Cross posted from Rational Resistance.
The news is that Obama has capitulated to the Republicans, agreeing to extend tax cuts for the richest people in the country, take a pittance for unemployment, and actually cut funding for the Social Security Trust Fund.
The stated rationale for the tax cut proposal is that the tax cuts proposed and implemented by George W. Bush in 2001 are needed to create jobs. Uh-huh. The jobs we've been seeing for the last ten years under the tax policies in existence right now?
Yes, that's what they're saying.
What we do know is that the actual motivation for the R's is to make sure the richest people in the country continue to reap mind-boggling incomes and mind-boggling tax cuts.
And they'll screw the whole country to do it.
So here are a few facts about this “deal”:
1. If the current tax rates were what we need to create jobs they'd be creating jobs right now, but they're not.
2. American corporations are sitting on unprecedented supplies of cash, and they don't need tax cuts to get enough money to hire more workers. They're not going to hire more workers until they think economic conditions will support them.
3. The real job creators are the people who spend their money. That especially means the people on unemployment, who spend every dime they get, and for this reason every dollar spent in unemployment benefits creates $1.61 in economic activity, better than almost every other mechanism for economic stimulus.
4. The deal includes a cut in the “payroll tax”. The people who have been attacking Social Security since the 1930's, and supported Bush's plan to kill the program off by privatizing it, were able to get Obama to agree to a cut in the payroll tax. This means that every Republican's argument that Social Security is headed toward bankruptcy just got a little stronger.
No more negotiating with terrorists. Call your congressional delegation and tell them to vote no on the tax cut extension.
They’re dragging out the old, frequently debunked argument that tax cuts for the rich translate to jobs. I can’t believe that still has legs anywhere in this desperate country.
1. The raw deal does nothing for anyone who has been out of work more than 99 weeks. They still get no additional benefits.
2. The raw deal only extends your benefits to a maximum of [99 weeks] – [the number of weeks you’ve already been unemployed]. If you’re at week 98, you still lose your benefits next week.
3. If your state is one with lower unemployment, you still don’t qualify for the maximum. You’ll get only the number of tiers currently allowed in your state, as determined by your state’s official U3 unemployment number.
4. As people surpass the number of tiers for which they’re eligible, they will fall out of the U3 numbers, artificially lowering the unemployment rate in their state, thus reducing the number of tiers allowed in their state, thus reducing the maximum number of weeks others in their state can get.
5. The wealth hoarders and unscrupulous speculators have just been given the equivalent of 158* weeks of additional unemployment benefits for every single one of the currently unemployed 15 million people. (*seat of the pants calculation, because the exact dollar amounts were all in swirly rumor land when I pulled out the calculator. Whatever it turns out to be, it will be substantial and ridiculous when compared to the suffering of millions that will result from extracting so much money from the productive economy. The raw deal doesn’t simply extend Bush’s ill-advised cuts, it also cuts capital gains and inheritance taxes.)
The middle class will have to foot the bill for the increased taxes to fill in the hole, and will suffer from the cuts to things like Pell grants and student loans that will result from the budget cuts that will now be rammed through.
In addition, the middle class (or what’s left of it) is the group that will lose social security in a meaningful way (the poor get no significant benefits and the wealthy don’t need them) when the massively enlarged deficit must be addressed. Never mind the fact that Social Security is self-funded and not part of the budget, and thus can’t have any effect on the deficit. The middle class will pay far, far more as a result of today’s betrayal than most seem to anticipate.
And in the mean time, the fuckers who ruined everything will be laughing all the way to their investment bookies to start betting on the next economy-wrecking bubble.
We’ve lost our president. He is now, for all intensive purposes, a republican. We are on our own now.
Blessed are the Rich for they shall inherit the Earth. Yea, they will trickle down on worthless creatures here below. Let us offer thanks for their Golden Trickle.
Verily, it is Justice that Charity shall flow without limit from their Great Corporations to those they deem worthy and it shall be called Free Speech.
Surely Tax Cuts will flow without limit to the Rich on high. By their greed (which is good) and their net worth shall ye know them, but let none say no unto them.
As for the rest, the Golden Trickle shall flow from their toes up to their nose. The poor shall tread water in the Golden Trickle until their unemployment life preservers fail. The old shall huddle in leaky Social Security lifeboats until they too sink. Rumors of the Coming of the Golden Trickle shall heal the sick. The children shall learn to read the Tax Code and the library paste from its pages shall be called School Lunch. The Great Corporations shall build debtor’s prisons where foreclosed homes once stood to house the disenfranchised middle class until they are kicked off the island into the churning Sea of Golden Trickle.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Grief!
Back in the day, Pete Rouse, Obama’s Chief of Staff, and I were friends. He worked in the office next to mine (he for an Iowa Congressman and me for Jim Jeffords). Pete used to joke that, when he would have parties, he would want to rent me out as the token Republican to “sort of be there like a potted plant.”
Now, if I were to run into Pete today, I would say to him, “Hey, how does it feel to work for a Republican yourself?” Quite frankly, although I am no longer a Republican, I am fortunate to have worked for some fine public servants who were: Dick Mallary, Jim Jeffords, Bob Stafford, Dick Snelling and John Anderson. I would put any of them up along side Obama. I voted for the guy but that was largely because I could not stomach the McCain/Palin alternative.
Someone once told me, “It is better to shoot for the moon and miss than aim at a skunk and connect.” Well, Obama and too many of the temporizing Democratic “centrists” like Kent Conrad, et. al., have become excellent skunk hunters, and the stench is obvious.
Think on this one:Obama couldn’t make a tax cut for 98% of the people a successful issue for himself or the Democrats!
The New York Times says today the deal (cave) suggests a new path for Obama .I am afraid they have it wrong. It is not new at all; it is similar to his path followed on health care.He may now be running on the path but it’s the same path. Truly amazing though is that he didn’t even kick the can down the road past the 2012 election.
Like a zombie, the Bush tax cut issue will return from this cave.
C’mon, take a deep breath, find your happy place, and get a grip. The UI extension is extremely important for millions of people. The Payroll Holiday is a Good Thing (it’s a regressive tax, cutting it helps lower incomes and thus is stimulative, and General Funds will be used to make up the diff in the Trust).
Since the deficit is the least important issue we face today, take the deal and don’t worry about the cost of the rich tax cuts. Seriously. Celebrate the positive things in this because we did, in fact, get something out of it. Frame it as a Democratic victory for the little guy.
Please, we don’t need hyperbolic rhetoric that the Right uses. Just call them heartless assholes.
Of course Obama and the Democrats aren’t worthless but they should be worth more.The Republican marching oreders to defeat Obama have been in place since he won or even beginning earlier (Hillary mentioned a right wing conspiracy years ago) and they (Dems) still act shocked,shocked each time the Republicans don’t act in what is expected to be good faith.
The real job creators are the people who spend their money. That especially means the people on unemployment, who spend every dime they get, and for this reason every dollar spent in unemployment benefits creates $1.61 in economic activity, better than almost every other mechanism for economic stimulus.
There is retroactive UI extension for 13 months. That’s a year of stimulus in this very deal.
Can you say, “One term!”
for Bush, meet millionaires for Obama!
Here…
Obama’s personality is to be a conciliator. That’s what made him such an effective community organizer in the dismal south side of Chicago. Unfortunately, he’s substituted this for fighting and trying to conciliate with a party that wants to lynch him in a country where a sizable chunk of the population that put the gop back into the house majority probably wants them to lynch him. There is no compromise with these people; Obama forgot that and sold us down the river because he let himself be shoved into a position where he had to.