, let me just say that I think Krauthammer’s argument is overblown. My major beef is that in equating the tax deal with the February 2009 stimulus package, Krauthammer is accepting the liberal premise that taxes and spending are the same thing. While it’s true that from a budgetary standpoint, a reduction in revenue to federal coffers will increase the deficit, just as an increase in spending would, the difference is that a tax cut allows individuals to keep more of their own money, whereas expenditures represent the government confiscating wealth and distributing it as they see fit. Seeing tax cuts as a cost to government is to accept that all income earned belongs to the government in the first place. To the individual who comes home with a fatter paycheck because they’re sending less of their hard earned money to Washington, a tax cut isn’t a cost, but a savings.

“At the very least, I think that conservative critics of the deal have gone way overboard in attacking the deal as some sort of second coming of the economic stimulus boondoggle. If some conservatives still feel that the unemployment subsidies and tax credits are not worth swallowing, that’s one thing. But we should still recognize that an overwhelming majority of the deal is stuff that conservatives have either been actively campaigning for or would be perfectly comfortable with.”

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“This political reality makes the tax deal a bad bargain for Democrats. Think of it this way: The deal essentially sets up 2011-2012 to be a repeat of 2009-2010. Once again, there would be initial benefits from the stimulus, and decent growth a year before the election. But as the stimulus faded, growth would tend to stall — and this stall would, once again, come in the months leading up to the election, with seriously negative consequences for Mr. Obama and his party.

“You may say that economic policy shouldn’t be affected by partisan considerations. But even if you believe that — how’s the weather on your planet? — you have to consider the situation likely to prevail a year from now, as the good parts of the Obama-McConnell deal are about to expire. Wouldn’t there be pressure on Democrats to offer Republicans something, anything, to improve economic prospects for 2012? And wouldn’t that be a recipe for another bad deal?

“Surely the answer to both questions is yes. And that means that Mr. Obama is, as I said, paying for the release of some hostages — getting an extension of unemployment benefits and some more stimulus — by giving Republicans new hostages, which they may well use to make new, destructive demands a year from now.”

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