According to Rhe Washington Post, President Barack Obama signaled a willingness to compromise with Republicans on tax cuts and energy policy Wednesday, one day after his party lost control of the House and suffered deep Senate losses in the midterm elections. Obama called the Republican victories "a shellacking." At a White House news conference, the president said that when Congress returns, "my goal is to make sure we don't have a huge spike in taxes for middle-class families." He made no mention of his campaign-long insistence that tax cuts be permitted to expire on upper-income families, a position he said would avoid swelling the deficit but put him in conflict with Republicans. He also virtually abandoned his legislation — hopelessly stalled in the Senate — featuring economic incentives to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, vehicles and other sources. "I'm going to be looking for other means of addressing this problem," he said. "Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat," he said, strongly implying that there will be others. We certainly hope so, since many people did not vote for Obama so that he could find ways to satisfy the Republican agenda while tabling or disposing of progressive concerns like the environment. We're still trying to figure out when he'll figure out that he needs a new political strategy that does not include trying to be everything to everybody.
Read more at The Washington Post.