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Obama sticks it to the poor

Obama has, once again, shown that when push comes to shove, that he simply hasn't got intestinal fortitude to tackle difficult topics. Once again he has caved in to the GOP and favoured the rich over the poor.

AlterNet's economics editor, Zach Carter, explains it all in a nutshell:

"President Barack Obama and Congressional Republicans are ready to mortgage the American economy to billionaires in exchange for a few months of unemployment benefits. This deal is easily the gravest economic outrage of the Obama presidency to date, and signals that other political assaults on the economy are ahead.

The basic deal: One year of unemployment benefits, a $40 billion extension of the anti-poverty tax credit, a $120 billion tax cut for workers and some additional tax cuts for American businesses that are already sitting on $1 trillion in cash and refusing to hire new people. In exchange, we get the Bush tax cuts for billionaires, plus an estate tax even more regressive than the worst estate tax implemented by George W. Bush. A few billion for the poor, hundreds of billions for the rich, and nothing—nothing – that will alleviate epic unemployment. It may even fail to prevent the economy from deteriorating further. The best I can say for it is that it will prevent things from getting too much worse."

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