Category Archives: Taxes
Reagan raised taxes?
On 6 Jan 1983, the great tax cutter President Ronald Reagan signed into law a five cent per gallon federal gas tax hike; that’s right, Ronald Wilson Reagan signed into law a five cent per gallon tax increase. The reason for the new tax hike? He was going to stimulate the economy!
Wow, the great white father of Republican mythology raised yet another tax; where does it all end Timmy?
It’s time for the far right-wing worshippers to come to the pool of truth, drink deeply, and admit Reagan didn’t raise revenues from trickle down, he did it by raising taxes, more than 12 times during his eight years in office, including raising the federal gas tax. Can you imagine how apoplectic the right would go if President Obama merely suggested a five cent gasoline tax? They’d be beside themselves screaming it was a socialistic plot to take over the petroleum industry.
Facts are stubborn things, and facts are Reagan cut taxes his first year in office, and when he failed to turn the economy around he then raised taxes non-stop his remaining years in the White House. Facts are stubborn things.
Wall Street Journal Editorial Rips Boehner and McConnell?
The Huffington Post’s reporting that the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has attacked congressional Republican Tea Party (GOTP) members for possibly losing the payroll tax cut standoff to President Barack Obama.
The Editorial began recounting how GOTP Senate leader Mitch McConnell “famously said a year ago his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest.”
Earlier this week GOTP House members killed the two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, unemployment benefits and a provision avoiding Medicare payment cuts to doctors by a 229-193 vote. The Senate had voted by an 89-10 margin to extend all three for two months. All three provisions expire on 1 Jan 12. GOTP House members want the Senate to return and negotiate over a compromise plan but Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he won’t negotiate until the House approves the Senate’s package.
Finally Senator Reid has shown some back bone against the Tea Party conservatives across the aisle; what’s even better about this situation is McConnell had clearly struck a deal with Reid, and Boehner has to have been part of it as well but then his Tea Party compatriots cut his knees out from under him led by Eric Cantor.
The conservative editorial board wrote that the GOTP has “thoroughly botched the politics.” The board also added that Obama’s in a “stronger re-election position today than he was a year ago.”
After 1 Jan 12, the payroll tax paid by workers will rise from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent and benefits for the long-term unemployed will expire if Congress doesn’t pull its head out of its collective fourth point of contact. Doctors will also face a 27 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements scheduled to take effect on 18 Jan 12.
The icing on the cake for the President is that 2008 Republican Presidential candidate Senator John McCain of Arizona showed his approval of the editorial tweeting, “WSJ is right on the mark here.”
When the smoke clears from this latest GOTP catastrophe, the President will once again come out on top, John Boehner may find himself stepping down as Speaker, and the Tea Party will come out as having attempted one bridge too far; come 2012 the bill will come due and local Congressional Districts will likely toss the riff raff out turning the House back to a Democratic majority. The Tea Party’s angry white guy shtick only plays so far and they’ve been on stage well past their collective curtain call.
Payroll tax extender bill unvieled?
Senate Democrats have stepped up and released a bill to extend and expand on the payroll tax cut that would otherwise expire at the end of this year.
The Middle Class Tax Cut act, S. 1917, would cut the employee and employer payroll tax to 3.1 percent, half of the 6.2 percent tax they would normally face. The bill applies this cut to the first $5 million in payroll for companies, which Senate Democrats estimate will cut payroll taxes in half for 98 percent of U.S. companies with payroll below that cap.
The bill also includes a “surtax on millionaires,” which applies a 3.25 percent tax on modified adjusted gross income over $1 million or $500,000 for a married individual filing separately. This tax would take effect in 2013.
Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) is the chief sponsor of the bill, which is also co-sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.).
Democratic leaders said they’d look to take up the tax bill soon, but had not scheduled any votes on the bill as of Monday night.
While the Republican Tea Party (GOTP) do-nothing House has wasted an entire year with grandstanding tactics like reading the Constitution, validating that our nation’s motto is “In God We Trust”, and introducing more than 100 bills aimed at limiting abortion; the Democratic Senate has introduced a bill aimed at helping Americans during a recession, cutting taxes to those of us who need them cut, and raising taxes on those who can easily afford an increase and who’ve benefited far too long on everyone else’s backs; it doesn’t bode well for a GOTP that ran on “jobs” and which has produced zero.
But I Only Have $400,000 Per Year to Live On?
Who has two thumbs and is whining about only having $400,000 to spend for his very own? It’s Republican Tea Party (GOTP) Congressman John Fleming.
While appearing on MSNBC to try to explain why he opposes President Obama’s tax increase on those earning more than $1 million per year, Fleming became defensive to the point of stupidity when host Chris Jansing commented on the fact Fleming has an income of more than $6 million annually.
“The amount that I have to reinvest in my business and feed my family is more like $600,000 of that $6.3 million,” Fleming explained. “So by the time I feed my family I have, maybe, $400,000 left over to invest in new locations, upgrade my locations, buy more equipment.”
So, let me see if I understand this correctly congressman; you spend $200,000 per year feeding your family? How many kids do you have? Are you a polygamist? What the deuce are you feeding your family gold plated hot dogs?
According to the Wall Street Journal, Fleming owns a string of Subway sandwich shops and UPS store franchises through which he earned about $6.3 million last year.
Jansing tried to point out to the congressman that he was sounding more than a little petulant, “You do understand, congressman, that the average person out there who’s making maybe 40, 50, $60,000 out there, when they hear you only have $400,000 left over, it’s not exactly a sympathetic position,” she said. “You understand that?”
“Class warfare’s never created a job,” Fleming responded. “And that’s people that will not get jobs. This is all about creating jobs, Chris, this is not about attacking people who make certain incomes. You know in this country, most people feel that being successful in their business is a virtue, not a vice, and once we begin to identify it as a vice, this country is going down.”
Yes, of course congressman, it’s all class warfare – so, how is it class warfare when the President suggests the wealthy pay more taxes, but it’s not class warfare when you – clearly part of the wealthy class – want to slash programs that benefit the poorest among us, and when you want to allow tax cuts benefitting the middle class to expire?
Well let me point something out to you dip stick, we’ve had the Bush Tax cuts for more than a decade and we’ve seen almost zero job creation from all of you good old American “job creators”; you’re chance is up, you and your country club set of business owners now has to foot the bill for the Bush/Cheney ear of adventurism. If you approve/support two wars and you didn’t pay for them, well, the bill is now due; congratulations.
Congressional Republican Tea Partistas want to raise taxes?
Republican Tea Partistas (GOTP) in the Congress – specifically the House – want to allow a tax break to end 1 January 2012, but it’s not the tax cuts enacted by George W. Bush which benefit the top 2% of wealthiest Americans, it’s the tax cut that applies to – and helps – the 46 percent of all Americans who owe no federal income taxes but who pay a “payroll tax” on practically every dime they earn.
The explanation from the GOTP House is an interesting one, GOTP House members say their proposal to allow the cuts to end is perfectly consistent with their goal of long-term tax policies that will spur employment and lend greater certainty to the economy. By spurring the economy they mean continuing tax cuts to the wealthy – the so-called “job creators” who haven’t created very many jobs in the past decade of benefitting from Bush tax cuts – while removing tax cuts for the lower 46% of the population ala Ebenezer Scrooge.
“It’s always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn,” says GOTP Congressman Jeb Hensarling, “but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again.”
What the deuce does that mean? Not “all tax relief is created equal for the purpose of helping to get the economy moving again”? Removing tax cuts to the lower middle class and the poor, while keeping tax cuts in place for the rich is supposed to get the economy moving again? This is like a Monty Python sketch of 12th Century England with the nobles trying to work out how to tax the poor out of every dime by instituting a road tax, or a tree tax.
The crux of the issue is that workers – aka “those people” to the GOTP – normally pay 6.2 percent of their wages toward a tax designated for Social Security. Their employer pays an equal amount, for a total of 12.4 percent per worker. Well, last December – when Congress was still controlled by real people and not the prostitutes of the wealthy – Congress approved President Obama’s request to reduce the workers’ share to 4.2 percent for one year; employers’ rate did not change. The President would like to see Congress extend the reduction for an additional year. If the GOTP doesn’t extend the tax cut the rate will return to 6.2 percent on 1 Jan.
President Obama has asked the GOTP House to come up with measures to help the economy and create jobs. “There are things we can do right now that will mean more customers for businesses and more jobs across the country. We can cut payroll taxes again, so families have an extra $1,000 to spend,” he said.
Unfortunately, the GOTP House – which ran on the premise of creating jobs – has not submitted one bill designed to help the economy; but they have submitted more than 100 bills aimed at curtailing abortions in America.
According to the Associated Press (AP), Social Security payroll taxes apply only to the first $106,800 of a worker’s wages. Therefore, $2,136 is the biggest benefit anyone can gain from the one-year reduction. Of course the vast majority of Americans make less than $106,800 a year, and thus millions of workers pay more in payroll taxes than in federal income taxes. But we can’t have the vast majority of American workers benefiting – you can almost hear Eric Cantor whining, “Why do they need a tax break? They don’t create any jobs! We need to cut taxes further for the top 2%, the “job creators”, not the sniveling supporters of the Democratic Party.”
GOTP Congressman, like David Camp, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, and a member of the newly created House-Senate “uber-committee” tasked with finding new deficit cuts says that allowing the tax reductions to continue is troublesome, “no matter how well-intended,” will push the deficit higher.
So, allowing tax cuts to continue for the vast majority of wage earners in America will increase the deficit, but allowing the top 2% who control the vast majority of wealth – i.e., money – to keep their tax cuts won’t raise the deficit? Wow, talk about GOTP double speak.
Many GOTP members of Congress are adamant about not raising taxes but largely silent on what it would mean to let the payroll tax break expire, and they cite key differences between the two “temporary” taxes, starting with the fact that the Bush measure had a 10-year life from the start. To stimulate job growth, these lawmakers say, it’s better to reduce income tax rates for people and for companies than to extend the payroll tax break. Yes, because the uber-rich and their corporations – who we all know are people too – need to be able to have their caviar and eat it too.
Bottom line: the GOTP doesn’t give two cents for the people who work in this country; they’re only concern is to keep their Sugar Daddies (the top 2%) fat and happy so they’ll keep writing contribution checks. These “job creators” haven’t created any jobs here at home, but they’ve created thousands of new jobs overseas, benefiting from deregulation and tax cuts during the Bush/Cheney run. If you make less than $200,000 per year and you vote for the GOTP you’re slitting your own economic wrists. If this latest, and completely open move to shank you doesn’t convince you I don’t know what will.
