House shoots down Obama/Republicans Tax Deal

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.co...s-defy-obama-on-tax-cut-bill/?hpt=T1&iref=BN1

All that political dealmaking for nothing.

Taxing everyone's ass off is not right for jobs, you contemptible fuckstain.

IT'S TOO BAD THE ECONOMY WILL HAVE TO LIMP ALONG FOR TWO MORE YEARS BEFORE WE CAN GET RID OF THE DEMOCRATS.

I'm sure the tax deal will go through next month when the House will become a little more amenable to economic reality.

**Cheery Piano Music Plays, all the outgoing house democrats are lined up**

"Hi guys! We've had such a good run, but we wanted to give the American people one last FUCK YOU before we left! Merry Christmas!"

The other team hasn't had the best track record, either. Am I alone in wanting more than two political parties to choose from? Bring back Bull Moose and the Whigs, I don't give a fuck! More options!

uhhhh the House didn't shoot anything down because they haven't voted on anything yet.

This was the Democrat caucus having a in house vote to beg Pelosi to not take the deal to the floor. She may or may not listen to them.

Most likely she won't listen to them and will still bring it to the floor.

If she didn't you would see Democrats catch hell for it because it would be at minimum a month or two before the Republicans started pushing it through the House and on to the Senate. We would all be paying more in taxes until they got a new bill passed and with the Democrats running the Senate we might not get the bill passed for months if not a year.

It would make the Democrat position even weaker because I doubt the Republicans would go for the "compromise" a second time. It would signal an all out rebellion against Obama from his fellow Democrats seriously jeopardizing his chances of winning in 2012. Last but not least the Democrats screwing this up would give Republicans free ammo to beat them senseless all the way to 2012 for raising everyones taxes.

I think they are just venting and if push comes to shove they will vote for it.

FTFY

It's funny because the House Democrats don't seem to realize they lost the election

Actually they just realized it with this attempted compromise. Which is why they are throwing a tantrum.

LOL at the deficit fetishists who want to make the deficit bigger.

I don't know who you mean by that, but I'm not going to cheerfully embrace an ever-increasing tax burden just because I'm outnumbered by people who are addicted to the government teat.

Deficits happen when the government is irresponsible and chooses to budget and spend money it doesn't have.

That goes as much for corporate bailouts and foreign military adventuring as it does for social programs. Everyone on all points of the political pentagram need to give up the fantasy that taxation is a blank check to be used for their personal wish lists.

Priority #1: lower taxes
Priority #2: smaller government
Priority #3: lower deficits

If you push #1, you may force #2 and #3. If you go for #3, you're liable to get the opposite of #1 and #2.

Then why did the deficit increase when these tax cuts were implemented?

Possibly because spending continued to increase?

The rational way to reduce the deficit: simplify the tax code, keep rates low enough not to be an excessive drag on economic activity, reduce expenditures.

The gubbermint way to "reduce" the deficit: tens of thousands of pages of tax laws, changes every year, unpredictable, reduction in one part offset by increase in another, minimal attention paid to unintended consequences, uncontrolled spending increases.

That's the part people like Rick always leave out.

House is such an asshole!

No. Tax take went down as well. Extra taxes do in some cases help with deficit reduction, but as has been made clear, that's not what people are actually interested in when they complain about the deficit.

WRONG!!

Tax money revunue increased.

Would showing you the figures for government revenue actually dissuade you from this point or is it an article of faith?

In either case, here they are:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2011/assets/hist01z1.xls

Revenue dropped as soon as the tax cuts were implemented, and still has not recovered in real terms.

Hmmm.

And altho this is just a blog post, it contains instructive information.

A similar essay from the Heritage Foundation.

A somewhat more balanced view from the International Business Times.

Yet another take from the National Center for Policy Analysis.

And this bit from the Washington Post points out how complicated this question actually is.

Most sources I've seen seem to agree that the Laffer Curve is real, but misunderstood by most people, and that there is a "sweet spot" which maximizes tax revenues while minimizing economic drag, but that this spot is highly mutable.

OMB is not always reliable. Their information is often cherry-picked based on which party holds the Presidency. CBO numbers are probably better.

If there are different numbers somewhere, feel free to provide them.

The Laffer Curve is more guideline than gospel - it all depends what taxes are cut, what benefits are affected and how streamlined the tax code are.

You can cut taxes, but if the code book makes the collated Lord of the Rings look like a pamphlet you're not going to be doing much good, as any savings that may be made will be heading towards your accountants rather than boosting the business.

Also, the kind of taxes you need to cut are income - to boost disposable income - and corporation, to free up a businesses resources.

"IT'S TOO BAD THE ECONOMY WILL HAVE TO LIMP ALONG FOR TWO MORE YEARS BEFORE WE CAN GET RID OF THE DEMOCRATS."

You mean so we can go back to the policies of the prior administration, which TORCHED the economy? You want to give them another shot so they can finish us off once and for all?

We forget that under the prior Clinton era tax laws, which eliminathed deficits and started us on the road to paying down the national debt, not to mention taking the government out of competition with the private sector for investment capital, we had the hottest economy in history and created 23 million jobs. Bushonomics? Destroyed half those jobs and clobbered the global economy. They say continuing to do things that got you bad results in the hopes that they'll work next time, is the dictionary definition of insanity. First question we should ask Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and maybe even Barack Obama is, guys, since you're contemplating doing what you've been doing in hopes of different results than you've been getting--ARE YOU NUTS?

Probably because spending increased. I can't believe you actually have to ask the question.

NAFTA, the "peace dividend" of winning the Cold War and therefore being able to draw down military spending, and opening the Internet up to commerce--all things started by previous administrations--were responsible for the "Clinton prosperity". That and Clinton's efforts being hamstrung by the Republican majority he managed to get elected to the legislature.