Will the Bush Tax Cuts be Extended?
- Thread starter The Thriller
- Start date
Wasn't the Bush tax cuts, simply tax cuts for the rich? That has been the Democrat mantra since day 1. If the Bush Tax cuts did nothing for the middle class and poor, by the Democrat claim, why did they need to be preserved? The middle class and the poor, according to the Dems, experienced very little tax cuts so by a logical conclusion the tax increase, due to expiration, should not even been noticed.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
LOL. Excellent post.
Yet, if you turn on AM radio you'd swear Obama didn't do anything the Republicans wanted.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
I seem to remember this being tossed around 2 years ago by Democrats seeking election.
Of course, Democrats today will deny this... OR if they don't deny it, they'll use the excuse that they're "compromising" and working "together" with the other side for the "good" of America.
I think the government is just being exposed for what they ware. I think we can always argue about health care reform, wars, and tax cuts... But I think we can all agree that the government is bought off and run by special interests. I think that's why the Demos didn't stick with their "standards." They too are rich and have ties to those who didn't want to lose their tax cuts.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
The last two years have been blockbuster years for big corporations USA. Tax cuts extended, bailouts handed out, "stimuluses" to help them grow... From the economic standpoint, what has Obama done differently than Bush?
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
Serious question,
I remember watching just a few weeks ago him saying on TV, "I'll sign off on the Bush tax cuts if the Republicans can show how they'll pay for them."
So what's the Republican's plans? What did they come up with that his cabinet couldn't? What's the plan? How are they going to be paid for?
Because remember now, Obama said that he wouldn't agree w/the Repubs unless they showed how these tax cuts wouldn't add to the deficit. Soooooooo....
I remember watching just a few weeks ago him saying on TV, "I'll sign off on the Bush tax cuts if the Republicans can show how they'll pay for them."
So what's the Republican's plans? What did they come up with that his cabinet couldn't? What's the plan? How are they going to be paid for?
Because remember now, Obama said that he wouldn't agree w/the Repubs unless they showed how these tax cuts wouldn't add to the deficit. Soooooooo....
There were no tax cuts. The choice was not tax cuts/no tax cuts. The choice was keeping marginal rates the same or raising them. The only choice was to raise taxes or not.
Don't fall for improper framing of the issue.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
I understand that. So why not raise taxes?
We're cutting taxes while spending more and more. Cuts are unrealistic, since no one wants to have their Medicare or defensive spending touched. Especially with the baby boomer's retiring. That whole issue of Medicare/SS is completely off the table.
Because, with proper framing, maintaining a temporary tax cut is not cutting taxes. Allowing the rate to return to the planned rate is raising taxes. Don't want to frame these things improperly, after all.
TheMulletMutilator
Member
Paying for them is not going to happen unless they do the unthinkable and go after social security and medicare. It is political suicide but the only way to try to reduce the deficit as I have pointed out. As for pre-Bush tax rates.... I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of wealthy people move their money etc. I could be wrong, we'll see what happens.
We don't raise taxes because nobody wants their taxes raised. There are the sirkicky and the buffett's of the world, but they are a very small minority. The democrats are in bed with the rich as much as the republicans. Simply look at the Wall St., Ivy League, Democrat connection. It is deep, wide, and entrenched. Not every rich liberal wants their taxes raised.
This compromise is standard operating procedure since the early 80's. Shoot for lower taxes, no controls on spending, keep the poor dependent, keep the rich happy, throw the far extremes of the party under the bus because they have no where else to go.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
I'm actually beginning to think that this tax cut is losing it's "temporary" title. Weren't there those in the Bush administration that wanted to make them permanent? Actually, wasn't that what McCain campaigned on?
Anyway, I just don't understand with "raising" tax cuts to the rate that they were before?
I think we're living in la la land by thinking that we can have more government (wars, medicare, etc) without raising taxes. I'm not calling for an immediate tax hike of 1000 %. But we desperately need to start considering the future. Is this current tax rate maintainable since we're obviously never going to make drastic cuts to defensive spending and health care.
TheMulletMutilator
Member
Which is why we should have less government... A lot less.
The truly insane part is that they're shaving social security receipts as part of a new tax cut.
This is only going to supercharge the argument going forward that social security needs to be repealed.
Obama is literally giving away some of the greatest Democratic achievements of the last century as well as breaking key campaign promises because he's too big a pansy to play chicken.
This is only going to supercharge the argument going forward that social security needs to be repealed.
Obama is literally giving away some of the greatest Democratic achievements of the last century as well as breaking key campaign promises because he's too big a pansy to play chicken.
I must admit, I am not surprised by anything anymore, but when this broke yesterday, I was dumbfounded. This is like letting Charles Mansion get a foot in the door.
TheMulletMutilator
Member
The issue must poll well with the center and Independents. I can't really think of another reason why he would do it.
Obama, speaking economically, is doing the same thing every president has in the last twenty years...listening to the smartest guys in the room. Where that's gotten "them" is in the situation they are in now.
The Dems have to cave on taxes, they have no choice. The need the tax issue to be an ongoing problem, they need the rich to be the villian. The Republicans in a perverted way actually screwed this up. The Republicans should have caved on the hiking taxes for the rich in exchange for making the taxes becoming permanent. This would have been a clean sweep in removing the two main thrusts of the Dem party for the past 15 years...healthcare and taxes.
The Dems have nothing to run on for maybe a generation. They would have been left to relentless defend themselves.
You're mixing two different forms of measurement here: collective and individual.
The Dem. argument (or at least my version of the dem argument) has been that the vast majority of the total dollar amounts of those tax cuts have gone to the top. For example, the top quintile received 64.6% and the top 2% received something like 20% of the total pool. In 2008, the effect of the Bush tax cut on just the top 1% was $79.5 billion. To put that in perspective that's nearly double what the appropriation is for the Department of Homeland Security.
Where you change measurements is when you say that this must mean, according to Dems, that lower income families received nothing. The remaining 35.4% of total dollars was spread out among the bottom 80%. In many instances that's a couple thousand dollars (median-deduction median-income family tax burden decreased by $1247 in 2006). That's noticeable for middle income families. No one can seriously deny that much. But the debate was really about equity in the cuts, not whether or not they were noticeable.
I would have had significantly less problem with the Bush tax cuts, even if they were exactly the same cost in that we sucked the same number of dollars out of the tax base, if 64.6% had gone to the bottom 80% (largely to the 2nd through 4th quintile given that the bottom quintile's tax burden is generally somewhat negligible) and the 35.4% had gone to the top quintile.
Certainly it's not wise to inflict the pain of a noticable but hardly catastrophic tax increase on middle income families during a recession and a period of high unemployment. But the top 2% are the top 2 ****ing percent. They, by definition, aren't hurting and wouldn't have been hurting with the tax increase.
Fiscal policy as a method of economic regulation is completely broken because taxes are a one-way ratchet. I have no faith the tax cuts will ever go away now, even when the Dems were handed opportunities to put bills on the floor to preserve the cuts for 98% of Americans and force Republicans to publicly vote to screw everyone else in favor of the top 2%. Instead the Dems caved. They deserve to lose.
If I am not mistaken, the payroll tax holiday is right out of the Robert Reich playbook.