Politico has the story headlined Schumer drops objection to Obama tax plan.

Pelosi announced her support in a press release Monday afternoon.

“Today, President Obama once again stood firmly with America’s middle class and small businesses,” she said. “Democrats and the President have always fought for an extension of the tax cuts for middle-income families to offer greater relief and economic certainty to all working Americans. Once again, Republicans must decide: will they continue to hold middle class tax cuts hostage to tax breaks for the wealthiest or will they agree to pass the middle class tax cuts we all agree should become law?

Obama press secretary Jay Carney was also quoted:

Carney also said a White House push could actually help to get the tax cuts through Congress despite suggestions otherwise.“What we’ve seen in the last year or so, the last 10 or 12 months, when the president makes a public case for policy that is sensible, that’s broadly supported by the American people and he continues to make that case when we see the kind of movement that initially seems unlikely in Congress and hopefully that’ll be the case here.”

And to think, it has only taken them almost 4 years to figure out that Obama has to push a policy to get it through Congress.  The White House used to think that Congress would just present Obama with good legislation that he could sign.

Then we get to the Republican reaction:

Republicans weren’t buying the show of unity — or the notion that Obama wasn’t pushing a broad tax increase.

“Americans are struggling in a ‘zombie economy’ and President Obama’s only answer is to pass one of the largest tax hikes in history,” said Amanda Hennenberg, a Romney campaign spokesperson. “President Obama’s tax increases on families and job creators will create more economic uncertainty and fewer opportunities for struggling middle-class families. From Day One, Mitt Romney will take action to lower marginal rates, help middle-class Americans save and invest, and jumpstart economic growth and job creation.”

Have you had it with the so called job creators yet?  They are sitting on trillions of dollars in liquid assets, but they don’t create any jobs with that money.  And why should they?  They can “invest” those assets in fancy financial instruments and make more money that they can in hiring people to do work for which there is no demand.  And why is there no demand?  Because the wealthy suck up all the money and “invest” it in financial derivatives and don’t buy anything that requires workers to produce it.  They also don’t let any money trickle down to the workers so that they can buy stuff.

The only solution that will work is to extract some of those liquid assets by taxing them, and then putting those assets to work with government investments in education, research, and fixing our crumbling infrastructure.  When that infrastructure crumbles into dust, it is going to have to be replaced anyway.  Why not do it now when workers are begging for jobs?  Would we rather that the government try to do this during times of full employment when they would have to pay top dollar to get the work done?