Now Jeb Hensarling wants Democrats offer up some Medicare cuts in exchange for tax revenues. It seems awfully convenient, doesn’t it? Republicans get to keep low taxes for rich people, weaken the social safety net and cut a bunch of ads blaming Democrats for higher taxes and less Medicare (though not in the same ad, lest it give the wrong impression). Democrats should tell them to piss off and eat the trigger. It will hurt (as intended) but a hundred times less than the ridiculous ‘deal’ that is on the table now.
And let the goddamn tax cuts expire already. At least put them on the table and make the GOP give something up if it wants to keep them so bad.
Kola Noscopy
Un-banned by the Cole.
Return greetings, salutations, and hugs to my haters.
I love you all and have missed you so.
NobodySpecial
I will repeat what I said earlier.
JC
So, it seems like a no-brainer to allow any Republican to dictate this. These ridiculous offers from the Rethug caucus.
Anyone have any visibility in regards to what democrats will actually do?
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
But making the GOP give up anything is unconstitutional, don’t you know?
Xecky Gilchrist
@NobodySpecial: That timeline is a bit odd. It has the rumors of the deal in the works LAST and the apologies for it first. (penultimate?)
Comrade Mary
Pelosi to Hensarling: You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
Special added bonus: Pelosi’s reply to Perry’s invitation to debate (from the TPM article above with the sadly censored title):
Brachiator
@JC:
Cave.
Tax cuts are locked in until 2012.
mk3872
Pretty darn obvious, isn’t it, that the “Super Committee” really knows that no “grand bargain” will occur and are instead just trying to make each other vote for things that will make them uncomfortable in the next election ??
geg6
@Brachiator:
As to you first comment, Nancy says no fucking way.
As to your second, locked in for another month and half isn’t much, is it?
JC
@NobodySpecial:
A post from Yglesias helps to confirm your scenario:
Only 41 senators, standing firm, and we can retire this nonsense about a debt issue.
41 Democratic Senators.
Or a veto from Obama.
And then, ONLY 34 SENATORS need to stand firm. As well as the House Democrats could stand firm.
It’s important that everyone here have NO BLINDERS ON.
If an effed up deal is signed, that puts ‘deficit reduction’ ahead of people, and that extends the Bush tax cuts – DEMOCRATS WILL HAVE GONE ALONG with it.
Democrats would have SANCTIONED it.
That is the truth – absolutely.
Mnemosyne
@NobodySpecial:
And then two days after that, it will turn out that the “cave” that everyone has been screaming about is actually a series of accounting tricks that don’t actually cut anything, but people like you will continue screaming about the horrible, horrible betrayal of … something.
Mnemosyne
@mk3872:
I think that’s been obvious from the beginning. What I think was not obvious to the Republicans is that, since they’re in charge of the House and are running the committee, they’re going to be made a whole lot more uncomfortable in the next election than the Democrats will.
JC
@Mnemosyne:
What are your thoughts on mine – or rather Yglesias’s – point about letting the Bush cuts expire?
Also – those ‘accounting tricks’ don’t actually attempt to solve the revenue disparity, or fix the inequality issue, but only put off the work to another day.
Samara Morgan
@JC: but O can still veto it, cant he?
JC
@Samara Morgan:
? I’m not sure of your point – I said that Obama could veto? What am I missing?
Mnemosyne
@JC:
I’m not sure how Yglesias can characterize a theory that requires a bare minimum of 72 Republican votes plus every single Democratic vote in the House as not needing “even a single Republican” to assent to it. Is he having trouble with basic math again?
We can’t solve the problem with the current Congress. It is impossible. There is no way in hell that a halfway acceptable plan would pass the Tea Party House. So, yes, it puts the work off to another day, but I’m not sure why you think that’s worse than what Boehner and his guys would come up with.
Schlemizel
WHAT!? You want the Democrats to show some spine & force the Rethuglicans to make an honest deal?
DREAMER
rikryah
tell the truth..
keep on telling it.
Brachiator
@geg6:
Even though money bills originate in the House, Senate Republicans have been the driving force behind the past tax deals. Every major item in the Small Business Jobs Act that the Republicans liked, passed last December, can be found in Senate draft proposals.
The tax cuts are locked in through Tax Year 2012. If Obama loses his re-election bid, making them permanent will be on the top of the GOP agenda. As a lame duck president, Obama would have no bargaining clout at all.
If Obama wins, the GOP will bargain an extension of the tax cuts in exchange for other expiring tax items, and continuation of the next phase of health care reform, especially the items not scheduled to take effect until 2014.
JC
@Mnemosyne:
Perhaps the point is not getting across. I’ll try again, maybe it’s in my presentation:
a. Current law is that the Bush tax cuts will expire.
b. If Obama is sent a bill where the Bush tax cuts are extended, he can veto it.
c. If he vetoes, then the Bush tax cuts will expire on schedule, unless his veto is overriden.
d. To override the veto, you need only 146 of the 192 Democrats to refuse to override the veto, along with 34 Democratic Senators to refuse to override the veto.
In this sense, the Democratic party – Senators and Congressmen SANCTION AND EMPOWER the extension of the Bush tax cuts.
And if they decide to stand firm against those tax cuts, the deficit issue goes away.
JC
Oh wait – good point above. The Bush tax cuts were already extended til end of 2012.
So the above should be amended to ‘if Obama wins in 2012’.
Otherwise, we should still require this of the 41 Democratic senators in 2012, which there will be at least 47.
Joel
@NobodySpecial: Or the democrats will tell the republicans to eat a bowl of dicks. Know it alls will, of course, continue knowing it all.
JC
Although – won’t the tax laws for 2013, be decided this year? Doesn’t the extension for 2013, have to be passed in this year, while Obama is president, even if lame duck?
How does that work exactly?
JC
@Joel: From your mouth to God’s ears.
JC
Another good take on the subject by Greg Sargent.
GVG
The last 2 big “caves” of the democrats to the insane radical GOP involved giving in on stuff we really disliked with the alternative being a catastrophe to the economy with lots of innocent ordinary people hurt, many of whom are still willfully unaware of how much danger they were in. This time I’m not aware of any nuclear overkill danger to us all so I think the Dems actually can hold the line.
Refusing to raise the debt ceiling would have wrecked the world economy…..being sane Democrats had to agree to almost anything.
If I’ve missed a danger, please let me know. I am worried about it, but I assume our doom enjoying media would have already let me know if there was such danger. terror=good ratings after all.
BC
@JC:
The tax cuts expire December 31, 2012. New Congress takes office the first week of January 2013. New Congress cannot extend tax cuts, which go away before they are sworn in. Obama will be president when tax cuts expire and has an enormous amount of leverage, whether he wins or not, since it is unlikely that Republicans can get 60 votes in Senate to make a new law to cut taxes in 2013. So I think the Republican new gambit is going to be to try to make them permanent before December 31, 2012.
Brachiator
@JC:
The Congress can send the president a tax bill whenever they like.
For the past few years, Congress has always been lazy about dealing with extensions of already passed legislation to deal with ongoing issues like the alternative minimum tax and expring tax provisions.
In 2010, a tax deal was not reached until December 16. I can’t see Congress doing anything major with respect to taxes in 2012 until after the presidential election. And no matter what happens, I would not be surprised to see them wait until December to try to get the best deal possible.
Worst case scenario would be the following. Obama loses the election, the Republicans take the House and the Senate, and get a “gentleman’s agreement” that Obama would go along with most of whatever they wanted, and allow an incoming president to take on major tax reform.
But yeah, Obama could approve or veto whatever came to him in 2012.
TheMightyTrowel
OT: I need to brag… about 30 minutes ago I gave Michael Portillo a brief, public lecture on US politics, in response to ridiculous ‘both sides do it’ platitudes. I also expanded a bit on Romney’s terrible record as MA gov and how even though i want Obama to get re-elected, to characterise him as “the most left wing president in history” as Portillo had just done was demonstrably tosh. I had a similar talk several years ago with Lord William Waldegrave… next on the list: Thatcher.
MikeJ
@TheMightyTrowel: Don’t waste time on Thatcher. I’m planning on a feast of asparagus and beer for a high volume of stinky pee for her grave.
Judas Escargot
@JC:
I’ll be a one-note Johnny again: Assume that if the GOP gets the WH/House/Senate trifecta, there will be no more filibuster. Gone, kaput, finito.
Contemplate the damage they’ll be able to do from 1/2013 – 1/2015 with such absolute power. Then fight accordingly.
TheMightyTrowel
@MikeJ: On my bucket list: picket thatcher’s funeral.
Mino
Remind me: Whose turn is it in the Senate to tell us we can’t have nice things?
JC
BC, Brachiator, thanks.
Lesson is, tax law is very very important.
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, set the stage for the elimination of debt in the 90’s (that plus a roaring economy).
The Bush tax cuts, plus wars and Medicare D, blew up the budget and created the deficit threat we have today (hyped as it is).
Democrats have to start standing firm on tax issues. They have to.
geg6
@Mino:
Always and forever, it is Joe Lieberman’s. In fact, they should just call it “The Full Lieberman.”
That fucker can’t be gone soon enough.
agrippa
@Mnemosyne:
“And then two days after that, it will turn out that the “cave” that everyone has been screaming about is actually a series of accounting tricks that don’t actually cut anything, but people like you will continue screaming about the horrible, horrible betrayal of … something.”
That is about how it will work out.
Some people just like to holler:
“Nous sommes trahis!
Sauve qui peut!”
JC
@Judas Escargot:
Well, hopefully it doesn’t come to that. But considering what happened in Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, I you could well be correct, since that is the ‘next generation’ of Republican power. Will be another case of huge buyers remorse.
For now, if Obama wins re-election, we get the ACA, for all it’s faults, cemented in. And then Obama can take the hit for blocking the extension of the Bush tax cuts.
That is the scenario I prefer.
Brachiator
@BC:
Problem is, it’s not just a matter of dealing with the Bush tax cuts. There are other expiring provisions that have to be dealt with, so something will have to get done before the end of 2012, or else some middle class tax breaks will also expire. The enhanced American Opportunity Tax Credit for folks in college or grad school, for example, is set to expire in 2012. Some kind of deal will have to be made. If Obama wins re-election, and if there is a shift to the Democrats in Congress, he will have a much stronger hand even if he decides to go for a veto over a stubborn GOP resistance.
Also, I expect the Bush Tax cuts to become a presidential campaign issue. The GOP candidate will obviously spout, “vote for me, and I promise to make the tax cuts permanent.”
The obvious retort is, “If you vote for the GOP, the 1 percent is going to make the rest of us the none percent.”
Calouste
@MikeJ:
You might not want to waste time on explaining Tatcher something because she is as senile as a goldfish.
JC
@Brachiator:
Aren’t most of those small beans, in the scheme of things? Don’t the numbers of the Bush tax cuts, dwarf the other tax issues?
The money to fund SS and rising Medicare/Medicaid costs, have to come from SOMEWHERE, right? Either that, or people stop getting covered, start dying, or the US goes way in the red.
Start with the biggest impact, and what has turned out to be one of the more maliciously evil laws designed – the Bush tax cuts.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@NobodySpecial:
You seem to have repeated that many times in the past three years…
So far, so true.
.
.
Brachiator
@JC:
No.
For example, the Mortgage Relief Act prevents homeowners who lose their homes through foreclosure from having to include Cancellation of Debt Income as taxable income. This provision is set to expire in 2012.
Do you think that the housing crisis will have ended by then?
The expiration of other middle class credits would be a de facto tax increase.
And this is without considering what the federal budget might look like.
superluminar
@TheMightyTrowel:
OK that’s awesome – where did it take place BTW? I hope it will be on TV! I still have fond memories of 1997…
JC
@Brachiator:
Well, I see what you mean in terms of the important of certain income being FAIR, but I think the numbers still favor my conjecture.
Total income was $2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if incomes had stayed at 2000 levels, based on the tax cuts.
That is more money that what you are talking about, in the future as well, just from a numbers perspective.
Brachiator
@JC:
It’s not just about numbers. Again with the Mortgage Relief Act, for example.
Taxpayer has income from a pension she cashed in of $45,000 after being laid off. She has COD income on a foreclosed home of $275,000. Her tax liability jumps from $9,500 to $91,862 (using 2011 tax rates).
This is one of the reasons why the Supercommittee is such a dumb idea. The president and the Congress can’t just look at aggregate numbers on a spreadsheet. Tax policy has real, tangible impact on the lives of people.
JC
Well, that clearly makes sense.
I would say handle that issue, as it is, separately, and demand a vote on those, while still leaving the Bush tax cuts expiration deadline as current law.
So are you saying that potentially the Rethugs would BLOCK – not do – some of the obvious things that must be done, to fix situations like this – unless they get an extension of the tax cuts?
Would they play that cynical game again?
If so, Obama and Democrats can pin that on the GOP.
TheMightyTrowel
@superluminar: Not televised. It was after a talk at the University where I work. But there was an audience.
JC
Another article on this, another choice quote.
I’ll say again, it’s worthwhile not to muddy the waters.
DEMOCRATS SANCTION BUSH TAX CUTS, if they choose to extend them.
The power is THEIRS, to stop it.
No plea for special circumstances.
No whine that ‘Republicans forced them’.
To extend, or make a deal with Republicans, is a betrayal of both the regular people, and the country’s finances in general.
Bart
What about letting all the Bush tax cuts expire gradually over a period of five years, beginning in two or three years?
They could even make the start date dependent on some economic indicator; but definitely beginning within five years.
No one of importance
@TheMightyTrowel:
Heh, Portillo. Now there’s an ex-gay you can believe in….
I still treasure the night he lost his seat (to an out gay man too!) The look on his face was pure gut-churning shame. And he deserved every microsecond of it.
No one of importance
@TheMightyTrowel:
I’d settle for taking a shit on her grave.