Appearing on Sunday's Good Morning America on ABC to discuss legislation recently passed by Congress, This Week host Christiane Amanpour referred to tax cuts as "giveaways" as she predicted that President Obama would receive political credit for the agreement to prevent the Bush tax cuts from expiring in January, which anchor Dan Harris described as a "big tax cut law."
After Harris asked if Obama was on a "winning streak" because of the recent passage of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal and the tax agreement, Amanpour responded:
Well, it's certainly been a busy and an active lame duck session. Obviously, the tax cut law, everybody was watching. It had to be done before the end of the year. And certainly a President doing that and being responsible for giveaways - in other words, tax breaks to people - is going to get the credit. Clearly, of course, the Republicans got what they wanted as well, which was all the tax cuts remaining.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Sunday, December 19, Good Morning America on ABC:
DAN HARRIS: Let's talk more about this history-making development with This Week host Christiane Amanpour who joins us now from Washington. Christiane, good morning.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Good morning, Dan.
HARRIS: So the President signed this big tax cut law on Friday, and now he's celebrating the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which was a big campaign promise for him. Is there a sense in Washington that he's on a winning streak?
AMANPOUR: Well, it's certainly been a busy and an active lame duck session. Obviously, the tax cut law, everybody was watching. It had to be done before the end of the year. And certainly a President doing that and being responsible for giveaways - in other words, tax breaks to people - is going to get the credit. Clearly, of course, the Republicans got what they wanted as well, which was all the tax cuts remaining. So that was really a win/win, although many people are sort of spinning it one way or the other. And then on Don't Ask, Don't Tell, that's something that the President said that he wanted to do, have repeals, way back before he became President right from the beginning of his campaign. That took longer than his base wanted it to take, but here we have it.
-Brad Wilmouth is a news analyst at the Media Research Center