Senate Republicans – Extend Tax Cuts For Every American…Not Just A Select Few

You are writing this from an inherently inaccurate position.

First, neither Obama nor the Dems are choosing to raise taxes; taxes are set to increase because when the GOPer cons passed the Bush tax cuts, they CHOSE — did not have to, but CHOSE — to have a “sunset” provision. If the GOPer cons had written the bill correctly in 2001 through 2006, we would not be in this situation.

Second, under the Dem proposal that the GOPer cons just defeated, EVERYONE would have received a tax cut on their first $250k in earnings in 2011 because the current GOPer con Bush tax cut law MANDATES that tax rates increase on January 1, 2011. The Dems, however, determined that people earning more than $250,000 would get no tax relief on those dollars in excess of $250,001. GOPer cons want those earning $250,001 to get ADDITIONAL tax relief.

Third, I personally believe that NO ONE should get any tax relief unless spending cuts or closing of loopholes to close that gap left by that tax relief. If you do not decrease spending or close other tax loopholes, you increase the projected deficits by trillions of dollars. In reality, the Dems want to add about $2 trillion to the long term debt; the GOPer cons want to add about $3 trillion.

Memo to cons: if you are going to be the party of “fiscal responsibility”, you can’t go around refusing to add $2 trillion to the debt burden because you want to , instead, add $3 trillion.

The problem is spending. Specifically, mandatory spending.

I’d caution anyone of a right mind in engaging in class-warfare rhetoric…it may “look good” to still put the cuts on those top marginals, but the reality is that those are folks who have a disproportionate impact on the economy and federal revenues.

But once again, if you don’t stop the outgoing monies…the whole revenue stream debate is just a dog and pony distraction.

If real strategists talk about logistics…then real fiscal conservatives talk about spending. Not just the up-front obvious topics either – but the bad practices that congress has taken to employing over time. At any point a bill has become so large it takes and army of lawyers to comprehend, you’ve moved away from the founders vision.

The fact of the matter is that Congress does not obey *its own rules* — if it cannot hold itself accountable to itself, what makes anyone think that the body (regardless of R or D in charge) is going to practice due diligence in it’s duty to the nation (outside of mass consumption soundbites?)

JVerive —

This is the fundamental problem with GOPer cons: you like to rely on slogans as a way to avoid making any actual decisions that impact actual problems. Hence the new con mantras “No tax increases on anyone” and “The problem is spending.” But slogans cannot solve a math problem. Indeed, if you write normative solutions in math class, you simply fail.

Governments spend money in order to provide goods (like school meals, Social Security checks, and highways) and services (like health care, defense services, federal courts, etc.) to the American people. The only way you can fund such goods and services is by taxing the populace, borrowing money, or impounding assets from others and selling them. We will not be impounding anyones assets (like seizing oil fields in Iraq, for example) because the US has never done that before. So we only have taxing and borrowing left as the way to pay for our spending. And a dollar borrowed today must be repaid with interest in the future.

This is a matter of math. The baseline we work from is the revenues and expenses projected as of January 1, 2011. Because of the sunset provisions the GOPer cons put into the Bush tax cut, there is set to be a Bush tax increase on January 1, 2011. This scheduled tax increase has NOTHING to do with Obama or the Dems: it is cooked into the present math. THAT, not slogans, is what has to be managed . . . the math.

ANY extension of he Bush tax cuts will add to the deficit. If you want those new tax cuts, and want to be deficit neutral, YOU HAVE TO CUT SPENDING DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR AS THOSE TAX CUTS KICK IN! Otherwise, you are borrowing from the Chinese and charging our children to fund spending, instead of charging the taxpayers today.

I hope I don’t have to repeat that, but it is simple math.

The Dems plan cuts taxes for EVERYONE compared to the January 1, 2011 baseline. The Dems tax cut plan phases out at $250,000 dollars of income, so that the dollars above that are taxed at 39.5%, the pre-Bush tax cut rate, versus 35% under the Bush tax cuts. With no spending cuts and no other tax revenues, the Dems’ plan will add $2 trillion to the long term debt pile.

The GOPer cons want to reinstate all the Bush tax cuts. With no spending cuts and no other tax revenues, the GOPer cons’ plan will add $3 trillion to the long term debt pile.

$3 trillion is a significantly larger number than $2 trillion. This must be acknowledged and addressed.

You can SAY “the problem is spending”; but if the GOPer cons refuse to actually cut any spending as they insist on cutting taxes, then they add $3 trillion onto the debt pile.

You cannot credibly complain about Obama adding $2 trillion in two years in the midst of a recession, or about the Dems wanting to add another $2 trillion to that pile if you cons insist on, instead, adding $3 trillionto the pile, in addition to the trillions y’all ran up under the Hastert/Frist/Bush regime!

Watching Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace just set up the State of the Union: Obama is going to call for addressing the long term debt issue by adopting the Fiscal Responsibility Plan; the Dems will stand up in unison and cheer, while the GOPer cons look glum and/or smirk. You will have completely ceded deficit and debt reduction to the guy you cons kept referring to as “the most liberal member of the US Senate.” How to turn the tables . . . .

* * * * *

Finally, on teabaggers, I call them teabaggers because they kept exhorting each other to “teabag” politicians they did not like. Had they never set up websites that said “Teabag Pelosi and Reid”, the moniker would never have occurred to anyone; but satire needs a connection to facts or be so absurd as to loop back around to criticism through shear absurdity dripped in comedy. “Teabaggers” is rooted in what they were proclaiming as their goal: teabagging people.

Curiously, though, I don’t recall them threatening to “Teabag Obama.” Maybe they thought his bite would be worse than his bark . . . .

I, for one, love being recognized as a teabagger. It’s a term of affection used only by the teabaggees who provide us with oral support.

DaNang —

Nancy Pelosi is 70 and Reid is close to that. Why you teabaggers boast of your desire to “teabag” two elderly people, I do not know . . . .

Apparently in B-Rob’s world you just spend and spend and don’t ask if you should be or even need to be doing so.

Really B-Rob, place both hands firmly against the ground and push, repeat as often as necessary until head is free of sand.

Greg – consider the arithmetic. If for example, ten percent of small business employers hire ten or more employees a piece, then small business employers with ten or more employees hire a majority of small business employees. The same applies to five percent of the small businesses hiring twenty or more employees, or two percent hiring fifty or more employees.

This conflation of the number of employers in a headcount bracket, and the number of employees in the same bracket, is highly misleading.

Also, when you talk about the percent of employees nationally, keep in mind that about 17% of workers are government-employed. If half of all employees work for small business, then that’s more than half of private sector employment. The private sector pays for every employee in the government. It is duly noted that the government is borrowing about half its expenses these days — but that all has to be paid for eventually one way or another. Raising taxes on the top few percent is not going to stop the current unsustainable borrowing. There just isn’t enough revenue there. The only answer is cutting spending.

This $250K dividing line between “rich sons a bitches” and “the rest of us” is divisive and misleading, intentionally so. It’s a smokescreen.

It is worth a reminder also, of studies that have concluded that historically, each dollar of new tax revenue has resulted in more than one dollar of new spending. Just on an empirical basis, the idea that the “missing tax from the wealthy” would all go for deficit reduction is not believable. It can reasonably be anticipated that none of it will.

A modest proposal – start by cutting government spending to the level of 2008. Is that radical and vicious?

The trolls are making a full court press here. I wonder why. Just trying to do the right thing, fellas?

Missy, when you whine about super-majorities and the GOPers not having them, yes you are blaming Dems for GOPer spending decisions. Likewise, when you talk about the Dem super-majorities, then you are talking about Dem decisions. You act as if GOPers had nothing to do with all the spending, even when they are the ones doing the spending! Like they are Dem controlled automatons. That is just silly.

Another thing about FY 2008, that was the year the Bush administration submitted a deficit budget to Congress and got back a deficit spending package and Bush signed off on it. That is his responsibility. Spending takes two sides: the president presents a budget proposal, the Congress to set out the spending plan, and the president signs off. Bush NEVER vetoed anything, so he is responsible for the budget proposal and the actual spending that occurs.

@ anticsrocks, #21:

@Greg: When you cite a blog as proof of your argument, well it just shows how silly you really are.

Actually, what I cited was a Wikipedia article with footnoted links to supporting documentation, and a document produced by The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which also provides a list of sources.

That only 1.9 percent of taxpayers with small-business income fall into the two highest tax brackets, and that a majority of small-business jobs are created by small-businesses that are actually small, would both seem to come under the heading of factual information. So would the this statement: Last Thursday, republicans voted almost unanimously against a bill that would fully extend the Bush tax cuts for upwards of 97% of all U.S. taxpayers, and intend to allow nothing similar to make it through the Senate until the richest 3% get theirs.

I figure the statement that extending Bush tax cuts to the remaining 3% somehow targets American small business owners comes under the heading of spin. (Or b.s. Take your pick.) I put the assertion that the resultant loss of at least $700 billion in tax revenue won’t increase the national debt in the same category. I might go for that last one if republicans were presenting detailed spending cut proposals as part of the argument, but they’re not. They’ll gladly pay us Tuesday for a hamburger today. (An outdated pop-culture reference, from the days of the Great Depression.)

Greg, you’re correct about one thing: “a lot of people are automatically distrustful of Wikipedia”. So you back up the Wiki kids with analysis from The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who describe their mission as:

“The Center conducts research and analysis to help shape public debates over proposed budget and tax policies and to help ensure that policymakers consider the needs of low-income families and individuals in these debates. We also develop policy options to alleviate poverty.”

In other words, another publicly subsidized organization which advocates for redistributive government while claiming to be nonpartisan… like Acorn. 🙄

lol

@ “teabaggers” comments from B-Rob…wrong on so many levels.

But then again I’m sure you also “heard” Palin say she could see Russia from her front porch…

Just the fact that you use the term “teabaggers” invalidates pretty much anything else you type.

Let’s call it “reductio ad teabaggeri”

Missy,

I was going to save the numbers because I figured the same revisionist history would pop back up again as it always does.

Perhaps it’s time to consider a flat tax with no loopholes. It would be fair across the board. From what I’ve read, countries that have implemented it have experienced good growth in their economies. I haven’t seen anything about what it has done for their deficits though, although at least here, we’ll never get the deficits under control until we get spending under control.

B-Rob: The last Bush budget in FY 2009 was a $1.4 trillion deficit.

You do know, right, that the House submits budgets, and not the President, right?

And also that, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress starting in January 2007, right?

And also that, a President faced with multiple crises, and both houses of Congress controlled by the other party, might sign a budget he did not like at all, in order to preseve funding for things he considered essential to national security — was manipulated by extortion in other words — right?

Take your time.

my boy Sherman —

You wrote the following. I will respond with small words.

You do know, right, that the House submits budgets, and not the President, right?

You are 100% wrong. The president submits his budget; the House decides what is appropriated on what items. The House and the Senate then have to vote to approve individual bills. Those bills are then sent to the president who either signs off or vetoes them.

And also that, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress starting in January 2007, right?

Correct. And from January 1994 through January 2007, GOPer cons controlled the House. Further, from January 2003 through January 2007, GOPer cons controlled the Senate. Last, from January 2001 through January 2009, a GOPer con was president.

And also that, a President faced with multiple crises, and both houses of Congress controlled by the other party, might sign a budget he did not like at all, in order to preseve funding for things he considered essential to national security — was manipulated by extortion in other words — right?

The president was “being extorted”? You really, actually, truly believe that? Furthermore, are you claiming the GOPer cons were “extorting” Bush from 2001 through 2007, when they controlled the purse strings? Uh, yeah, . . . that makes no sense at all.

Your “explanation” would make sense if Bush had submitted balanced budget requests for FY 2002 through 2009. He never did. Your “explanation” would also make sense if Bush had EVER made any move to limit spending from 2001 through 2009. He never did. Let me emphasize this: Bush NEVER submitted a balanced budget and never vetoed any spending. As such, your “explanation” is nothing but a post hoc rationalization that is detached from the actual history of what went on.

Face facts — the Hastert/Frist/Bush regime ran deficits DURING AN EXPANDING ECONOMY because they had no discipline and no principles where fiscal responsibility was concerned. The perfect example: the Medicare D drug bill, which added billions in long-term liabilities and was not paid for with higher taxes or cuts in other spending. You can try to blame the Dems for those Hastert/Frist/Bush deficits, but that does not even past the giggle test.