Republicans achieve top goal in Obama tax-cut plan link You're a fool Obama. Be it from naivety or idealism, a giant fool regardless.
I believe that the rich should pay just about all of the money it takes to run the government because of the writings of Thomas Jefferson, among other Founding Fathers.
that's deep, bro "just about all the money"? What's the stat on that? Doesn't the top 1% already pay something like 25-30% of the nation's taxes, today?
If you believe that increasing aggregate demand helps spur employment to meet that demand, then yes it should work.
Both extremes are up in arms right now and it's laughable. I'm not happy about the rich keeping their 3% tax break (I'd rather temporarily pay more taxes to help with our deficit than some of these fat cats with granny and pappy oil money and no responsibility), but you just can't raise taxes on the ever-growing lower and ever-shrinking middle classes right now. Wingers will be pissed about more spending in the extended unemployment benefits. So Obama kept tax cuts!! There goes one Tea Bagger talking point!!
Slash the pentagon budget!!!!! Nobody has the balls to stand up to them though. Hope, Change. Empty slogan for just another hollow suited puppet whose strings are being pulled by corporate interests and elitists. We will never be able to elect a man 'of the people' because every politician's soul is bought and paid for by the self interests they serve. Why not make a compromise in this case of enacting the 3% on people with earnings over 750k? Idiots.
Ezra Klein looks for the silver lining... Can the White House win in 2012 by losing on the Bush tax cuts now? The compromise the White House is negotiating on the Bush tax cut is looking more and more like the White House's opening gambit in the 2012 campaign. The White House has stopped negotiating for ideal -- or even acceptable -- tax policy and moved to negotiating stimulus policy. The tax cuts for income over $250,000 will pump about $100 billion into the economy over the next two years. It's not the most stimulative way to spend $100 billion, but it's more stimulative than not spending it, or than raising taxes. And it won't be alone. The deal isn't done, but right now, Democrats look likely to get a 13-month extension of both unemployment insurance and many of the tax breaks built into the stimulus (Making Work Pay, the bump in the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, the business tax breaks and so on). That totals about $180 billion over two years. So if the White House gets the deal that the early reports suggest are close -- and that they seem to think they'll be able to get -- this is a two-year stimulus package that approaches $300 billion. [Update: Just to be clear, that's $300 billion for tax cuts for income over $250,000, and tax extenders. Add in the rest of the tax cuts -- which I left out because they're already at consensus -- and it's closer to $750 billion. So the $300 billion is the marginal cost over the tax cuts for income under $250,000.] In other words, rather than paring the tax cuts and the deficit back, they're making both larger. If you're of the mind that the economy needs all the extra help it can get right now -- and you should be -- this is a lot more extra help than anyone expected Republicans and Democrats would agree to give it. And from a political perspective, if you believe that what matters for elections is the economy -- and you should -- then it's worth it for the White House to lose news cycles in 2010 if it means adding jobs by 2012. That's the policy of the deal. The politics are similarly focused on the next election: Democrats are negotiating toward a two-year extension of the tax cuts. They've rejected a three-year extension. That means the next fight over the tax cuts will be part of the 2012 election. And the White House believes that an improved economy and a bigger deficit will make it much harder for Republicans to support extending tax cuts for the rich. If they try, that gives Democrats both a populist cudgel and a way to take hold of the deficit issue. The White House's problem is that they handled the politics of this argument so poorly in 2010 that their allies on the Hill don't trust them to do better in 2012. One Senate staffer summed up his reaction to the deal in one word: "Nausea." Another said the deal is fine -- but it was getting hard to trust the White House. "Will they actually have that fight in 2012?" He asked. "They dropped the ball this time around." The irony of the situation is that the White House may strike a better deal because they handled the politics so poorly. If they'd showed more backbone early on and publicly demanded that the Republicans extend a package of tax breaks from the much-hated stimulus bill, it might've made it impossible for Republicans to agree to anything of the kind. As it is, the White House defined an extension of the tax cuts for the rich as a loss for them -- and now they're going to extend those tax cuts, and lose. They were not playing for this outcome. But though they're coming out on the wrong side of the short-term politics and the wrong side of the tax policy, they may be coming out with a win on stimulus that no one expected, and that may ultimately matter much more for both the economy and Obama's reelection campaign.
It's also a joke that we should pay the same tax rates during a huge deficit as we did right after the tax bracket changes to adjust for a budget surplus.
Thinking non-partisan here for a moment, didn't Obama run on the idea that he would be someone who would compromise and work across the aisle? He got bashed by Republicans for allegedly not working across the aisle prior to the midterms, and now that he has lost political power and is negotiating and compromising he is being bashed by the left. The truth is, when people talk about wanting a president that is a uniter not a divider, what they really mean is they want a president who will do everything they want and nothing for the other side. It's just codeword for "I'm pissed that the last president represented the other team!"
He was brought on for change, when people don't see it, then he isn't exactly living up to his promise. I rather see his uniting act as a weakness, it's a sign that he doesn't really have a plan of his own, rather he wants an excuse when things eventually go wrong, "Hey I worked with both parties ideas, so I can't be blamed for it all". He had stated in his campaign for the presidency that he would NOT extend the Bush tax cuts. The rich havn't had it this good since just before the great depression. Also, its funny how the benefits for the poor is only extended 12 months, while the rich get a guarentee of 2 years. Don't know how people have bought into the idea that the trickle down affect is an optimal booster for the economy (according to most economist it's not effective).
