Maybe I am a poor judge of the mood of the electorate, but it seems to me that people are pissed off right now. And I don’t think they are pissed off that those people living on Staten Island who make more than a quarter million dollars a year in gross income are paying too much in taxes. I don’t think people are looking to the government to extend the tax cuts that the well-to-do received under President Bush. I know that the populist mood of the country is a bit inchoate and not necessarily logically consistent, but a common theme of anger is that we’re running deficits that are too big. Since no one wants to pay for our government, it seems only natural that most people would support making people who make over $250,000 a year pay for it.
Yet, once again, we have a bunch of Democrats who don’t want to change the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. They say it will be a tough sell. Maybe it will be, I don’t know. However, I think most people want to see financial services workers drawn and quartered, not extended more tax breaks. Is it me, or is everyone in Washington friggin’ crazy?
lemme put it this way….I personally am convinced that the nonstop dumping of snow on Washington that is forecast to continue through the week is a modern day Noah’s flood, i.e., God’s way of obliterating this dysfunctional government before it does any further damage.
I completely agree, Booman, and I’m what a lot of liberals call “a sell-out” in this area (banking, finance, taxes, etc).
Stop complaining, you cowards. It’s not a tough sell:
“The Bush tax cuts have been one of the largest contributors to our deficit. While you folks here on Main Street have been hurting, the biggest bank CEO’s and people on Wall Street have been getting these tax cuts and pocketing the money, without providing you with jobs.”
Stand your fucking ground, whiners.
They are not crazy,
they are corrupt.
nalbar
Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt, corrupt, corrupt! Gack!
If we didn’t have the corruption, everything else would be about infinitely more solvable.
The Dems don’t want to raise taxes on the people who fill the majority of their campaign coffers. It’s just that simple.
And I wonder how many people here donate money to their own state’s senate and congressional candidates?
It’s pay for play. The rich are paying, and getting what they pay for.
The mood of people is something like “if they’re going to keep wasting it, why should we keep paying taxes when the big guys are making out like bandits.”
It’s the frustration of thinking that money will ever not talk in DC. So if that’s the case, cutting off the source of that money by cutting taxes makes a lot of sense to ordinary people.
That’s the “logic” of the people. The “logic” of Congress is something else. Keeping the tax cuts keeps the deficits which puts pressure on eliminating entitlements so that when Medicare and Social Security are gone these anti-tax Democrats can get re-elected.
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Rep. John Murtha of Pa. dies at 77
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."For Dems, pretty much anything is a tough sell. Somehow the beltway culture seems more virulent in Dems than the other side. They appear to really believe that the citizens care about Senate rules and prerogatives, that they hate and fear anything that can be called class warfare as long as it’s focused on the lower end of the hierarchy, that they believe wealth and power flows to those who most deserve it, that they don’t care if anything gets fixed as long as it fails bipartisanly.
So yeah, they’re frigging crazy and worse. The Dems in a hallucinatory way and the Reps psychopathically. I think we’ve reached the Johm Wayne Gacy House tipping point — the DC ground is so cursed that our only survival play is to turn it into a museum and start over someplace else. Sad that nobody but a few teabaggers feels the same way.
Not freaking crazy – it’s a mix of freaking stupid, and freaking corrupt.
Letting the Bush Tax Cuts expire is political GOLD for the Democratic Party. It’s not a tax increase. IT’S NOT A TAX INCREASE. It’s repealing giant tax breaks handed to the richest 1% of our country, without being paid for. Bush basically subsidized being rich in this country, paid for on the backs of the middle class, and letting these tax breaks expire, and being vocal as all hell about it, is the best thing Dems can do.
Everyone still hates Bush. These tax breaks can EASILY be framed as part of the problem that got us into the economic mess we’re in – the debt, the deficit, and the overall economy. The Democrats should be screaming “NO MORE TAX BREAKS FOR THE WEALTHY!” all over DC. And they should fucking DARE the GOP to defend the Bush Tax Breaks for the Wealthy.
I’m pretty damn sure that having Republicans defending a) Bush, b) Tax Breaks for Rich People, and c) Bigger deficits/debt, is exactly what Dems would want in an election year.
This is one we can boil down to a bumper sticker and so I will:
“TAX GREED”
They’re quite rational, unfortunately – their prospects for re-election are more dependent upon the good graces of financial services workers than the whims of the masses.
It is hard because a significant percentage of the population who make less than $100K a year are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that their financial fortunes are inextricably intertwined with those making a gazillion dollars a year. In their mind there is absolutely no way that something as modest as a return to the tax rates of the Reagan years on wealthiest of the wealthy will not be directly applied to their wages in a proportional way.
And the politicians, who live and die politically by the support of the wealthy in this country, have absolutely no reason to argue otherwise with that part of their constituency.
I know that the populist mood of the country is a bit inchoate and not necessarily logically consistent, but a common theme of anger is that we’re running deficits that are too big.
Common theme of anger by whom? You know this comes up every time there is a Democratic President, right? Where was Pete Peterson when Dubya was spending like a drunken sailor? People are only worried about the deficit in as much as they hear the empty headed fools on the BoobTube talking about it.
What’s to sell? The expiration is AUTOMATIC! All the Senate Dems have to do is NOTHING! This should be easy for them. They have demonstrated all year their skill at doing nothing.
yeah, but they actually don’t want to let them ALL expire. Obama explicitly campaigned on only letting the $250,000 and up expire, and so they have to break the top bracket in two and exempt the lower brackets. Something has to pass.
ok, we got that.
but why isn’t this the perfect issue to use the reconciliation process on? it’s part of the budget package, it’s not attackable thru the byrd exemption…as l understand it, and it’s revenue positive.
why all the sturm und drang? this ought to be a slam dunk for the democRATs, and it’d go a long way with main street and the base back in to the fold.
it’d go a long way with bringing main street and the base back in to the fold.
preview is my friend…ohmmmmmmmm
The Bush tax cuts had peanuts for working people. It’s like that Obama $800 tax cut, no one noticed it on their pay checks.