Tag: tax cuts

Since all the evidence says that elections depend on the rate of change of unemployment, not its level, this is actually bad news for Obama: he’s setting himself up for an economic stall in the months leading into the 2012 election.

Paul Krugman, caught in the act of being exactly right. Couple this with the decision to let these Bush tax cuts expire in an election year again, and you’ve got recipe for disaster.
On what planet do these (so called) Democrats live? Do they expect to learn from the messaging disaster they perpetrated in the ten year leadup to this battle? Nothing I’ve seen from anybody, dog catcher up to President, has shown me that they have any chance of even budging the conversation, much less crafting a winning electoral message on this in the face of a still-stagnant economy and ~10% unemployment come 2012.
Obama’s determination to be the “next Carter” is really remarkably strong. I’d say he’s one killer rabbit away from being little more than a punch-line.
Get out there and fight for something, anything. What is so hard to understand about that? Why is it so terrifying for them? This is why they fail.

Right on, Kevin Drum. Implicit here is what nobody ever seems to say: if your taxable income is $250,001, you will see tax increase only on that last one dollar. You still get the tax break on the first $250K, just like every single other American. Compare that to the GOP plan (red portion of bars). Utter and indefensible lunacy.

And yet The Democrat is absolutely getting his clock cleaned on this.

I don’t see any possible repercussions to this fecklessness and timidity in the face of a fight on which you hold the economic, moral, and public-opinion high grounds once we get to the real fight early next year on the debt ceiling.

I’m delighted to hear the eloquence of the Senator from New York. And as I was listening to him I was reminded that the people — most of the people whose taxes he is trying to raise live in New York. I mean they’re not in Tennessee, we’re a relatively low income state. So I admire him for his courage on — that’s almost a tax earmark, you know, to — to be so specific that we’re gonna raise taxes on just a small number of people, most of whom live on Wall Street in New York.

Lamar! Alexander, (R, TN) letting some truth leak out. Expect a tearful retraction later today in which he details how tax hikes on the richest 2% will only take low wage, non-union jobs away from people in Tennessee.
Source: politicalcorrection.org

What Digby Said

Paul Begala: Yes but I do think his point about capitulating [and just offering up a freeze on federal pay] rather than negotiating is a valid one with this president. The pay freeze is probably a good idea but should have come out of negotiation. What do the Republicans give, when the president gives…
Gloria Borger: Why not give something first though? People don’t like government and this is an easy gimme for the president.
Begala: What are the Republicans proposing? Then you get it on the Republicans turf. Why don’t you say I’ll freeze federal pay and cut this in return for this and that program but you guys need to come with taxes on the rich at least say people who make over a million bucks don’t get a tax cut. My Lord …
Borger: Well maybe there’s something else he can negotiate.
Digby: I’m sure there is. Why not throw in debtor’s prisons? It wouldn’t be enough to totally appease [the Republicans], but it would go a long way toward proving they are “responsible.”

WHY THEY FAIL

[Axelrod said that] separating out different categories of tax cuts now – extending some without extending others – is politically unrealistic and procedurally difficult

God almighty Christ is there a clearer possible enumeration of why this administration is failing in the eyes of the public? This sentence alone should cost Axelrod his job. Period
Procedurally difficult? How? They all expire at the end of the year. You write a law enacting the sub-$250k part. You put it to a vote. It passes or it doesn’t. We’re meant to believe this is too hard? Yes, it’s “politically unrealistic” because Republicans will oppose it. THAT’S WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO DO, YOU FUCKING IMBECILE. You want to force them to a) take a hard position publicly -or- b) genuinely compromise with you and your still giant majorities and continue only the sub-250k cuts. Instead, after the events since 2008, you apparently still believe it’s best to begin negotiations from the GOP position and then see what sensible add-ons they want once this thing hits the floor. And you wonder why the public loses faith and doesn’t turn out to vote you and yours back in?
Do you seriously expect me to believe that you just do not understand politics at any level? That you are that dense? Or are you just suffering from an overtight necktie? Your job is to help us; not to fuck us up. Does that seem clear to you? I know I’m the one out here “on drugs,” but still. Statements like this makes me think maybe life under our Tea Klan theocratic overlords would, if nothing else, at least be more sensible from a beliefs-vs-governing-stance viewpoint than anything I’ve heard emitted from the raging shitspew that’s been coming out the maw of the national Democrat since November 2nd.

Really, really execrable. Just the worst, most defeatist, circular-firing squad shit I’ve seen coming out of this administration ever. Why not just go into the Rose Garden with Biden and abdicate the day Boehner is named Speaker and make him President? For life, if possible.

Honestly, if this is the way you plan to govern in opposition you may as well just cede the whole thing right off the bat.

[END BLOODRAGE]

WHY THEY FAIL

If Obama stood there and said ‘Republicans lied to you and now we’re going to put those lies to the test" would it be any worse for him?

Peter Daou
Nope. In fact, this is the one and only way to defeat them over the next two years. A few tweaks around the edges on Daylight Savings Time start dates and such aren’t going to pull voters any more than a year long sausage making festival over a bill that won’t enact until 2014 did.
Issue one had better be “Extend the Tax Cuts for Bottom 99%, but Not Top 1%.”

In a New York Times/CBS News Poll last month, fewer than one in 10 respondents knew that the Obama administration had lowered taxes for most Americans. Half of those polled said they thought that their taxes had stayed the same, a third thought that their taxes had gone up, and about a tenth said they did not know. As Thom Tillis, a Republican state representative, put it as the dinner wound down here, “This was the tax cut that fell in the woods — nobody heard it.”

What if a president cut Americans’ income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed?(via southpol)

OR:

This is why they fail.

Source: The New York Times

Here’s an idea: MAKE THEM VOTE

…the best way for Dems to nationalize the elections right now is for Congress to hold a vote on whether to extend the middle class tax cuts. If Dems did this, it would reinforce the national strategy that Dems already have in place: Making the case that a vote for the GOP is a vote to return to the Bush policies that ran the economy into the ground.

Indeed, we’re finally seeing polling evidence that voters are beginning to buy the core Dem message that the GOP wants nothing more than a rapid restoration of Bush’s policies. Is it an accident that this is happening right when the debate over the Bush tax cuts is dominating the news? Doubtful. And holding a vote on whether to extend the middle class tax cuts would dramatize the contrast between the national parties even more cleanly, forcing lawmakers to go on record choosing between Obama tax policy and Bush tax policy. Put simply, there is no better way of driving home the Dems’ core message than to hold this vote.

Here’s an idea: MAKE THEM VOTE

To the Mondale-Phone!

Ezra Klein, 2010:The argument for taxing people who make more than $250,000 isn’t that they’re bad people, and it isn’t that they won’t notice the tax increase. It’s that we’ve got a very large budget imbalance, and we’re going to need to do a lot of things to correct it. Taxes on the rich have dropped even as the incomes of the rich have skyrocketed. So one of the obvious things to do is update the tax code to correct for that drift. But eventually, we’ll need to do much more than just increases taxes on the rich, and though politicians have tried to sell this one as a change that most Americans won’t notice and needn’t worry about, eventually, they’re going to have to start talking about changes that people will notice, and should worry about.
Walter Mondale, 1984: By the end of my first term, I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two-thirds. Let’s tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.
Lemkin, 2010: Oh for those heady, brutally honest days of the first Mondale administration.