Obama and the Payroll Tax: Compromise or Capitulation

A vice, St. Augustine reminds us, is a distorted impersonation of virtue.

I offer this principle in case there is anyone who might see virtue in the way President Obama has positioned himself in the standoff over extending the payroll tax. Despite originally insisting on a surcharge on millionaires to pay for the popular legislation that increased the average
worker’s pay by $1,000 a year, the President and Senate Democrats had agreed to
drop this demand if Republicans abandoned their insistence for a decision on
the Keystone XL pipeline.(1) When the dust had settled, the Senate had
passed—and the President had agreed to sign—a bill that jettisoned his proposed
millionaire’s tax but retained the Republican insistence for a quick decision
on the Keystone pipeline.(2) (Unaware of the hostage holders rules of etiquette
according to which when your demands have been met you release the hostage, the
Republicans in the House revolted over the deal most of the Republicans in the
Senate had agreed to—but I digress).(3)

Compromise is the sine qua non of democracy. In a system in
which the minority party can obstruct most action, the art of give and take is
essential for the system to move forward. To some Obama’s retreat from his
stated position in this instance might look like compromise. But it’s not. This
is where Augustine’s principle comes in. Vice can look a lot like virtue to the
uninitiated. Augustine put forward this
principle while agonizing over some pears he had stolen as a youth. Theft, he
declared, attempts to gain illegitimately the fruits of hard labor. Lust, which
he knew a bit about as well, is a perverted attempt to achieve the love we all
desire. And in Obama's case, capitulation in some respect resembles compromise
in that in both cases one must abandon one’s originally stated position. But a true compromise requires a roughly
fifty-fifty split, with each side giving up something significant in the negotiations.
In this instance, the Republicans got a tax cut, got it paid for entirely by budget
reductions, and got the President to accept a provision he had explicitly
threatened to veto. The president got, well, rolled.

The problem for supporters of President Obama is that this
is not just an isolated incident but part of a much larger pattern. The president
campaigns on the pledge that he will end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy; the
cuts are extended. The Republicans insist on 32 billion in budget cuts or threaten
to shut down the government; they get 38 billion. The Republicans demand that
the debt ceiling raise be accompanied by corresponding cuts, while the President
insists there should be a balance between revenue enhancements and budget cuts;
the final deal raises the debt ceiling entirely through budget cuts.

In the midst of the debt ceiling negotiations, President Obama
derided Washington as a place that did not seem to appreciate the importance of
compromise. The President, unfortunately, seems to have misunderstood the meaning
of the term.