What a wonderful point! Yes, the federal income tax is the only tax worth talking about!
Oh wait, that’s bullshit. Such complete bullshit that to focus on one of only 2 major progressive taxes in America (along with the federal estate tax) completely distorts the picture. No honest and informed person would ever refer solely to the federal income tax to make any point about relative or absolute tax burdens. Consider your ignorance vanquished.
Of course not. For many people, however, it allows them to retire by helping to offset expenses such as medical co-pays and dental insurance premiums. In my case, I could do without it. Something that would really help with SS would be to have people declare what kind of money they have sitting in retirement accounts and what they’re drawing from pension funds to determine how much, if any, SS they should collect. It’s silly to be sending a $1500 check to somebody who retired on $80K a year, like my brother. But raising the age could end up placing a lot of people on other social welfare programs to compensate for the loss when forced out of the workplace. Not to mention that by keeping people in their jobs longer, younger lions are kept from moving up.
Pfft. It was the tax being discussed, so my point stands.
If you want to make a point about raising other taxes, knock yourself out.
In addition to what has been said, there is an important additional point: Boehner was trying to get a majority of his caucus to agree to the other plan. If Boehner is willing to allow a vote on this Senate option that has enough total votes (Dem + Rep) to pass then that is a very different sort of vote than needing a majority of Republicans to support it.
Stratocaster says:
The impact of the chained CPI calculation would increase over time. Your uncited claim that it would have only a 1% impact is presumably something like an (average?) impact over the next decade. However, if you look out further into the future, it will have a larger and larger impact over time. And there are good reasons to argue that the chained CPI calculation is not a realistic calculation of the true rise in the cost of living seniors face when one of their largest costs relative to the average consumer, health care, is increasing at a much faster rate than inflation.
That is a completely irrelevant statistic given that the top 5% have quite a substantial share of the income. People who talk about the percent of all income taxes paid by the top 1% or 5% or whatever as if this number alone has any real significance are mathematically ignorant (or are actively trying to deceive those who are).
It turns out that the federal income tax is progressive (although the regressivity of other federal, state, and local taxes balances quite a bit of that progressivity out when one looks at the total tax picture) but one can’t conclude that on the basis of the irrelevant tax share numbers that you quote.
Well, of course it increases the deficit relative to what would happen if we go over the fiscal cliff. But, the question is whether the nation wants to follow Greece in a plan of forced austerity and trash the entire economy or whether we want to actually make intelligent decisions. (And, unlike Greece, we actually have better alternatives because we control our own monetary system…and we have a currency that, despite whatever deficits we are running, is still considered highly desirable and hence people are still willing to loan us money at rock-bottom rates.)
…It is also worth noting that of that $4 trillion increase, over 90% is due to decreases in revenues and less than 10% due to increases in spending. So, if you really want to significantly impact that, what you have to do is increase more revenues (or make even more draconian cuts than were envisioned by the automatic ones in the fiscal cliff scenario). Here’s the actual CBO document http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/American%20Taxpayer%20Relief%20Act.pdf , which is a bit more informative than a Washington Times blog piece.
I don’t think he will schedule a vote without a majority of the majority. He has been a chickshit coward, afraid to stand up to the Tea Party for the last two years, I see no reason to think he will change now, unless it is to add a poison pill spending cut amendment that will never pass the Senate. Chickenshit.
Passed.
This cracks me up. Norquist spinning away:
G’head. You try to stay relevant.
I can not improve upon this post in any way!
I support it for now as it won’t at least garnish my upcoming paychecks and when the new House gets in, they can really start to work out the foundations for a true Grand Plan…my hope is that now that it has passed Congress won’t just sit on their kiesters but push for something even better in the next two months before Fiscal Cliff II: Eletric Boogaloo hits us…
Also I coundn’t find anything about the lf the “Dairy Cliff” was averted…does anyone know if that dairy farm subsudity got saved or will I be paying $13 for Milk tomorrow (it’s already OVER $7 here in Hawaii…)
Anyone have the breakdown of the vote by party? Doesn’t seem to be up in the House website yet
My understanding is that the milk issue was part of the “cliff” bill the Senate passed, and the house just ratified that.
85/245 Republicans and 172/200 Democrats voted in favor of the bill. Some didn’t vote so I don’t know the nays.
Seems like the analysis I read a week ago was right, the failure of Plan B lead to a more Democratic bill after all.
I think that was pretty self-evident unless there was to be no compromise at all.
I’m surprised they got 85 Republicans to support it. Still too many Reps voted against it. I can’t imagine what they were thinking, this was probably the last compromise bill to be offered, they must have known it was either gonna be this or nothing and a huge majority of them voted for nothing! Its unbelievable! Well, not unbelievable, just…I dunno, hard to imagine these idiots are in government. Fuck, these people piss me off
Untrue. You responded to Der Trihs’s assertion that the rich have most and ever more of the money in the nation and need to be taxed much more with a reference to single tax which falls heavily upon high incomes. That’s deception, deliberate or no. You can do better than that.
Please. I’m neither. If you want to call me a liar, open a pit thread.
I think you and I have been going on about this for a decade. You do this over and over and over again and it serves no purpose other than distract from the topic of the thread, which is FEDERAL TAXES.
Look, this thread is about the bill passed by the Senate, and it deals with federal taxes. If you want to talk about how EACH INDIVIDUAL STATE needs to adjust its tax structure to make it more progressive, then please do so. But don’t expect the federal government to do this.
Yes, I ignored FICA. And I did that on purpose, because it’s a different kind of tax. We pay into it with an expectation that what we get back is based to a large degree on what we pay into it. But if you want to include that in the calculus, it really doesn’t change things qualitatively wrt my response to Der Trihs.
So, I stand by my statement that AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL, the idea that “the rich” are being carried on the backs of the rest of the country is simply not true.
Please note that I specifically said if you wanted to zero in on a tiny subset of “the rich” who get by paying little or no taxes, then I’m with you. Change AMT so that people like Romney have to pay higher taxes on dividend income. Change the rule that allows hedge fund managers to claim “carried interest” income and escape normal income tax rates. I’ve been on board with that for years.
But don’t go on about “the rich” riding on the backs of the rest of us.