It’s nice of J-Rube to try to help the Republicans but her advice sucks. Before I say a single word about her 10 tips for the Tan Man, I want to make this clear: the Republicans cannot win this fight in the court of public opinion. We just had an election. The president campaigned on what he is asking for now. The public has seen enough inflexibility from the Republicans and they will never blame the president over the Republicans if we go over the fiscal cliff and begin to suffer economic problems as a consequence.
That is why Rubin’s first piece of advice is so dumb. She wants Republicans to complain about the consequences for national security if we go over the fiscal cliff. But telling people that going over the cliff will be awful and get them killed is a very bad idea if the people are going to blame you for going over the cliff. This is why the Democrats should stop downplaying the consequences of going over the cliff and start hyping the consequences. The more the public fears the cliff, the more pressure they will bring to bear on the Republicans and the more blame they will place on them later if no deal is reached.
Rubin’s second piece of advice is to avoid talking about the filibuster reforms Harry Reid is kicking around and keep focused on the White House. The problem with this is that the Republicans can’t win in a battle with the White House, so focusing on them is unhelpful.
Her third piece of advice is to talk about the job loss and possible recession that could result if we go over the cliff, but that is the same stupid argument she made about national security.
Her fourth piece of advice is to widely disseminate a chart that shows the Republicans’ plan and the Obama plan side-by-side so people can compare them. This would be a good idea if the Republicans’ plan didn’t amount to a huge giveaway to the rich and a massive attack on middle class retirement security. To even make such a chart meaningful would require the GOP to spell out the agony they have planned for working people, and that could be quite illuminating. But it would not be helpful at all for the Republicans’ cause.
Rubin’s fifth piece of advice is to badmouth the president’s plan. Sorry, but the Republicans are going to get blamed if no deal is struck, so no one cares about any potential shortcomings of the president’s plan.
Her sixth piece of advice is so stupid that I am going to quote it in full:
6. Reiterate that Republicans will increase taxes on the wealthy. By removing deductions and lowering rates, Republicans’plan, just like the Simpson Bowles plan, will have the rich pay more but without rate hikes that act as a drag on the economy.
She wants you to believe that rate hikes are a drag on the economy. It’s not the money. It’s the rate hikes. If you pay more in taxes but you have a lower marginal rate, this somehow is not a drag on the economy. If you pay less in taxes but have a higher marginal rate, this somehow slows the economy down. In any case, Boehner’s proposal would result in much higher taxes and fees as a percentage of income for the middle class than the rich. So, this advice is basically nothing more than advocacy for bald-faced lying. It’s the best advice she has provided so far.
Rubin’s seventh piece of advice is to invite the president to a budget summit similar to the health-care summit of 2009 and have Paul Ryan confront him with…what? Paul Ryan just lost the election. Does Rubin think people want to watch Paul Ryan lecture the president about the budget? Is she high? In any case, the president does the inviting. This advice is for dunces.
Her eighth piece of advice is to start running ads against vulnerable Democratic senators who will be facing reelection in 2014. We saw how great those ads worked during the election. Karl Rove lost every race he spent money on. In any case, what would these ads say? That the Republicans’ refusal to raise marginal tax rates is going to get everyone killed right after it costs them their job? That they won’t make a deal because they want to hold the economy hostage again and cause another downgrade in our credit rating? While J-Rube is running ads, Team Obama will be unleashing its army of organizers.
Her ninth piece of advice is to explain that going over the cliff will cause many members of our armed services to be laid off and that troops in the field will lack some basic equipment. Sorry, but you are going to be blamed for that so you probably don’t want to highlight it.
And her tenth and final piece of advice is to not draw any false lines in the sand but, at the same time, to leave no room for hope that the Republicans will cave on tax rate hikes. So, in effect, she is saying that we are going to go over the cliff because the Republicans will not flinch. And that is what she is advising.
I have more succinct advice for the Republicans. Cut your losses.
The plan that President Obama released prior to the election for the spending cuts that he will make should the sequester be triggered explicitly exempts military pay and benefits from cuts and cuts other defense budget categories by roughly 8%. Any officer or civilian defense manager who can’t cut 8% without endangering the mission should be fired. Most likely most of them have the necessary funds to keep going already squirreled away.
The fundamental premise is not true. No matter that if it happened it would point back to Republican intransigence.
She wants you to believe that rate hikes are a drag on the economy. It’s not the money. It’s the rate hikes. If you pay more in taxes but you have a lower marginal rate, this somehow is not a drag on the economy. If you pay less in taxes but have a higher marginal rate, this somehow slows the economy down.
This really is a huge talking point among wingnuts and I have to admit that I’m not 100% sure why. Oh, I get that if they can get agreement in principle to lower rates but eliminate deductions their plan is to do it in a way that wildly favors the rich. That much is obvious. But I’m still confused about two things:
1) Why does this have so much appeal to the average wingnut? I’m guessing that this is like the Flat Tax idea. Wingnuts love it, but every time I’ve asked a wingnut (politely, of course), what they meant by this it was clear that they really were imagining a Simple Tax – no deductions, carry-overs, credits, depreciations, etc. Of course, you can have a Simple Tax without a flat rate structure and a Flat Tax without extreme simplification, but the wingnut think tanks have very successfully merged the two in the minds of the wingnuts.
If this is true, then what’s more important to understand is that this is exactly like the way the wingnuts imagine that half of the adult population is drawing welfare and that half of their taxes are going to Obama’s brothas in the hood. It’s a completely distorted view of reality (I know, obviously). They must be imagining that they will pay less under such a tax plan and thus imagining that somehow it’s the poor folks who are reaping all the benefit from those deductions and loopholes.
2) Why are the rich Republicans pushing so hard for this? Oh, I know, they think they’ll get lower taxes, but realistically it’s only the upper middle class who’ll benefit from lower top rates (and the GOP already signaled how much they care about that group when they offered to throw them under the bus by converting their tax rates from marginal to flat in order to protect the ultra-rich). The Romney class pays a very tiny amount of their taxes at the highest rates now – they use all those supposedly dastardly loopholes and income classifications to avoid doing exactly that.
(1) I kinda get – I mean the average wingnut will buy into whatever they are told. But (2) really gets me. I wonder if perhaps this is just a negotiating position to appeal to their base, but one which they know will never happen so aren’t worried about the consequences.
I think the special 15% rate for cap gains and dividends also expires. That’s what the Bain Capital types are worried about, not salaries. Corporate executive bonuses tied to stock prices are also considered cap gains. That’s what the CEO’s are worried about. I think all this expires with the Bush tax cuts.
That’s interesting. I can’t say that I’ve heard this before, so if it’s true no one in the media wants the public to know.
Every day that the R’s choose not to get the fiscal cliff behind them is a day where more stupid is added to the pot where their goose is being cooked.
The second week of January is likely the absolute earliest time these clowns are going to get their act together. I seriously doubt anything will happen before that, except more point and laugh style face-plants from the GOP. We’re going to get at least 5 more weeks of this distilled idiocy.
Would it violate Godwin’s Law to say that Rubin has Adolph Hitler’s inability to understand that there are certain situations when attacking is a bad idea?
Every single one of the fights she urges Republicans to start would be a huge boon to the Democrats. Not only would they not be able to win those fights, but they’d be doing Democrats a favor by highlighting the differences between the parties.
Well, you could substitute Hitler for Yosemite Sam in this case, so the mention of AH is avoidable.
But I think we should get over Godwin’s law, I mean if the shoe fits…
No, she’s Wile E. Coyote. Definitely WEC.
“Cut your losses” – perfect. But can they? I doubt, it would mean kissing Jennifer and Karl goodbye.
We’ll see. Wish I could stop watching.
I dunno. Today at 3:01PM CST, Bloomberg news said that President Obama reiterated his position that tax rates at the top must be raised, but also said that they don’t have to be raised to the Clinton Level as long as the revenue is raised elsewhere (where else but on working families? who else is there?). Sounds like Obama is starting to cave.
where else but on working families? who else is there?
Do you think wealthy people don’t take deductions?
Think about putting a cap on the mortgage interest deduction, or going after the carried interest rules, or any of the other thousand-and-one tricks that kept Mitt Romney’s tax rate so low.
The question isn’t whether there are other ways to raise rich people’s taxes than rate hikes; of course there are. The issue is that merely doing so cannot produce all of the revenue that the Republicans are claiming, so getting $800 billion in deductions would necessarily require going after the tax expenditures used by middle- and working-class families. It would be relatively easy to get to, say, $100 billion in deductions that only hit upper-income people.
I believe there is already a cap on mortgage deductions and all deductions are phased out at high incomes.
I’ll check with TurboTax and get back. Whether I’m right or wrong.
IRS publication 530. “Your mortgage interest deduction is limited if your total mortgage balance is more than one million dollars.
I couldn’t find a limitation on total deductions. Per wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itemized_deduction, this limit that I remember was phased out, apparently as part of the Bush tax cut. If we let those expire, the old Clinton law will apply.
Have to look more and see if the AMT puts a limit on deductions.
Sorry for the bad link. I hope this one is better: http://taxes.about.com/od/preparingyourtaxes/a/1040step6_3.htm
And here is a very good exposition of changes in the tax laws:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/press/press-resources-pease.cfm
The latter also makes clear that the removal was part of the 2001 tax act, the one that goes over the cliff if Obama only stands firm.
All very true. The point is, there are changes that could be made, such as lowering that cap, that would bring in revenue from high income earners.
The corporate side is another rich target for closing loopholes. The actual % that corporate America pays is something like seventeen % points below the statutory rate.
I certainly agree with that, especially foreign corporate income that should not have to be repatriated before it’s taxed. I’m pretty sure that if, as an individual, I went and worked at a job in say Europe for ten months and came home, I would be subject to US income tax. Businesses that sell overseas should have to pay tax on those profits too.
God I hope not. I honestly think bipartisan Obama is a thing of the past, I mean, I think he’s learned his lesson
No. He said he’d consider lowering the top rates only after they’d been raised, and then only in trade for closing loopholes and ending deductions. So he wants the rate increases first, then we’ll talk.
They didn’t report that part, but that’s no surprise. The whole MSM is clamoring for a deal before January.
Haha, when even the half-wit J-Rube thinks she needs to throw some shop worn “advice” to all her strong and savvy Repub Ubermen, you know things aren’t lookin’ too good for Team Conservative.
So where are all the “Repubs in Disarray!!” stories from our Lib’rul Media? They’d be running non-stop if the Dems were operating like a Headless Chicken party (Booman’s great metaphor of a couple days ago) But somehow, when it’s Team Repub running around in circles there’s never any disarray to be seen…
The idea that this worthless lame duck Do-Nothing Repub Congress is somehow going to roll-up its sleeves at Santa time and actually manufacture real non-bullshit LEGISLATION on trillions in deduction limits, loophole closing and entitlement cuts/reforms, as well as specific cuts to every other non-defense program and agency, is simply comic. This braindead party likely doesn’t have anyone in it that could produce such a thing, and certainly no one in Boner’s House of Turds could do it, ever.
They simply don’t know anything. About budgets, taxes, deficits, entitlements, you name it. They know no true facts about these matters. They refuse to actually know anything about the goddamed gub’mint they are supposed to be running and overseeing. That’s why junior lie-master Ryan is their Budget Leader. A total phony and conman is their anointed Grand Budget Ringmaster. QED.
So this is all just another Great American wank feast, but for whose delectation quite escapes me. Unless Obama decides to cut a terrible deal and look the national leader before year-end, Boner’s Boneheads will simply run around the barnyard spraying chicken blood on everything until they throw up their hands some day in late Dec and vote “present” on a Dem bill to extend the middle class tax cuts. They’ll die squawking and go down in history as the most worthless Congress ever.
Then they’ll adjourn into ignominy until they re-appear as the next iteration of Boner’s Boneheads and Mitch’s Morons next Jan and begin their ignorant buffoonery and clownshow antics all over again. They don’t care they look as fools and prattling knaves to any informed person. Hopefully we as a nation can at least serve as some sort of lesson to the world as to what one’s democratic politics can devolve into when plutocrats are given total power for a long enough time. That’s “conservatism”!
Wait. If I’m reading this right, Rubin Advice #7 is to do a repeat of that time when Obama went to Baltimore and debated the entire Republican Party. And won. Why would she think this is a good idea?
Listen to the wingnuts and they’ll tell you Ryan schooled Obama on health care and publicly humiliated the president.
May I point out that this comes from the intellectual, brainy part of the GOP that thinks in paragraphs? Oof.