Payroll tax cave-in

I'm curious to see what the Obama apologists here think of his hypocrisy on raising the debt ceiling once again, after referencing the similar debate about it in 2006 as a "failure of leadership" on the other side. Indeed, Mr. President.

It's amazing how some have the nerve to act surprised at the exceptionally poor results this administration has produced. It's because the country elected a 24/7 campaigner, not a leader, and it shows.

Really folks? Still blaming Bush after 3 years? That's pathetic.

Here's the thing about the Republicans. They're for lower taxes, true. But they're also for lower deficits. (Yeah, I know, they lost their purity on that one during Bush. But there are signs that they are recovering their sanity on this front.) And if you cut the payroll tax but don't cut the SS obligations, you've got a big addition to the deficit. Republicans - normal Republicans, not the Bush-tax-cut version - have a problem with that, a problem that's not just "anti anything Obama does" or "let's stick it to the poor". It's a genuine ideological problem for them.

And wow, the level of bile and mud-slinging by a number of posters here. A bunch of you sound like you need to have your meds adjusted.

@ RR: "I'm MS's arch-nemesis."

I am sure that you like to flatter yourself that way. :-)

Funny how the knuckleheads of both parties and their "columnists" continue to focus on Federal taxes.

I just put a check in the mail for my property taxes.

Up 9.4% year over year.

Regards

Spell check payrol and revise for redundancy of text and content ("it's hard to understand")

Why does MS seem to almost exclusively reply to RR? They both make good points but so do others, do you have a conflict of interest to declare MS?

It all goes to support my hypothesis that the tea-partyists are Fascist at heart.

Fascism, as I'm sure many readers will know, was defined by George Orwell as the politics of the bully. What he actually wrote was this: ‘Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. And the essence of bullying is to collapse your empathy for the bullied. If you do have empathy for the bullied you'll be disarmed as a bully. The same applies to Fascism. Hitler succeeded in collapsing his followers empathy for a particular human tribe - the Jews. As a result he succeeded in establishing a particularly egregious form of Fascism in his country.

By contrast 'St' Paul made Christianity into the exact opposite - an empathy bomb intended to destroy Roman Fascism, which oppressed his country (he was a Roman Citizen but born a Jew). This is what the exhortations to 'love thine enemies', 'do good to those who would do evil unto you', and 'turn the other cheek' would encourage, if people genuinely adhered to them. How could you be a Fascist if you empathised like that with your victims?

Arguably you shouldn't call yourself a Christian if you don't but who - really - does this? Well, the tea-partyist would say they were Christian -indeed fundamental Christianity, with its very un-Christian attitudes towards non-fundamentalists, seems to be bound up in what passes for their philosophy (maybe that's a word with too many letters for what they believe in).

Well, the Christians have the saying that ‘by their fruits shall ye know them’..

Apparently, on the day that the Obamacare bill was passed, a bunch of tea-partyists in Philadelphia came across a man begging in the street. He had Parkinson’s disease, no healthcare and no money. Far from showing anything remotely like the Christian charity Americans claim to be proud of, these tea-partyists proceeded to abuse this beggar, at first verbally, advising him that he ‘was in the wrong part of town’ for this sort of thing, then they started kicking him. Eventually someone stepped in, claiming to ‘buy this man’ and showered one dollar bills all over him. It was not exactly a charitable gesture but at least they stopped there, maybe interrupted because someone recorded the whole thing on their camera-phone and the footage went up on a website. ‘By their fruits shall ye know them’, indeed!

I can just imagine the famous 3 a.m. conversation if a tea-partyist (TP) were ever to take the White House. (This assumes of course they don’t self destruct at the next election.)

Official (on the line): ‘Mr President, The North Koreans have just bombed the Seoul stock exchange with a dirty one-ton nuke! What do we do?’

TP: ‘Well, that’s them well in the soup! Wun-tun, you say! Where is Sole anyway? In Scotland? They’ve got some pretty fishy politicians down there, you know, Salmon and Sturgeon, and the like. I guess they must come from Sole. Makes me hungry, just thinking about all that food.’

Official : ‘Seoul is in South Korea, Mr President. So, what do we do?’

TP: ‘Oh, Nuke ‘em both! There is a North Korea, right? Now I think about it, Nuke everyone! If that doesn’t fix it, call me in the morning. We don’t do PC in this White House. Meantime send me up a midnight snack, and no more interruptions! Fish soup, indeed! Yeah, that’d be great, make it – Alaskan Salmon Chowder! With all the trimmings! Yummy!”

Official: ‘But Mr President..’

TP: ‘You’ve heard of a Presidential Order haven’t you? Well, that was one! Nothing like firm leadership. Night-night.’

Official: (Aghast) ‘He’s hung up!’

(From 'The Devil’s Guide To Politics’ by Nicholas Dunraven)

Beware of what you wish for.

God bless us, everyone. (Someone had to say it.)

Do you think this government represents you or just them$elves. We can expect four more years of this kind of behavior, regardless of who becomes president.

To be fair, the bigoted, extremist fruitcakes that now control the Republican party made their agenda quite clear from the outset: to undermine Obama (who was never really American in their view - hence their so-called "birtherism") and to ensure he doesn't get a second term. So determined were they that they were willing to allow the country they love so much to default on its debt obligations (in clear violation of the Constitution they cite so often) and commit economic suicide.

But the problem, as I see it, has been the nature of the response from "mainstream" America who, when not blaming Obama for so-called "Tea Party" obstructionism, react half-heartedly, incoherently and too belatedly to make any real impact (e.g., the "Occupy" protests).

Personally, although an Obama supporter, I never thought it was a good idea for him to run for the presidency when he did. The legacies of Bush and Cheney were too much of a poisoned chalice for anyone to inherit. And in Obama's case (who never really enjoyed much support amongst white voters, further illustrating why he shouldn't have stood), it's hard to see how he can reverse that catastrophic legacy even after a second term, with the ugly, hate-driven obstructionism that now defines Congress. And so, he seems destined to be remembered, quite absurdly, as a failed president.

The reality, alas, is that racism still defines America despite appearances, and much of the obstructionism in Congress is driven by it. Which is almost certainly why Colin Powell declined to contest for the presidency some years back, in spite of his apparent popularity at the time.

What you fail to understand is that when tax rates and burdens are discussed, the Republicans assert that the payroll tax is not really a tax. It is an insurance payment for which ordinary Americans receive a very valuable benefit as a right.

But when spending is discussed, those very valuable benefits are not in fact rights according to the Republicans, but are in fact welfare payments to the lazy undeserving at the expense of the hard working, moral, productive people.

@M.S.: "In general, they treated the payroll-tax cut as if it were one of the opposing side's priorities, which they would be willing to approve only if they received some goodies in return."

There you go. I think at this point the Republicans would demand concessions if Obama nominated Jack Welch to the NLRB.

The problem is government spending not revenue. Cut spending, not raise taxes. It is that simple.

"Moderate Republicans are not too happy with the Tea Party."

Yes... in a recent survey, 11 of the 14 moderate Republicans nationwide expressed dissatisfaction with the Tea Party.

Tax cuts pay for themselves...unless the Democrats propose them.

In which case, duh, cutting tax rates cuts revenue, you idiot!

The issue here is Social Security, not whether the GOP "caved." The Democrats have subtly begun to cut the ground out from beneath SS.

FDR insisted that the employee contribution show up as dollar amount on each paycheck so that the worker know money was taken directly from him with the promise to return it at age 65. He felt this would make it impossible to reverse SS benefits and he was right -- until now. By largely exempting a couple years' income from the SS tax, the Democrats have shoved the ordinary worker off the moral high ground. That worker can no longer insist "I paid into the System so I am entitled to take full benefits out" because as of now he is NOT paying into the System.

Since the payroll tax cut extension puts a huge hole in the SS fund, this means general revenues must be tapped. And, general revenues, unlike the SS tax, can be cut as part of any budget negotiations. This whole business is a sneak attack by the Democrats on the fiscal and moral basis of old age insurance. Enjoy the tax cut, workers -- you'll pay for in spades down the road!

Let me explain it to you, MS. A Republican talking about taxes or fiscal responsibility is a liar, a hypocrite or both. Class war by the wealthiest against almost all Americans, the raw economic interest of the very top of the heap - these are the unvarying aims that direct the GOP's shamelessly contradictory tactical contortions.

But you can't fool all of the people all of the time. They have gone much too far, and it may be too late to backpedal. I think it was already too late once the House passed the Ryan Republican Suicide Budget.

They held the high hand, but lacked the courage to play it out!

Given that the House had passed and sent to the Senate a bill that extended the FICA reduction and unemployment and Medicare payment fix for a full year, it is hard to see why they should have to adopt a neutered bill that only extends it for 2 months. After 2 months, Mr. Reid will again attempt to play political games. The liability for the deadline fiasco is totally Mr. Obama's and Mr. Reid's. To say otherwise is to ignore the fact that the Senate could have made minor modifications to the House bill and then finished it off in conference. Me thinks the press doth posture too much.

There's no argument that the mortgage interest deduction is bad policy but at this point, for many, it's a form of welfare, a housing subsidy, which isn't the worst thing to have right now. People struggling to pay their mortgage right now depend on it. I would prefer to convert it into a general means-tested tax credit but if that can't be done, I might support keeping it in place just as I would prefer to reform Social Security and Medicare but if the choice is between keeping it as-is or abolishing it, I would elect to keep it.