It's just too painful.
So, to sum up: in 2001, the GOP and a few democratic collaborators passed these huge tax cuts, and since they used the reconciliation process, they could only be temporary and had to expire in 2011.
2005-2008: Bush lobbied hard and long for Congress to make his signature tax cuts permanent. Democrats in Congress refused.
2009-10: The economy craters, deficits become a preeminent concern among voting Americans. Obama and Democrats hint that they might be willing to extend the tax cuts (only for the middle class), temporarily, so there is not a painful tax increase in a recession. While this is very expensive, it's not unreasonable as economic policy. The GOP insists that the tax cuts for the rich must also be extended. Democrats, already in their defensive crouch, punt on the issue till after the election.
November: Obama signals that he is willing to consider a temporary extension of the tax cuts for all, and that he is open to making the tax cuts on the middle class permanent. The GOP is not playing ball. They refuse to divorce the tax cuts from the rich from those from the middle class (for obvious reasons). They want them all permanently extended, or all of them temporarily extended until after the next presidential election.
Does anybody drawing breath right now think there is a chance in Hades that any of these taxes will be allowed to expire?
Never mind that extending them would be insanely irresponsible. The tax cuts for the rich alone would cost nearly a trillion dollars, and the whole package I think is priced at $3.8 trillion. What of the deficit? Republicans blithely say that tax cuts don't need to be paid for since they pay for themselves. That's bullshit, of course, because the GOP doesn't care about the deficit at all: They are nothing more than an anti-tax cult. Democrats are already quaking in their boots after the Nov 2 ass-whooping at the prospect of being blamed for an unprecedented $3.8 trillion tax hike.
So whether the taxes are made permanent now or extended for two years, they are permanent. The Dems had a chance in September to split them up and pass a slightly less irresponsible middle-class-only tax cut, but they lost it and as of today, George W Bush is finally victorious in the first ever legislative battle he undertook in January 2001.
I hate being a democrat.
1 comment:
Yeah, this is really frustrating. Democrats are so bad at politics it is just shocking.
I was reading about the debt ceiling on TPM. The answer is pretty obvious to me. Every single Democrat pledges not to raise the debt ceiling. The Republicans need to find some way to balance the budget. Make the fucking Republicans raise the debt ceiling.
Then insist on spending cuts to pay for the tax cuts. Make the Republicans pass a budget that cuts taxes without paying for it.
In both cases, Obama "reluctantly" signs the bill because the Repubicans gave him no choice but to explode the deficit.
Play fucking hardball. Just for a minute.
And the next time same ass says that Obama is corrupt, or not a citizen, or a Muslim, or whatever, just have the CIA shoot that guy in the face. I'm sick of belonging to the party of good idea bad politics wimps.
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