President Obama is either incompetent or complicit in helping the GOP destroy the working class regular Americans with his tax cut sell-out to the Republicans.  He has crossed the line with his cowardly betrayal of the common good, the common good that is a cornerstone of Democratic Party values.

Tax cuts do not create jobs, but this woodenheaded president refuses to grasp that fact or deliberately ignores it in his apparent quest as a GOP multi-millionaire wannabe.

Jack Rasmus at Working In These Times writes: "The even more important question is: if banks and businesses have that record hoard of cash on hand why should their taxes be cut, in effect increasing even more that hoard of cash that isn't being invested? Won't they just continue to hoard the tax cut too?

"The idea that cutting business and wealthy investors' taxes originated in 1961 with then President John F. Kennedy. But at that time business investment tax cuts were tied to proven job creation. Businesses had to prove they added jobs before they could claim the tax cut. That was changed with Reagan. Now businesses could get the tax credits even if they didn't create jobs. Their taxes were cut even if it meant they reduced jobs. By the time of George W. Bush, businesses could claim tax cuts for investments made offshore. GM cut hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. while adding thousands in China. Ford cut jobs while adding them in St. Petersburg, Russia. Corporations could claim the investment tax cuts, even if jobs were created offshore and simultaneously eliminated in the U.S. In effect, U.S. taxpayers were paying US corporations to send their jobs overseas.

"Between 2001-2004 George W. Bush pushed through a series of annual tax cuts for investors and corporations that amounted to a total of $3.4 trillion over the recent decade, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Every tax cut bill passed between 2001-2004 was called a jobs creation bill. More than 80% of the $3.4 trillion eventually accrued to the wealthiest 20% of households and corporations, and most of that to the top 0.1%, or 100,000 households, and the S&P's largest companies. And what did George W. Bush's business-investor tax cut produce in terms of jobs? The period 2001-2004 witnessed the weakest jobs creation on record following a recession. It took a full 46 months just to recover the level of jobs in the U.S. that existed in January 2001, when the recession began. Estimates today after the current recession are that it will take 7-8 years to recover the lost jobs, if even then.

"Another, more recent test of the "business tax cuts create jobs" idea happened in the spring of 2008. Bush and Congress passed a $168 billion stimulus bill as the recession of 2007-2010 began to deepen. About $90 billion of that comprised tax cuts. What jobs did it create? None. The jobs market collapsed in the second half of 2008 at a rate of nearly one million a month for six months, a rate of job loss that roughly paralleled that of 1929-30.

"The Obama stimulus bill of 2009 is yet another example of why tax cuts in general, and business-investor tax cuts in particular, do not create jobs. Of Obama's original $787 billion stimulus passed in February 2009, about half were tax cuts and more than $225 billion were specifically business-investor cuts. Twenty months later we have virtually no net job creation. Private employers have created about 900,000 jobs in 2010, the majority of which are part time or temporary jobs. For its part, the federal government has created no net new jobs since Obama came into office, while State and Local government have laid off hundreds of thousands over the past year and even more cuts are planned for 2011."

Nancy Altman at Firedoglake explains why the 2% reduction in payroll taxes for a year, a part of the tax cut "deal" will lead to the end of Social Security.

"President Obama and the Republicans will say that the payroll tax holiday is all about stimulating the economy. But don’t be fooled....
.....The innocent-sounding payroll tax holiday, on the other hand, will lead inexorably to killing Social Security......

".....I find it unfathomable that a more conservative Congress, in two years, in an election year, will increase the payroll tax by 2 percent on the very first dollar, and every other dollar up to the cap, earned by virtually every single worker in the country. Consequently, I think we have to assume that the payroll tax holiday will be extended beyond the two years the president is proposing and quite likely could become permanent.

"The fact that the Republican idea of scrapping the payroll tax is being touted as a concession made to the Democrats by the Republicans, shows just how hapless and clueless President Obama and his advisers are. Today’s Democrats seem to be able to win electorally when the Republicans start two endless wars and destroy the economy but they seem incapable of presenting a compelling vision of what they are for. Social Security is the nation’s most progressive program, but it is not a progressive issue. It is overwhelmingly popular with the vast majority of the American people, including the Tea Partiers. Today’s Democrats fail to understand the program, and so are not only blind to subtle assaults against it, but seem to conspire in those assaults. All I can say is that with the Republicans and the Democratic President, perhaps unwittingly, conspiring to destroy Social Security, the American people don’t stand a chance."

And to show how terrible or perhaps how deliberately terrible a negotiator Obama is, currently expired unemployment benefits will be extended for 13 months while tax cuts for the ultra rich will be extended for two years.  Far from equitable.

And in the opinion of Pat Garofalo at Think Progress: : "But the most pernicious piece of this deal is the estate tax cut. It will amount to another $7 billion in tax breaks in 2011 that benefit no one but the ultra-wealthy. Under Obama’s plan, just 0.25 percent of estates in the country would conceivably have to pay the estate tax, but Lincoln and Kyl proposed spending billions to lop another 0.11 percent off of that."

It's ironic but no less tragic, that this first African-American president, a Democratic president, albeit a DINO, may be the one to destroy Social Security and all the other common good policies of the New Deal and the Great Society.