For an even rosier perspective, Andrew Sullivan thinks Obama suckered the Republicans:
Not only that, but Andrew Leonard at salon.com makes the case that the deal would only get worse if not passed now.
Pssst… have you been in a coma since the first week of November?
Come January, the Republicans are running the show in the House where tax bills originate. If they didn’t introduce a bill first… they’d do it seconds later… and it would be the one taken up.
Well since if they did nothing the taxes would revert back to where they were, it is not honest to call that a tax *hike *while at the same time saying you support a tax cut.
If it makes sense for you to call it a tax raise, go ahead. The deficit will cripple us if we don’t work on it. Letting the stupid Bush tax cuts expire like they were supposed to is fine. It will chop the deficit by 25 percent . In republican land that must be bad ,but it is not in the real world.
This already happened. It got filibustered twice in the senate 57 to 36.
Why is doing nothing the default position? Everyone knows that the Bush tax cuts are set to expire.
It’s purely playing word games, and possibly dishonest, to tell a person that their taxes will increase next year, but that they are receiving a tax cut. That is some serious wordspeak straight out of 1984.
If we need to raise taxes on the rich to reduce the deficit, then let’s be honest like gonzomax is being.
Yeah, 'cause that $70 billion or so a year we’ll get from letting the tax cut on the ‘rich’ is going to make all the difference to the deficit. 
But we wouldn’t want to play any word games or make any dishonest implications, right?
I will freely admit, however, that gonzo honestly believes that having the tax cuts on the ‘rich’ will solve all our woes and make everything right with the universe. The trouble isn’t his belief…
-XT
No, but it would ACTUALLY cut $70 billion from the deficit. At least gonzomax is making an honest statement instead of telling a man who makes $300k/yr that he is getting a tax cut when his bill goes up next year.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t agree with any increase in taxes, especially right now, but the argument that “even the rich get a tax cut” seemed especially atrocious to me.
I will speak for myself. I did not say that.
Have someone who can read explain to you letting the Bush tax cut die will cut the deficit by 25 percent and explain to them how that means I said that will solve everything. How dishonest can you be?
We are just beginning with our problems. Employment will not recover. it will get worse and worse. I don’t have answers, because the really rich make the decisions.
Cisco plowed 5 billion dollars into Chinese plants. The head of Cisco say" we are in the process of becoming a Chinese corporation". That is cutting edge technology and very desirable positions for educated people. IT, programming, everything involved in new technology gone from our shores.
Jack Welsh, when he was head of GE, said "Ideally , you want every plant on a large barge. Then you could throw the workers overboard and head for cheaper workers at a minutes notice. ’
The jobs are not coming back and more and more complex ones will go with them.
If you love your job and your company, you better expect that it is one sided.
Columbia Journalism Review This is who GE is.
You just accused me of being unable to read, and now you say I’m dishonest as well? So…I’m ignorant, can’t read AND a liar? checks forum Ah…to be sure.
Do you have a cite to back up your assertion that letting the Bush tax cuts run out on only the ‘rich’ is going to cut the deficit by 25%? Possibly one using small words so I can try and track it? Because, frankly, that sounds like complete fantasy to me. So…feel free to back up your assertions with a credible cite.
It MIGHT increase revenue by $70 billion…that’s a hell of a lot different than for sure cutting $70 billion from the deficit. Of course, gonzomax’s ‘honest’ statement is that it’s going to cut ‘25%’ from the deficit…something he asserts but has yet to back up. On the surface, it seems ridiculous that we would get that much money out of people making $250k/year…it would be literally hundreds of billions of dollars needed to do that (the deficit for 2010 is over a trillion dollars…25 percent would mean that we’d be getting in excess of $250 BILLION dollars a year out of a few percentage points difference in only the folks paying taxes on income over $250k/year…does that seem reasonable to you?).
Actually, the irony here is that I DO believe in a tax hike. I think the Bush tax cuts should be completely allowed to go away, and EVERYONE should pay more. Even with that I seriously doubt we are going to get gonzomax’s ‘25%’ decrease in the deficit, but it would be something…especially if we also cut government spending. What I object to is this left wing targeting of JUST the ‘rich’ for tax increases…especially when they moan about how this will cut the deficit while tossing in yet another large spending increase in the extension of unemployment benefits. That alone will eat up all of the extra money we get from simply allowing the taxes on the ‘rich’ to expire…and then some. I’m not saying I’m against those extension, mind, just that it’s fairly hypocritical.
-XT
When you lie ,you lie. I said letting the Bush Tax bill expire would result in a 25 to 30 percent reduction in the deficit.I did not say anything about just the Rich. have someone read post 24 to you. Then I suppose they will have to explain it to you too.
Letting the Bush Tax cut expire like they were supposed to. it that really that hard for you?
And when you violate forum rules, you are subject to a Warning.
Knock it off or you will be Warned.
That said, xtisme, he is correct that you changed the discussion regarding which tax cuts he was discussing by conflating his actual statement with jtgain’s interpretation of his intent.
Both of you be more careful in responding to other posts or making assumptions that errors are the result of malice instead of faulty reading.
[ /Moderating ]
Actually I felt bad about that exchange. It was classless and should not have been done. sorry.
Well Tom, gonzo, my appologies. Perhaps I do have some reading issues. I thought gonzo was talking strictly about the tax cut to the ‘rich’ but going back I see I may have been mistaken. I’d still like to see a cite to back up the assertions made, as they seem a bit far fetched, but I apologize for misunderhearing and not paying proper attention.
-XT
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/business/economy/03leonhardt.html I have read several article talking about the impact of letting the Bush Cuts expire. This one says in 10 years, the cuts could make us half way to a deficit economists think is sustainable. Half, just by letting them die. Then with spending cuts like stopping the Bush wars , we would be back in the surplus we had before Bush.
A tax raise for 10 years would also get us back faster. We need to do it.
http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2010/08/deficit-hawks-would-let-the-bush-tax-cuts-expire.html And here is an article claiming letting the tax cuts expire would drop the deficits 25 percent quickly.
You have a cite for that? I’m pretty sure that extending the unemployment benefits for a year costs about the same amount of money we’d get by simply letting just the $250K+ cuts expire, and is much smaller than what we’d take in if we let them all sunset.
You kbnow there were TWO votes to extend tax cuts for those making under $250K and for those making under $1 million and the Republicans voted them bgoth down. Why would you blame the Democrats for the failure of those making under $1 million from getting an extension of their tax cuts?
Because the Democrats are pansies