I think that it is a lose, lose, lose for everyone except the top 2 percent of taxpayers and a small subset of the unemployed that get continued benefits. Obama looks weak and unskilled in negotiation. The American people have a terrible precedent set of cutting the funding end of social security, the deficit is made much worse. There is no plan for closing the future deficit gaps and the dollar will continue to weaken and the economy sputter because of it. Without a long term plan to show investors how the debt and deficit is going to be dealt with, this only makes the problem with the budget worse.
Obama topped all of this off by insulting his allied critics, rather than having them at the table, he cut them out.
I wish SD had the ‘Reputation’ feature, because I’d be adding to yours right now.
Totally irresponsible. We need more stimulus, this was not the way to go about it.
What I don’t understand is why the Democrats are so fucking bad at messaging, that they haven’t been pounding and pounding and pounding home the following message:
The Republicans who instituted these tax cuts are the ones who put the sunset date on them. BLAME THEM for the fact that they’re expiring now.
The reason they had to put the sunset date on them is that that was the only way to skirt PAYGO rules. These tax cuts have been UNFUNDED for a decade. BLAME THEM for irresponsibly increasing the deficit and not “paying for” their legislation (same with the Medicare debacle!).
Now that Republicans have an opportunity to make their tax cuts permanent for 98% of Americans, they refuse to, because their ultra rich buddies aren’t included. BLAME THEM for middle class taxes going back up to where they were.
We had a golden opportunity to frame this debate in the eyes of the public and we completely dropped the ball.
I’d ‘rep’ you, too, if I could. Thanks for posting that.
And Saudi Arabia and Iran, of all places! We’re not only increasing our deficit, we’re actually risking our national security here.
On another forum, I was asked why I wasn’t as angry at the Republicans as I seem to be at the President. How can you be angry with a 3 year-old when he does what a 3 year-old does?
"In a rare Saturday session, Senate Democrats and Republicans remained at loggerheads over whether to extend the George W. Bush-era tax cuts to all taxpayers, ratcheting up the pressure on lawmakers to try to reach agreement before the tax cuts expire at the end of the year.
"With Republicans unified in opposition, Democrats, as expected, fell short of the votes needed to overcome a filibuster and extend the tax cuts for all but the very wealthy.
"An extension of the tax cuts to families earning less than $250,000 a year was defeated, 53-36, short of the 60 needed to limit debate. An extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to those earning less than $1 million annually was rejected, 53-37."
"But as tax experts look at the proposal more closely, it has become clear that the working poor will actually end up losing money under the new arrangement.
“Single working people with earnings below $20,000 and married couples with earnings below $40,000 are worse off under the payroll tax cut proposals in the compromise between the president and the Republicans,” explains Bob Williams, a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Policy Center.
Here’s why: The Obama proposal substitutes a Social Security payroll tax cut for the Making Work Pay credit, which was targeted to do the most good for low-income families. Under current rules, the working poor receive $400 when they earn at least $6,452 a year through the Making Work Pay credit. Married couples with earnings above $12,900 get $800 under the program.
The compromise cuts the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2% to 4.2%, so a couple would have to earn $40,000 to get the same $800 tax benefit. Every working-class couple earning less than that will get less than $800, meaning they lose money under the Obama proposal."
Call, call, call!
Yeah, but it was a “non-binding” vote. Watch them cave, as always.
Besides which, if they’re looking for an alternative, I still say Senator Warner’s is an excellent one, so it’s still worth calling and hammering that home. Obama is already aware of it and had been considering it. He needs to consider it harder. Democrats need to get off their collective asses and be as loud and as angry as the Tea Party people were. That’s how they got what they wanted and it’s the only way we’ll get what we want, apparently.
Yep. And not only that, but if every Republican votes for it, you can be sure the Democrats aren’t nearly as cohesive, so there’ll be plenty of Blue Dogs and a few other Dems who’ll also vote for it, so it’ll pass this year no matter what.
Basically, we’re screwed unless we can convince President Obama to reconsider a better alternative. The likelihood of that happening is slim to none, but I’m damn sure going to keep trying. I’ve been phoning and writing everyone who has a hand in this for weeks now. And I’m not giving up until it’s a done deal.
Shayna, while Sen. Warner’s proposed compromise certainly sounds reasonable, I don’t see where it addresses the restoration of the unemployment benefits extension. Whereas Obama’s compromise does.
One might believe, after talking with their circle of friends and acquaintances and going to their usual blogs and news sources that it’s inconceivable that any elected official who wants to be re-elected would let vital benefits lapse for millions of eligible voters and thus the GOP would eventually have conceded on the unemployment comp. Such a person would understandably see the top-2% difference between Warner’s plan and Obama’s as pure concession to the GOP.
One might also believe, after talking to Republican friends immersed in their blogs and news sources, that it isn’t so bloody obvious that the party of NO, the party of “let them eat cake”, the party of “death panels” would have eventually voted to extend unemployment comp. Such a person would equally understandably see the tradeoff of the top-2% tax cut for extended unemployment comp (the difference between Warner’s apparently Solomonic proposal and Obama’s purportedly spineless proposal) as a decent trade.
In a related story, and one which almost revives my hope of recovery from the entitlements hole into which we have dug ourselves. the GOP has managed to beat back an effort to raise Social Security spending in conjunction with Obama’s Social Security tax cut. I grant you, it is only a failure to increase spending rather than a real cut, but FWIW.
This is the sort of thing I was hoping for with gridlock. Now if only Obama can keep from “compromising” on it and f*king it up.
Hell yeah! Old people only need to eat once a day, maximum. And if they can’t afford to heat their house, it’s their own damn fault for not living in Florida or Arizona like they’re supposed to.
Yup. Glad the GOP beat that back by losing the vote 254-153… and saved $14 billion (until we get those top-end tax breaks through of course, that’ll only cost $70 bill per year)!
Amazing that a $900 billion tax “compromise” is agreed to, but $14 billion to SS recipients is a no-go.
And hey, the GOP killed the DADT repeal by losing that vote 57-43 as well!
I think there’s a fundamental difference in the way conservatives and liberals view the government’s relationship to the people that shapes their priorities as regards to these issues.
Liberals seem to view the government, as representative of the people, as “owning” all the assets and income in the country. From this perspective, anything anyone has - no matter how they came by it - was effectively given to them by the government, either actively by transfer payments or passively by not taxing it. If the government gives something to someone or a group of people, the government is simply giving its own assets to these people.
From this vantage point, it’s natural that liberals focus on who deserves to have what portion of the nation’s assets, and a tax cut is “giving” something to the people whose taxes were cut. Naturally they look askance at tax cuts for the rich, because why should the government “give” the rich anything?
Conservatives view the government as having no inherent claim to anyone’s property. There’s a certain level of taxes that are required as a necessary evil. But when the government taxes people, it’s taking what really belongs to the people, and thus needs to be looked at long and hard before an assessment can be made that the need rises to the level that justifies seizing other people’s property.
So it comes to tax cuts for the rich versus programs for the poor. Liberals focus on “giving” to the rich versus giving to the poor. Conservatives focus on taking people’s money to give other people versus letting people keep their own hard earned money.
[I had half a mind to start a separate thread about this, but I don’t think I will have the energy to follow through on debating it.]
Well put. Puzzles me as well that the Dems suck so badly at messaging.
As an independent voter, certainly one of my frustrations with Obama is that as a pragmatist cutting deals, he completely misses out on the messaging part or the quid pro quo. Eg, I’ll give you the 2 year extension for the wealthy in return for x, y and z. Make it clear cut and a good business decision. I see a black box and it’s not obvious to me that the quid pro quo is a no-brainer, and generally given my individual viewpoint am leaning to concluding in the parlance of Wall street “shit, that was a bad trade.”
It should be clear to anyone that is not brain dead that our deficit is such that
spending needs to be cut significantly (and that means sacred cows like social security, medicare, the military, farm subsidies, etc. None of this cut waste bs)