Defend Senate Republicans denying 1st responders for the rich

Great Debates
1

Last straw. Last chance. All pretense to good faith, legitimate intention, sincere desire to serve the public good - gone. There is simply no excuse.

I could spew all the things about the Senate Republicans that make them puke-inducing, but why rehash? We all know.

What I want is a believable defense of their behavior: the Republicans have exploited 9/11 since about 3 minutes after the towers fell, virtually claiming ownership of it, using it like a sick mantra.

They have also demanded that the rich stay rich and get richer, and refused to do anything for anyone until the rich are taken care of. Including the 9/11 first responders, sticking to their “Keep and make the rich as rich as possible or you get nothing” position when faced with a vote on the health care for first responders bill.
And anyone who mocks the fact that lots of people trust Jon Stewart more than most mainstream news outlets, its because the daily show covered this when none of the three major networks bothered.

Liberal bias my ass.

2

I’m not sure if this was just a middle of the night rant, or what, but perhaps I can tackle this part.

I think the basic concept of the Senate Republicans who refuse to raise taxes on those with high incomes is better stated this way:
It’s not acceptable to tax the successful more as a mechanism to redistribute income to the less successful. The current tax rates are high enough. More taxes simply create larger government and diminish the capitalist engines which create real jobs.

I’m pretty sure the same Senate Republicans are good with everyone getting and staying rich. They’re just less sure that those who have been successful should have their success taxed for the benefit of the less successful.

In recent decades the wealthy have gotten wealthier faster than the poor have gotten wealthier, but in general everyone has gotten wealthier. I don’t have my numbers with me right now, (I can get my references by tomorrow) but right now as I recall, those who earn the top 19% of income pay 37% of federal income taxes, and about half the populationpays no federal income tax at all. This is up from about 38% in 2007 who paid no federal income tax. The top 1% pay about 24% of taxes.

So the Senate Republicans don’t really seem to take the position that nothing should be done for anyone until the rich are taken care of–perhaps their position is that the rich are doing enough already.

One of the problems we have in coming together for policy is this persistent insistence on both sides of exaggerating the other’s position. It’s very polarizing and probably not helpful.

Full disclosure: the Pedant pays a lot of taxes. He’d pay more happily if there were some sort of concomitant guarantee to lower the cost and scope of government, and use the extra taxes to pay down what we’ve already borrowed.

3

What cracks me up, is that if the shoe were on the other foot – if it were Democrats blocking a bill like this, or indeed any bill with “9/11” in the title, right down to the ‘Beatify Everyone Affected by 9/11 Act’ – Ann Coulter would have three new chapters on how Liberals all need to die for being treasonous traitors who hate America.

4

To directly respond to the OP, why don’t the rich deserve first responders? You fall and can’t get up, does it matter what your income is?

As to the garbled premise of the OP, Congress could barely get its ass in gear to get the extended tax cuts to Obama before the end of the year and it’s not certain tax bills won’t go up for awhile because they didn’t meet a necessary deadline. What else should they have been working on before settling the tax issue? Solving climate change? Peace in the Middle East?

5

Here is one article on some taxes FAQs, Stoid.

6

There’s no reason this bill had to wait for the lame duck period. The House passed the bill in September. Various versions have come before Congress over the years.

7

Surely the blame for the timing goes to Democrats.

8

So what?! Who needs a handout here?! Let the rich hire their own first responders!

9

There is probably plenty of blame to go around in terms of the timing, especially if the bill has been languishing for years. I don’t know the full history of the legislation. But I did want to point out that this is not something that had to be left until the last minute, at which time the tax cuts were invoked as a higher priority.

10

Well, as I recall, the “Bush era tax cuts” were enacted when the Republicans were in control, and for the last couple of years the Democrats have had all three branches by a pretty handy margin.

So while it’s nice to say “there is probably plenty of blame to go around in terms of timing” I don’t think there’s any doubt ALL of that blame (in terms of timing) should be placed on Democrats. I’m pretty sure if the Republicans had all three houses over the past two years, the cuts would have already been extended, no?

11

I’ll tackle this next, since I’m bored.

My observation is that Republicans (at least the sub-group I suspect you are pointing to) take the position that Islamist extremists “own 9/11.” The Republicans may want to own the response to 9/11, although in my opinion if that makes them owners of Iraq and Afghanistan as appropriate responses, it’s a net foolish decision of which to take ownership.

12

Unless there was a filibuster or the threat of one, which is exactly what has stalled the bill the last couple of weeks. And we know how rarely the fiibuster has been an issue in the last two years. I’m not sure what held up the bill before that. I see it was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2006 and never left it. I also don’t know why it was not taken up sooner after the House passed it in September. (I also don’t know why House Republicans opposed the bill.)

Incidentally ‘all three branches’ means Congress, the presidency, and the judiciary. The Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency since 2009.

Unless the bill wasn’t brought back because it’s clear passage would have been blocked. And I don’t know if that’s what happened.

13

This is a very important point. This happened in the 80s.

To explain, I’ll simplify this

If you were poor in the 80s you would be at a 1. Middle class would be 3, upper middle class would be 5 and the rich would be 8.

1-Poor
3-middle class
5-upper class
8-very wealthy

In the 80s, something different happened. The rich people started getting MUCH richer than before.

So the distribution changed to something along the lines of

3-Poor
6-middle class
7-upper class
25-wealthy

You see the poor went up a few places but by enlarge the middle and upper middle classes only went up a notch.

But the rich got MUCH, MUCH richer. They increased their value about three times.

A CEO formerly was only a few places above his upper management. Now he was miles and miles away from them. Actors, Athletes, Singers and such were being paid for one performance, the equivelent of what their contemporaries made in a life time only 20 years ago.

Now I oversimplified so you can get the idea more easily, but this poster made a VERY important point. Everyone got better in the 80s. The poor did better than the working, middle and upper middle classes, but no one did better than the wealthy. They just skyrocketed.

And this is why it seemed worse. Because in proportion to where they were the distance between classes was wided by a huge amount. But all classes got better.

And here’s a shocking thing. People making over $250,000 a year in this country are about 15% of the wage earners. Yet they drive about 42% of the big ticket items in this country (Source: Money Magazine). (Big ticket = items more than $1,000)

So 15% of the people are deciding nearly half of what big ticket items are going to be produced.

This also produces the oddity of, why are things being made no one wants or can afford.

Now as a person that was hit hard by the recession, I am now in the bottom of the run. I’m poor now, so of course I want change and complain about things. But even as poor as I am now, I’m better off than I would be if I was poor in 1980.

14

I see no one has offered a good defense of the Republicans yet. Instead we’re getting a strawman argument about how the Democrats should have had better timing. Which is true, but doesn’t explain why has the GOP insisted on acting like a bunch of assholes when the bill finally was brought up.

15

Markxxx: of course you’re better off. Thirty years have passed and we have Viagra and the internet and frost-free refrigerators and airbags. You’re not better off because Microsoft stock went up.

A poor person in 1980 was also better off than a feudal serf.

16

The issues with James Zadroga himself are the same ones I would ask about the bill named after him - and I am not referring to the controversy over his cause of death.

When Zadroga was diagnosed, he was placed on disability (which is reasonably generous in financial terms in New York City for first responders) and was given an additional payment through the 9/11 compensation funds.

What justification is there for additional money for first responders than these financial vehicles that have already been approved? Please justify your response in terms of money that people can get and needs unmet.

I am aware that this is an emotional subject for most of us - that doesn’t by itself justify spending money. And spending money, sadly, won’t stop some people from passing on - James Zadroga is tragic proof of that.

17

There’s no justification for their behavior and their excuses are absurd. That said, it’s possible those excuses would not have been an issue if the Democrats had dealt with this sooner. I’m not buying that it is all their fault, but they never moved with any great urgency on this. We’ll see what happens now that the tax cut extension is going to pass.

Inciidentally, this would be a tu quoque, not a strawman.

18

Ahh, thanks for clearing that up.

19

I think we should all take a moment to genuflect, and thank the rich folks for letting us live in their country.

20

Surely any discussion on timing has to include the inordinate amount of obstruction that has occurred (and is still occurring) by the minority party. You can’t really lay timing down on the majority party, which has been attempting to pass a quite a bit of legislation and get appointments confirmed, only to be hit with every procedural hurdle in the book, including the reading aloud of the largest pieces of legislation.