Anyway
If reasons like this or other considerations add up to We Just Gotta Have the XL, the way to compromise on the issue is to require that the dilbit be refined into crude oil before it crosses the border. Then the XL really would be just another crude oil pipeline, safer than rail, little more objectionable than what we’ve already done with oil infrastructure. And George Will would have a valid point instead of a misleading lie!
I’m a recovering Texan.
Under this reasoning the GOP has no right to expect to do anything other than continue to generally oppose the President since that’s what they were running on. President Obama won election. He is the President and if the GOP Congress wants a tax deal he’s the one they are going to have to deal with. If he stands his ground on increasing revenues then there doesn’t seem to be much they can do about it.
We also need to put in safeguards to make it harder to recomplicate the tax system again. I love Bill Clinton, but one of the things he did that I hated was create new brackets only six years after both parties worked so hard at tax reform, and then create all kinds of new exemptions to shield favored people from the higher taxes. That can’t happen again. Congress should include a parliamentary rule that in the future, rates can go up or down, but new exemptions or the creation of new brackets must pass by a supermajority.
I agree with elucidator that this is a good post, but it has a fundamental flaw: blocking Keystone is antidemocratic, favoring it is democratic. Not only does a majority of Americans support Keystone, but there has always been a veto proof majority to pass it. It only failed to pass because Harry Reid blocked all votes on it. Low hanging fruit doesn’t get any lower hanging than this.
Yeah, I guess if your definition of “democratic” is “a few wealthy corporations have bought out all the Congressmen,” then yeah, it’s democratic. To me, it sounds like oligarchy in action.
I define it as simply as can be: doing what the public wants.
As I pointed before the problem for me is the emissions, the fact that many do approve Keystone can be assigned by many not knowing what it would really mean to the global environment, but if that is what the people do want thanks to incomplete information then Keyston should be approved by approving bills like this one that have stalled with no Republican help:
Reason being that as I pointed before it is the emissions what is the issue, and regardless if a fossil fuel comes from Canada it is better to ensure that we will use less of the stuff or help to use the fuel with a minimum of CO2 and other contaminants to the atmosphere.
Thanks for the article, it gets to the heart of the issue.
Before I get into that though, has anyone else noticed that all these discussions end up at the dilemma between what the public supports and what the government will approve? Pot passes but neither Obama nor the GOP really support it. Minimum wage, other questions. It’s interesting.
Anyway, reading the article closely seems to support my point of view. Did you notice that the analysis of the reasons behind people’s support was all couched in terms of, “These people believe XL will…”, followed by things the XL will not accomplish? People believe the XL will create jobs- it really won’t make a ding. And unemployment is down to 5.8% now, we aren’t desperate for any job, any way anymore.
People believe the US will get the oil. No, it is just a way to export Canadian oil. Sure, increasing global supply by about 1 million bbl per day would have a nominal (~1%) effect, except that production is online already via rail. So really, no effect.
You see? People have swallowed the lies they have been told. There are mentions of ‘environmental risk’, but nobody seems to be aware that this is a dilbit, and not a crude oil, pipeline. Nobody seems to be aware that the oil won’t stay in the US. And all the tar and sand that has to be extracted from this sludge is going to get dumped all over Louisiana- thanks Canada! That itself is a huge disaster, before we even mention the nearly inevitable spill catastrophe the XL will eventually cause.
This is when the government can oppose the public- the public believes a fairy tale they’ve been told by oligarchs. By contrast, the public knows the facts about pot and the government seems not to. Minimum wage- debatable I guess, but probably not a disaster for business AFAICT.
Who believes that the U.S. will get the oil? From the first I heard of the XL pipeline, it was presented as a way to move oil by pipe instead of train, for export from southern ports. Jobs would be created by the building of the pipeline, and building new refineries; end the refineries would provide some permanent jobs. I never heard anyone say that the oil would be exported from Canada to the U.S.
Hey… Louisiana is washing away, right? So dumping the tailings (or whatever their called) is a good thing! They say, ‘Invest in real estate, because they’re not making any more land.’ Well, here they are! Canadian tar sands will rebuild Louisiana’s coastline! 
And if the fisheries are damaged? Louisianans (and Texans, and Mississipians) voted for that! Pollution is the Will of the People! Why do Liberals hate FREEDOM[sup]®[/sup]? As long as politicians keep their government hands out of FEMA and Medicare and VA entitlements, the former fisher-folk will have money to live on and not even have to work for it!
Conversely, the Republicans won the election that puts them in control of both Houses of Congress. They control the Congress and if the President wants to increase revenue, they are the ones he is going to have to deal with. If the Congress stands its ground on not wanting to increase revenue then there doesn’t seem to be much the President can do about it.
If tax reform is revenue neutral, as you say is the only true compromise on the subject, and some people who don’t currently pay will have to start, then taxes would go down on some people who currently are paying. Sounds like this would shift the burden downwards on the economic ladder.
I don’t know what new exemptions Clinton passed (and he could hardly have done it alone), but changing or adding brackets doesn’t really make things any more complicated. That’s the lie put forward by people who say they want a flat tax in the name of simplicity. The complexity of doing your taxes is in finding out exactly how much income you had, what with interest, dividends, deductions, exemptions, rental income, farm income, etc. Once you have that number it’s trivial to look it up in the table and find out what you owe. Adding brackets changes the numbers in the table, but the act of looking up the tax you owe is no more complicated than it was before.
There are parts of the tax code that could be changed to make the process simpler, but the brackets aren’t one of them.
Adding brackets makes things more complicated because to the shock of no one, politicians themselves don’t want to pay more taxes. Plus you have lobbyists going into a frenzy seeking exemptions, which are usually forthcoming.
What politicians pay, or what exemptions are sought by lobbyists, have nothing to do with how complicated it is to look up a number in a table. When figuring your taxes, you get a number (the complicated part) and look up another number in a table (incredibly simple). Two brackets or twenty makes no difference in terms of complexity.
There are two kinds of people who don’t pay income taxes:
Very few people want to increase income taxes on low income people (on the other hand they often support taxes which hit hard on lower income people–from cigarettes and alcohol to gasoline to social security taxes).
The controversy about income tax reform is about people in the second group.
Possibly, but when people complain about the 47% who don’t pay income tax, I don’t think it’s the losses/deductions folks they’re talking about.
Actually, there are SOME middle class people who pay no income taxes who should be. Having kids and a mortgage can wipe you from the tax rolls even if you have a pretty decent income in some cases.
However, I’m not talking about shifting the burden from the rich to these people, more a case of giving even poorer renters with no kids a break.
I’d REALLY like to see a cite for this.
First, you think 47% of Americans are too poor to pay taxes?
Second, math is your friend. If you have two kids, that’s $2000 taken directly off any tax liability you owe right there, if you actually owe any taxes. That’s the child tax credit. Then there are the regular deductions: $3950 for each dependent. So added to the standard deduction, we have no tax liability up to $28,200 already. Then you have the credit, which means that you owe no taxes until your tax liability goes over $2000. That gets you to almost $50,000 before you owe a dime. If you have a mortgage and itemize, you can go even higher before owing anything. Meanwhile. the single renter has tax liability starting at just over $21,000/yr.
Oh, and the child tax credit is refundable, so if a family of four makes $40,000, they actually have negative tax liability.
Cite using very simple back of the envelop math that I might have gotten wrong follows. It is a cite only for the claim that one can make a decent income and pay no federal income taxes. No comment on the claim that such people “should” be paying them.
Child Tax Credit is $1000 per 16-or-younger child. EITC is complicated (I used this calculator). I’ll assume a married couple with 4 children filing jointly.
If they made $48,500 in earned income, their EITC is $640 and their child tax credit is $4000.
Standard deduction is $12,200, so they have $35,800 in Adjusted income. Let’s assume for the sake of simplicity that it’s all taxable.
Tax on $36,300 is $4,571, which is completely wiped out by the credits.
Is a family of 6 with $48k in income qualify as making a “decent income”? Not sure. That’s kind of a value call. But they’re not obviously mired in poverty. If that income is from a stable job that includes health insurance, they’re probably doing better than the average American household.
I cherry-picked this example because I wanted to make it easy to find, and the child tax credit is easy to calculate. I have no idea how common such a thing is, but there could be many families with two parents and 2-4 kids and income in the $35-65k range who pay little to no federal income tax.