I just got around to checking out the memo from Simpson and company, and I gotta say, I am impressed. I mean, why hasn’t anyone else suggested cutting tax rates to balance the budget (and spare me the “They’ll make it work by getting rid of deductions!”)? Look how well it worked the last decade!
The Chinese can’t take over soon enough.
bleh
Don’t forget the intrinsic fairness of cutting the tax rate for the wealthy by a third while simultaneously squeezing a few more pennies from the poor by eliminating the EITC. Now that’s fair and balanced!
J.W. Hamner
Wake me again for this nonsense when we actually have a debt crisis. Too much of any solution is completely politically toxic to ever happen when we don’t actually need it to.
arguingwithsignposts
Because it’s real and honest and vital? at least that’s what sully said.
General Stuck
A Clinton dlc free trader and gold plated libertarian wingnut probly shouldn’t surprise us. It should be called The Monty Python Report, instead of Catfood Commission. giant pratfall.
John O
The tax decrease thing is probably just a political tell. Start by lowering them, bargain your way to keeping them where they are?
Please?
Reads like a Republican wet dream to me for the most part. It’s simple, really, the very wealthy are generally the ones that got us into this mess, and they’ll be damned if they’re going to get us out, fiscally.
Without them, after all, nobody would even be able to work, much less want to.
Derelict
It’s a great proposal that gives my millionaire friends yet more of the tax cuts they need to continue not creating the jobs they haven’t created for the last 30 years. Meanwhile, it takes away the EITC, the food stamps, AND the only hope of retirement my working-poor friend has.
AT
Well if the country is going down the sh!tter we need to make sure that the rich get to build up some reserve so they can go and buy their own islands when it all goes down.
How can they save the cash needed the current rate? A smallish island for their immediate family and 10-15 servants just isn’t large enough, no one can be expected to survive on that, they need at least 30 servants, that requires tax cuts now!
MikeJ
@John O: Without the rich why would anybody even *want* to build a guillotine? They keep the rest of us motivated.
JGabriel
John Cole:
The last three decades. That was St. Reagan’s platform too. Why anyone thought Alan Simpson would push any other platform is beyond me. Reagan was his hero, and those were Simpson’s glory years, when he was a fresh and virile young Senator, and his bald spot had yet to turn gray.
.
John O
On further reflection, I could live with those tax rates under the condition there was one more, at about 90%, on income above $1,000,000.
BGinCHI
I’ll say what I said on an earlier thread, but with more analogy.
You get two old rich assholes to lead a commission, and this is what you get. Repetition of the last rapacious go at the tax rates.
It’s like hiring two tea baggers on scooters to cover a 50 Cent song.
Susan Ross
I have simply accepted the fact that the United States of America is turning into a complete joke, and it’s probably time to make plans to seek your fortune elsewhere. We are rapidly becoming a failed state.
jl
Now we know it is a fraudulent or foolish GOP plan (is there any other kind?): lower taxes and promise that this will help solve the deficit problem by a recommendation that loopholes be closed.
Yeah, that will work.
And a spending cap.
Talkingpointsmemo says that both Obama and Conrad are distancing themselves from this piece of boring hashed over nonsense.
These Very Serious People are like a sick dog that keeps throwing up the same dinner, looking around and lapping it up again, only to revomit it out a little bit later.
I am really trying to be polite about what a piece of dreck this thing is. Well, it is only a draft, and I think it will make a lead balloon look like a soap bubble.
The serious long term debt problems are 1) recent overly generous income tax cuts to wealthy, and 2) rapidly growing health care expenditures for primarily Medicare, and secondarily, Medicaid.
The commission had some good ideas, but the good ideas are small potatoes compared to the big problems, and there is so much half baked garbage in it, I cannot take it seriously.
Good riddance to these bothersome elderly out of it fools.
John O
@BGinCHI:
Isn’t it more like hiring a dog to watch over your grilled steak?
beltane
Yesterday, someone on DKos posted a clip of Vladimir Lenin giving a speech. He was saying some pretty crazy stuff, but still not as crazy as this. All I can say is “God help us”.
jl
Well, time for some fun.
Here is your next fun new cause alert: Barton wants to save The America We Knew and Loved from a sinister threat: the energy efficient light bulb. The good old incandescent light bulb must be saved.
Traditional Light Bulb Values!
David Kurtz
November 10, 2010
Talkingpointsmemo
One of the legislative priorities for Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), who’s vying to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee is defending the “traditional, incandescent light bulb” against government regulators who want to replace it with “the little, squiggly, pig-tailed ones.”
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/11/traditional_light_bulb_values.php?ref=fpblg
Mnemosyne
@jl:
I’m still convinced that this was an attempt on Bowles’ and Simpson’s part to publicly pressure the other commission members into doing what they want.
Given that at least two commission members (Durbin and Schakowsky) have already said “hell no!” today, I don’t think it’s going to work out the way B&S hoped.
Mark S.
Couldn’t we have saved some money by just getting some libertarian college kids high in a dorm room? That’s probably what they would have come up with.
Two of my favorites:
We need a year long study to determine if the gays already serving in the military can come out, but proposals like these are like, “What the fuck? Let’s give it a try!” What would happen to the housing market (that’s already in the shitter) if the deduction was eliminated? And I don’t even want to think what would happen if the employer-tax exclusion for health care was taken away with nothing to replace it. I would imagine a shitload of people would wake up with no fucking healthcare.
beltane
@jl: The Very Serious people are like a sick dog indeed. A dog so sick that its ideas need to be put down.
Citizen Alan
And yet the Third Wayers love it to pieces! I am now of the opinion that every Republican in Washington and at least half the Democrats should die screaming in a fire.
beltane
@jl: Wingnuts hate compact florescent lightbulbs. They seem to feel that high electric bills are a necessary component of freedom, similar to the way that being personally responsible the disposal of one’s household waste is the same thing as democracy.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Yes, it’s a clever ruse. Reduce and flatten the basic tax rates but don’t allow many deductions. Except what will immediately happen thereafter is that deductions favoring the elites will be slipped in one by one but with no accompanying rise in the basic rates. I’ve got to hand it to Simpson and Bowles, this will certainly appeal to the Gergen wing of CWmongers.
Crusty Dem
From what I’ve read, it would be difficult to come up with a plan less likely to earn the support of democrats. They could’ve saved some time and paper and just printed “FUCK YOU!*” on a single 8×11″ sheet of paper. In tiny print underneath it would say:
*except for you really rich people, you’re awesome and we’d like to lower you taxes by ~35%. Just act like this isn’t awesome for you and it’ll be fine, like it always is for us.
Oscar Leroy
@Mnemosyne:
“I don’t think it’s going to work out the way B&S hoped. ”
Why are you talking about things that haven’t even happened yet?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Calouste
@jl:
You forgot:
3) Defense spending
John O
@Mark S.:
Yeah, the health care deduction was another laugher. “Uhhh…you realize what will happen, right?”
Well said.
I don’t care if housing prices are driven down more though. It got out of hand and housing should be cheap because it’s such a big chunk of everyone’s standard of living.
NR
My sneaking suspicion is that this is just an attempt to move the Overton window so that when the full commission’s recommendations come out that cut taxes for the rich, but not as much, and cut Social Security, but not as much, Obama can adopt that plan as a “reasonable” compromise.
I guess we’ll find out.
Mnemosyne
@Oscar Leroy:
You mean Bowles and Simpson didn’t hold a press conference today?
Weird, I could have sworn I saw stories all over the internet about it.
NR
@jl:
Well, not exactly:
Oscar Leroy
Or maybe, just maybe, wingnuts care about the environment a great deal, and say things like that to get people to pay more attention to energy efficiency. It’s pretty brilliant, really: Spend years making themselves look like fools, then discredit foolish positions by advocating them.
11-dimensional chess, people!
themann1086
If this happened, or anything remotely approaching this happened, the Very Serious Persons would get to see some real class warfare. You know what happens in real class warfare against the rich? Hint: it involves being up against the wall.
ETA: Sorry, I forgot in my rage to mention that increasing top marginal tax rates by 5% (or whatever) isn’t class warfare.
Oscar Leroy
@NR:
Firebagger! Go back to La-La Land, Dennis Kucinich, you Thompson’s gazelle!
62across
@John O:
What would a deficit reduction proposal have in it, if it were drafted by the commenters here at Balloon Juice? I’d sincerely like to know.
Say the parameters would need to be that it would have broad appeal, so it would be supported by Democrats and Independents – screw the Republicans since they’ll never come along.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
I’m not really getting the contradiction there.
General Stuck
@jl:
jeebus christ, before long these morans will require everyone to have their own milk cow, like they used to do it. All the way back to The Garden, if they can pull it off.
Oscar Leroy
@Mnemosyne:
There is a huge difference between “the White House distanced itself from the report” and “no comment.” “No comment”, by definition, does not equal “distancing itself from”.
BGinCHI
@John O: Or hiring a grilled steak to watch over your dog.
Mnemosyne
@Oscar Leroy:
You’re the guy who’s already forgotten that there was a press conference from Bowles and Simpson today, so, yeah, not really buying your “not commenting is actually support!” claim here.
uila
America’s domestic policy is basically one big social experiment to see how much shit the lower and middle class will eat before they finally vomit.
On a related note, every time I see the name Erskine Bowles, my brain registers “Irksome Bowels”. Whereas with Alan Simpson, it’s just “asshole”.
John O
@62across:
I would say $200 billion in defense cuts, eliminating completely the SS tax ceiling, and something like this for the tax code in general:
FYWP.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Mnemosyne: I think NR is trying to imply that their not outright saying that they don’t like it means that they’re not backing away from it.
BGinCHI
@uila: Simpson’s middle name actually is Asshole. Seriously.
OK, this is actually true: Erskine Bowles’ wife’s name is, wait for it, Crandall Close.
It’s like a fucking cartoon.
uila
@62across: Considering that the US
defensewar budget is greater than all other nations combined, I’d say that would be a good place to start.Mnemosyne
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
And if you look at that single quote out of context, you might come to that conclusion. Unfortunately, this quote comes even earlier in the story:
jl
Looked into more details of the draft ‘BS plan’.
I made a mistake, they do have some serious proposals for Medicare and Medicaid, but they want to start basically with benefit cuts to beneficiaries, then try to reduce payments to the providers (particularly doctors). And, if the insurance exchanges do not work, then they recommend a public option.
So, there is more there than I thought, but still, their recommendations for immediate action is cuts in benefits to ordinary people and providers who are such chumps that they actually do useful work (ie, doctors). Some doctors probably need to get their pay cut, but a lot of primary care doctors are not making a lot of money, considering the amount of time they had to work at low pay as residents, and the burden of their medical education bills.
The one piece I cannot believe, and think I must be misunderstanding, is the proposal to get rid of wage indexing for benefits. If they mean what I think they mean, their proposal is to basically phase out social security.
As it is now, while you are paying in, the increase in your future benefits is indexed to wage growth. After you start receiving benefits, the payments are indexed to price inflation. Over the long run of a person’s whole career, 40 to 50 years, wage indexing is needed in order to keep the real value of the benefits up. If you use price inflation indexing over such a long time span, over several decades, the real value of the social security benefit will go to almost nothing.
If I understand it correctly, the proposal to get rid of wage indexing for future beneficiaries is equivalent to a proposal to gradually phase out the program.
I cannot believe they would propose this, but that is how it looks. Maybe I misunderstand it, maybe they are incompetent, maybe they think we are stupid, or the economists like Krugman, Stiglitz and Galbraith who will oppose it are stupid. I don’t know.
Anyway, Galbraith is right, stuff like long term fixes to social security (which is recognized as a part of unified budget by Very Serious People only so long as they can steal the money from its surplus) and proposals for federal budget caps seem beyond the commission’s mandate. So, Obama has an excuse to fire their asses for not doing what they were tasked to do.
62across
@John O:
Thanks.
I really like your tax code proposal, especially the idea of leading the way on simplification. I’ll light the match.
Also, I wholeheartedly endorse the defense cuts, though as uila gets at, we could go further. I’d also go heavy at corporate subsidies.
Any thoughts on an alleged Democratic “sacred cow” to sacrifice in order to take the wind out of the inevitable Democratic wet dream labeling?
themann1086
@62across: Removing the cap on income eligible for the SS tax would be a huge start and (iirc from the SS wars of 2005) close the projected SS shortfall that occurs in 2045 or whatever. Return Clinton-era tax rates, add a new higher tax bracket ($1 million+) with higher rates, withdraw fully from Iraq, begin withdraw of Afghanistan, cut defense budget by 10%… once the economy picks up again, revenues will increase. That might, might cover the entirety of the deficit. I’d need to do math, though, and I’m feeling lazy.
uila
@John O: Nicely done! That one comment is roughly 1000x better than the Simpering Bowels memo, and they didn’t even have to contend with WordPress. Sign me up.
I still want that 90% marginal rate on all dollars over a million though.
uila
@BGinCHI: The best name I’ve seen recently was highlighted by James Fallows:
John O
@62across:
Well, I don’t think anything I’ve proposed is particularly partisan, but thank you. I’ve never really talked to anyone on either side of the aisle who wouldn’t discuss it rationally.
Politically speaking, I get what you’re saying. Means testing for SS, Medicare and Medicaid is fine by me, as long as only people with serious means (net worth $2M or higher?) are the limit.
NR
@Mnemosyne: What you quoted is nothing more than the writer of the story editorializing. The actual quote from the White House spokesman is what matters here.
jl
@John O: I disagree about means testing for either Social Security or Medicare. Any means testing that will save money must start at lower incomes than the very wealthy. I think any means testing, especially for social security, will leak down into middle class.
In the end Social Security will be seen as a poor persons’ program. If means testing for middle class produces tax breaks for supplementary private pension insurance, or maybe some BS matching program to make up shortfalls in expected savings for middle class people, then there will be a rich person’s retirement system and poor person’s retirement system (social security), and social security will become vulnerable.
Social security should be considered an retirement insurance and savings program from the perspective of a person beginning their career, when we cannot tell who is going to be a Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, and who will be a bum. The price is that Bill Gates gets a stinky little social security check in the mail, and that is a trivial price.
Citizen Alan
@NR:
Yeah, this. My prediction is that the actual committee report will be only 2/3 as evil as what Simpson and that fucking pig Bowles proposed today. And it will pass Congress and get signed by our beloved President. Why do you think he appointed all these assholes to the “Presidential Commission”?
John O
@jl:
I dunno about that. The rich receive proportionately larger SS benefits, just like they get the biggest piece of the pie everywhere else. Sources?
62across
@jl:
Is there no way to design means testing so that it saves money and can’t leak into the middle class?
SS being seen as a poor persons’ program is a real threat, so I get your point. I guess I don’t see a slippery slope as inevitable.
Mark S.
@Citizen Alan:
I doubt they’ll end up agreeing on a report.
I’m not worried about any of this dogshit ever passing. What I find incredibly depressing is that you can propose something that will force everyone to tighten their belts except the rich who will get a huge tax cut and the Serious People will all lap it up. I’m beginning to understand why they’re Serious People: they know they live in a plutocracy and they suck up accordingly.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
And that quote sounds distinctly unenthusiastic to me, especially since it came from a junior spokesperson (the deputy press secretary) who basically poo-pooed the whole presentation from Bowles & Simpson and said it was not worth commenting on.
Tomatoe, tomahto, I suppose.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan: My prediction is that fourteen votes can’t be found for any set of recommendations, and, therefore, the commission issues several fragmentary minority reports. None of these will be an official report and, after a short period of squabbling over the corpse, the whole thing goes away for a while again.
John O
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s a good prediction.
themann1086
@John O: OK, yours is better than mine.
jwb
@jl: Personally, I think they killed it with their obscene overreach on the tax cuts. The only people who cared about this commission were those who really care about the deficit, and those who care about the deficit are not generally impressed by the logic that tax cuts lower the deficit. So with this proposal they’ve lost the very crowd that might have championed a proposal with brutal spending cuts and tax increases weighted toward regressive schemes (like a VAT). In any case, this looks DOA.
Calouste
@62across:
Cut out all the defense contractors and at least half the new weapons systems. Any plans for what you want to do with the surplus?
WereBear (itouch)
Sounds like that tax plan is spreadsheetable. I’m in.
NR
@Mark S.:
I wouldn’t be so sure. I think what you’re going to see is this report being set as the baseline. Then you’ll see a “moderate” faction emerge consisting of Baucus, Conrad, Spratt, Rivlin, Cote, Fudge, and Bowles. They will negotiate directly with the Republicans and there’s your 14 votes. They may scale back the tax cuts for the rich and the Social Security cuts somewhat, but we’ll still end up with a “compromise” plan that greatly favors the rich at the expense of the poor and the middle-class. Obama will then endorse this plan as a reasonable, bipartisan compromise solution to the Very Serious Problem of the deficit.
And if this happens, the plan will sail through the House without amendment (there are more than enough Blue Dogs to see to that), and so the only way to stop it will be with a filibuster in the Senate. And I’m not at all convinced that the Dems will be able to hold the line on that. And if they don’t…. Well, you can basically kiss the party goodbye at that point.
General Stuck
@NR:
Doesn’t it embarrass you in the least, pumping out this swill? You must have the self esteem of a shithouse rat.
Sly
The elimination of the EITC is the most glaring and galling proposal. It’s arguably one of the most successful poverty-fighting policies that this country has ever adopted. No one has ever been this brazen in their desire to completely fuck over the poor. Even Ronald Reagan expanded the EITC.
Yes, they’re cutting the bottom rate substantially. But all the deductions and credits they’re eliminating does not make up for the rate cut. Especially the EITC. They’re patting people on the head with one hand and shoving a spiked mace up their ass with the other.
@NR: There is no way on God’s puke-colored Earth that Kent Conrad will ever sign off on cuts to agribusinesses subsidies. Period.
Nick
at least they’re calling for a public option
Kryptik
You gotta love it. “The Solution Is Painful”. Yes, except for the folks whose taxes you’re thinking about drastically cutting and giving plum deals, which is fine apparently because you’re making drastic spending cuts elsewhere!…just not for programs that would directly affect those folks whose taxes you’re slashing.
What I find remarkable is how much fucking gall there is involving this whole bullshit about the deficit, budget, and the continued sacrosanctity of tax cuts. Just like the ‘OMG YOU CAN’T LET THE TAXCUTS EXPIRE, BUSINESSES WON’T HAVE MONEY TO HIRE!!” They have fucking money now, and they’re still not hiring. Extending the tax cuts to current level doesn’t exactly seem like it’s going to make them jump to hire again, unless the business owners are being partisan hacks in withholding employment for political points (which is an entirely likely situation in and of itself).
We are so goddamn fucked for the next two years at the least.
El Cid
@NR: At present, I see this as the most likely process and result. I certainly wouldn’t say that I can predict it absolutely based on each official’s particular comment, but it seems to be based on what our political system is and what the most powerful in and outside it appear to want.
El Cid
@Kryptik: Businesses are most likely not investing and not hiring and sitting on reserves and cash because people aren’t buying enough that would merit it.
The right really does reject the idea that a lack of customers buying stuff (i.e., demand) is preventing all this spending and investment and hiring by business.
The businesses I work with are following that rule quite closely, they are planning their spending and hiring and hours and such upon sales and indicators of sales. Now, the head honchos will say all the conservative supply side spin on this (i.e., nobody’s hiring because they’re unsure of the taxes and regulations), but, of course, they assure me that their situation is different, and they have to be determined by actual purchasing, because, they just are different.
El Cid
The Onion, on-topic actually:
El Cid
The New York Times editorial on the sort of draft thing from the ‘deficit commision’ on the section re. Social Security.
It’s odd, but I guess it’s significant that some thrown together lot of right wing pricks and other politically admired advisers didn’t sit around their tables and dinner meetings and decide to recommend that we totally rework the Social Security system which has functioned successfully for about 70 years.
I guess we have to be thankful for so many of the simple things.