The only realistic weapon in his arsenal of weaponry against Republicans' ultimately forcing slashes in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, regulatory enforcement, and many other vital government programs, had actually been handed away by him, on December 6th: the 14th-Amendment weapon. Clearly, therefore, Mr. Obama is determined to give Republicans much of what they want on these "entitlement" cuts. He evidently wants to allow them a way to do this. He wants House Republicans to be able to block the federal government from paying its previously contracted debts, so as to force him to cut "entitlements."
On all prior occasions in which Obama has caved on vital details before even negotiating with Republicans about them, he had the public on his side but caved by his own choice. Polls showed about a 2-to-1 support for the availability of a public option; polls showed about a 2-to-1 support for his $250,000 benchmark for increasing tax-rates. But Obama caved on those matters because he had lied to Democrats -- and even to many moderate Republicans -- about those claimed goals of his, and his actions showed that he actually agreed more with the goals of congressional Republicans on these issues than he did with Democrats and others who, in poll-after-poll on these matters, showed that they agreed with his stated (and even promised) positions on them.
Now, he is repeating this same behavior, regarding cuts to "entitlements." Yet again, polls show that the public rejects raising the retirement age, reducing the inflation-measure in calculating SS benefits (using "chained CPI" instead), and the other Republican-pushed measures; but Obama is doing all he can to help congressional Republicans get what they want on these issues.
Barack Obama had, even earlier, driven Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to fits with his back-door efforts to gut such "entitlements," as when he had appointed the conservative Democrat Erskine Bowles to serve opposite the extremely conservative Republican Alan Simpson as being the two co-chairs on the White House's "bi-partisan" federal debt commission concerning entitlement "reform." (The Commission produced recommendations that congressional Democrats roundly repudiated for slashing entitlements, and that Republicans condemned for increasing taxes.) Obama had set this Commission up to deal with the soaring federal deficits that had been caused by Bush's 2008 economic collapse, by their using those federal deficits as an excuse to slash entitlements and thus produce even more suffering for the poor, at the same time as Wall Street was being bailed out. (Bowles was supported by the very Wall Street banks that were being bailed out by taxpayers. Simpson was a born conservative who followed in his father's footsteps as Wyoming's Republican U.S. Senator. His father had been quite extreme: "one of six Republican senators who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964." ) So, this was a wolf-in-charge-of-chicken-coop type of operation, which congressional Democrats opposed. Republicans opposed it because it would have meant increasing taxes -- it wasn't conservative enough for them. Thus, on the very same day, 28 March 2012, when Bowles-Simpson was finally dashed in the House, the House passed instead the Paul Ryan budget, which Mitt Romney ended up running on, against Obama. The 2012 "election" was thus between two conservatives, one of whom pretended not to be.
Bowles and Simpson recommended extending the Social Security retirement age, reducing the cost-of-living hikes for beneficiaries, and increasing Medicare deductibles. On 18 December 2012, two weeks before the fiscal cliff, Obama accepted all of those ideas. Ryan Grim at huffingtonpost bannered "Obama Hits Social Security In Fiscal Cliff Offer Friendlier To The Wealthy," and reported that, "President Barack Obama ... proposes extending the Bush tax cuts for everyone earning less than $400,000 a year, and paying for it by increasing taxes on the middle class and cutting Social Security and Medicare. Obama's offer would allow the payroll tax holiday to expire, meaning middle class workers will see smaller paychecks. ... Obama's concession to Republicans is opposed by a majority of Americans, according to a HuffPost/YouGov poll." Thus, even well before the fiscal cliff approached, Obama was already yielding to Republican positions that the American public opposed -- and Americans opposed all of these Republican positions overwhelmingly. In these negotiations, it seemed as if one Republican (Obama) was "negotiating against" another. This was show time, more than deal time. Now that Obama had stripped himself of his 14th-Amendment weapon, Republicans in Congress held out for even more. And congressional Democrats made clear that they wouldn't vote for the President's offer, either. So, it immediately died. But when the cliff finally came, Obama gave Republicans the $400,000/$450,000 cut-off part of it anyway, and Democrats needed to vote for it in order to avoid being blamed by the public for causing an immediate economic maelstrom after January 1st.
Yet again, Pelosi and Reid are tearing their hair out about Obama's deceits and his preemptory caves on vital issues. Right after Obama betrayed the Democrats by caving to the Republicans on the January 1st fiscal cliff, Pelosi was asked in her weekly press briefing on January 4th about the only realistic remaining defense against the Republican assault on the spending side, which is for the President to use the 14th Amendment to annihilate the Republicans' threats to violate the 14th Amendment by their causing a U.S. default; and Pelosi said, "I've made my view very clear on that subject. But I'm not the president of the United States." On the same day, Ryan Grim bannered "Harry Reid Would Back Obama If He Bucks GOP On Debt Ceiling: Source." Reid "has privately told other Democrats, including President Obama, that if the administration used its constitutional and executive authority to continue paying its debts in the face of House Republican opposition, he would support the approach."
The way this would work is: Republicans will bring the U.S. to the brink of default, and President Obama would then cite the 14th Amendment, and possibly also the trillion-dollar-coin tactic, to continue paying the U.S. government's debts; and the matter would then go to the Supreme Court to be adjudicated. Obama would almost certainly win on the 14th Amendment there. But Obama has already, through his Press spokesperson on December 6th, said that he won't use the 14th Amendment. That would leave only the coin-tactic, which is less likely to succeed. (See the immediately following parenthetical paragraph if you want to know why.) Obama had already publicly trashed his biggest weapon: the 14th Amendment. He has done this -- disarmed himself -- because he wants the Republicans to win. There's no other reason for it.
(Regarding the coin-trick: The legal basis for the coin-trick is USC Sec 5112, which starts with sub-section "(a) The Secretary of the Treasury may mint and issue only the following coins" -- and that word "only" is key here, so I emphasize it -- and it then describes sub-sub-sections 1 through 12, none of which allow for what is subsequently said in the coin-trick's sub-section within Sec 5112, which is "(k) The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary's discretion, may prescribe." Consequently, if the Treasury Secretary actually were to try using sub-section (k), which is the coin-trick clause, the Republicans could file suit to charge illegality. The Supreme Court would then make the final decision, but the case for the coin-trick is very weak, at best, and would hinge on the intent of the Republican congressman who had added sub-section (k).)
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