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Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

This fight is for everything.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

This really is a full service blog.

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Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

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One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

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Reader Interactions

241Comments

  2. 2.

    WyldPirate

    But, but..it was “the best deal we could get”.

    And no one could have anticipated…

    And Republicans are mean….

    And it’s nobody in the Democratic Party’s fault….

    meh…fuck all the excuse making, incompetent sonsabitches.

  4. 4.

    A Humble Lurker

    I thought this was why we hated the Republicans. Because they didn’t care who they hurt as long as they scored the political victory.

    Isn’t there a quote about how “When you look into the abyss the abyss looks back at you”?

  6. 6.

    PurpleGirl

    Please realize that the UI extension would only affect the people still receiving extended aid or who become unemployed in the near future. It does not help people who have already run out their benefits over that last 6 moths or so. Also, there are state laws that restrict the length of benefits and those haven’t been changing. The 13 months sounds good but it’s really misleading.

  7. 7.

    Corner Stone

    Cole, whatever meds the ENT put you on – you should back the fuck off of them.
    I’m worried about you dog. You are all over the damn place lately.

  9. 9.

    calling all toasters

    On the bright side, it won’t actually create jobs, either. See: Clinton tax increase, Bush tax cut.

  10. 10.

    WyldPirate

    The vicious circle jerk of non-leadership in the Democratic Party…

    And a vicious circle took hold, according to interviews over past months with Democrats in the administration and Congress: Mr. Obama largely deferred to Democratic leaders — the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, was among those in tough re-election races — while Democrats looked to the president to take the lead and make the case against extending the tax cuts for high incomes.

    I can hear them now..

    Pres O: No you lead Harry…

    Harry Reid…nuh-uhh, the Republicans are too mean..Nancy, you do it…

    Nancy: uhuh…My Blue Doggies are whining..Pres O?

    Pres O: Mitch McConnell skeeers me. Maybe I should give some stuff away before we even negotiate so he won’t be so mean…maybe if we just wait and don’t talk about it it will all go away.
    ,
    Harry and Nancy–Yeah,great idea..

    Buncha wankers. None of them are capable of being the pivot man at a circle jerk.

  11. 11.

    Johnny Pez

    So, waitaminute, you’re saying that Saint Barack should not have agreed to this deal? All right, you imposter, who are you, and what have you done with John Cole?

  12. 12.

    BR

    Yeah, I was disappointed to see that. Calculated risk had this:

    Tax Bill to add $857 Billion to Debt:

    It is important to remember the Joint Committee on Taxation assumed all the provisions will end as scheduled; the payroll tax cut after one year, and the other tax cuts after two years. That seems very unlikely, so the actual cost will be much much higher. As an example, if the tax cut for high income earners stays in place for the next decade that will add $700 billion alone to the debt!

    When I called my senators today I couldn’t get myself to argue either for or against the deal, so I shouted at them about the lack of prosecutions of banksters.

  15. 15.

    YellowJournalism

    @PurpleGirl: I had to explain this exact fact to my mother, who was surprised by how angry I was over this so-called deal. (And seeing this chart doesn’t help, either.) I know for certain there are people in my extended family who think they’re going to get benefits again, even though theirs expired a long time ago. Rude awakening would be an understatement.

    I guess this means I have to rip up my official Obot membership card, take down the Obama’s Sermon on the Mount velvet painting, and return the pony and rainbows that came with them.

  18. 18.

    Yutsano

    @Johnny Pez:

    All right, you imposter, who are you, and what have you done with John Cole?

    Tunch took over the keyboard again. Nothing more to see here folks, move along.

  19. 19.

    calling all toasters

    Hey, but at least he’s getting some infrastructure projects out of this! I mean, at least the estate tax is returning to normal! Err, well there is the agreement to raise the debt ceiling! OK, lemme try again…

  20. 20.

    Mike

    According to my calculations, under the compromise plan the people in the $40-50K bracket would save enough to purchase a thick swordfish steak every week of the year.

  21. 21.

    goblue72

    Add to that the payroll tax cut was added to entice Republicans and the Republicans freely admit they will treat it as a tax “hike” when it expires and use the issue of not making it permanent as leverage to “reform” Social Security:

    http://leftword.blogdig.net/archives/articles/December2010/09/Summers__Payroll_tax_holiday_was_GOP_s_preference_for_tax_stimulus.html

    Course, what do I know. I was beating with a stick by the authoritarian frat boys around here for suggesting the GOP-Obama tax deal was a crap sandwich.

  22. 22.

    eemom

    @PurpleGirl:

    and WHAT HAPPENS when the 13 months runs out, and we are right back to square ONE? Why will no one answer this??

    Feed people now the better to starve them later?

    We scoff about ponies and unicorns — but what miracle is going to unfold that puts all those people to work before then…..especially with the “deal” rigged the way it is to perpetuate jobs being outsourced??

  25. 25.

    Nylund

    Those are just averages for each bracket. For the really rich like Rush Limbaugh, they’re cut is well over a million dollars.

    And since this will add to the debt, eventually we’ll have to cut grandma’s social security benefits so he can add that million dollars to the $350 million he already has.

  27. 27.

    Mark S.

    @Yutsano:

    I saw Tunch on TV with Bernie Sanders saying they were going to filibuster this thing. Of course, I’ve been eating the brown acid again.

  28. 28.

    Rudy

    So, I’ve already looked at this graph about 10 times today, and I appear to be slower than normal. I had never noticed that the $1M bucket is, actually, using the ‘Obama compromise’, a 30% INCREASE over what the Republicans proposed. That’s rich.

  29. 29.

    Emerald

    John, if pictures are that important, take a look at the picture in this DK diary. Just scroll down a little bit.

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/8/926896/-Obamas-Tax-Deal:-A-GOOD-Deal-(updated-with-clip-from-The-Last-Word)

    This deal is a stealth stimulus. Even Krugman admits that it will help the economy. Most economists are predicting that it will lower the unemployment rate by at least a point. This is the only way we’re going to get more stimulus into the economy for the next two years.

    Plus, without this deal your taxes are going up by about $3,000 next year. Two million unemployed people will be out in the cold (alas, it doesn’t help the 99ers though. Nobody cares about them). Instead of a kick, the economy will take a pretty big hit.

    Think again.

  30. 30.

    frosty

    @WyldPirate: Good stuff. That’s what we used to clean the ink off the folding machine rollers in the bookbindery I worked in for a summer. Well, either that or toluene, which we all know is the active ingredient in airplane glue. They sorta smelled the same.

    Combined with the beer my boss bought me (underage) for lunch, it made for some interesting afternoons.

  32. 32.

    Ija

    Even the Republican plan would have better than this deal. How do you negotiate between the Democratic plan and Republican plan and end up with this? What kind of negotiation was this?

  33. 33.

    FoxinSocks

    I still respect Obama, but more and more, I’m convinced he’s wrong on this. The Republicans’ response to the 9/11 bill, holding unemployment benefits hostage… The Republicans have shown they’ll do anything, hurt anyone to get these tax cuts. They need to be stopped cold, because if they’re successful here, they’ll only want more, and it’ll come from the middle and working class.

  34. 34.

    ChrisNBama

    I’m not sure I follow the logic. The Bush tax cuts are either going to expire, or they are going to be extended. Decoupling is out of the question due to the arcane rules in the Senate, and allowing the tax cuts to expire would have serious repercussions for the democratic party.

    Since the GOP has made it clear that it’s an all or nothing proposition, Obama was able to extract concessions for unemployment benefits, a payroll tax cut, and extending various green energy tax credits from the Stimulus bill. If you look at the charts showing how the monies are allocated, you will find that the majority of the funds are dedicated to Obama’s priorities and not the priorities of the GOP. Mark Zandi and many different economists have reviewed the deal and think that these short term measures will have sufficient offsetting advantages as to compensate for the additional debt, particularly since all tax cuts extended will sunset in two years.

    As much as I find your posts enlightening, John, I believe you are wrong here. The deal has some onerous provisions, but overall represents good stimulative policy for the next two years.

  35. 35.

    PurpleGirl

    @eemom: When your time runs out, they (the pundits, etc.) tell you to find the other safety net programs your city/state might have. Of course, those also have restrictions to them, i.e., some states don’t give welfare to single adults without children at home, some have work requirements, some require you to get help to guarantee your rent because what the state gives you is less than half of what the rent might be. Each locality does things differently. And those benefits don’t usually add up to equal what the UI benefits were.

    Emerald: Not everyone got/gets 99 weeks. It’s “up to 99 weeks” depending on the state you live in. California gets 99 weeks, NY on the other hand only got up to 72 weeks with a state law restriction to one year on UI, so that is actually only 60 weeks of UI total. Then we’re on our own.

  36. 36.

    Corner Stone

    @Emerald:

    Even Krugman admits that it will help the economy.

    No. Krugman says it will help in 2011. And then all be sucked right the fuck back out again in 2012.

  38. 38.

    goblue72

    @Emerald: Shall we go back to the days when ARRA was being pushed and the predictions of economists at the time on how many jobs it was going to create and how much it would reduce the unemployment rate by?

    Look, I like Krugman – a lot. But he really doesn’t seem to want to accept the depressing truth that we are still in the middle of a great de-leveraging across the economy and until that process is complete, we ain’t going anywhere.

  39. 39.

    Corner Stone

    Why does Austan Goolsbee look like a wannabe Clint Eastwood in this interview?
    Stop squinting tough guy!

  40. 40.

    WyldPirate

    @Rudy:

    I had never noticed that the $1M bucket is, actually, using the ‘Obama compromise’, a 30% INCREASE over what the Republicans proposed. That’s rich.

    No, what is really rich is that for single filers making under 20K and married making under 40K, their fucking taxes are going up.
    In Tax Deal, Many Public Employees Will Pay More

    Nice negotiation team…..

  41. 41.

    frosty

    @eemom: That miracle would be the Civilian Conservation Corps or the 21st Century equivalent wherein the Federal Government hires the unemployed to build ‘n’ fix stuff that desperately needs built ‘n’ fixed.

    Lets all recommend that to Boehner and McConnell. I’m sure they have the nation’s best interests at heart.

    frosty +3

  42. 42.

    tweez

    JC is straight-up trolling again. This was the best deal available at this time. It sucks, sure, but wait ’til you see the next graphic.

  43. 43.

    freelancer

    David Gergen sez, “Fuck the middle class, it’s Austerity time!”

    Privatize the profit, socialize the losses.

    How long before we start bringing back the guillotine?

    Seriously, I’m 60% through Griftopia, and every other page has me bursting a blood vessel. Selling out sovereignty, fucking with commodities markets and gas prices, the real estate heist perpetrated from bottom to top. Billion dollar corporations that don’t “produce” a single tangible thing. The balls on the Masters of the Universe.

  46. 46.

    goblue72

    @ChrisNBama: Bwahahahaha!!!! Like those two-year cuts are just gonna go away. And like in two years, during an ELECTION season, Congress and the White House are just gonna let the Bush cuts expire.

    Back here in reality, we know that ain’t happening. Because if it was, we wouldn’t be having this frickin’ argument about extending the Bush tax giveaways in the first place.

    Yeesh.

  47. 47.

    Softail

    In other news…

    UPDATE, 2:01 p.m.: In today’s White House briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs addressed the Democratic resolution and Pelosi not bringing the deal to a floor for a vote as its currently written: “This is a long and winding process, but I think that at the end of the day, members are not going to want to be in their districts…when their constituents find out on the first of January that their taxes have gone up by several hundred thousands of dollars. … It was a voice vote…and my guess is if a lot of voices yell one thing, you may not yell the other.”

    Are your taxes going up hundreds of thousands of dollars?

  49. 49.

    PurpleGirl

    @ChrisNBama: The UI stuff is not as good as it should be. It will not help people who have already run out their benefits. It also doesn’t seem to include the COBRA subsidy that was there from the Stimulus bill. People are already falling off the cliff.

  50. 50.

    NR

    As someone who has been very critical of Obama lately, just let me say this: The problem is much bigger than him. The problem is a government that is increasingly tilted toward the plutocrats without a force to counterbalance it. The Senate is really the center of this problem.

    If the Senate can’t pass anything except tax cuts and military spending increases, America is fucked regardless of who is in the White House.

    So chew on that one for a while.

  53. 53.

    freelancer

    David Gergen sez, “Fuck the middle class, it’s Austerity time!”

    Privatize the profits, sociaIize the losses.

    How long before we start bringing back the guillotine?
    Seriously, I’m 60% through Griftopia, and every other page has me bursting a blood vessel. Selling out sovereignty, fucking with commodities markets and gas prices, the real estate heist perpetrated from bottom to top. Billion dollar corporations that don’t “produce” a single tangible thing. The balls on the Masters of the Universe. It’s high time for some reasonable castration.

  54. 54.

    WyldPirate

    @frosty:

    I had a job once in an environmental lab doing sample clean-up. We used methylene chloride, hexane and toluene. Talk about High Times….no respirators, ventilation sucked.

    We were breaking OSHA rules left and right. Damn glad I left that job.

  55. 55.

    Chessy

    @Rudy:

    I’m guessing that’s because of the 2 year inheritance tax bit included in the compromise.

    In any case, I’m not sure what’s so interesting or shocking about this graph. Is it surprising that when you look at how each individual makes out from the 2 year renewal of the bush tax cuts, that a wealthy person gets back more far more $? As far as I can tell the koslings fiddled with another chart that demonstrated how many billions went to the wealthy, and then the lions share of the deal that goes to the rest (it’s just there’s far, far fewer of the wealthy divvying up the >$250,000 cuts and the estate tax cut). They switched it to show each person’s individual cut to generate outrage.

  59. 59.

    Chuck Butcher

    Ah a return to the long missed much lamented Gilded Age, sometimes called the Robber Baron Era. Do you suppose we’ll have a Haymarket, or a new Wobblies will arise to be assassinated? What could you call a strike on now that would paralyze the nation ala TR? China?

    I expect the Harley will get a lot of use this coming year because people sure the hell ain’t gonna buy what I’ve got to sell ’em. I’ll bet that roof or whatever can make another year, two, …. I’ve got buckets…

  60. 60.

    Ija

    @Softail:

    Are your taxes going up hundreds of thousands of dollars?

    Obviously Gibbs is referring to those making more than 1 million. Because they are the only constituents who matter.

  61. 61.

    Corner Stone

    @tweez:

    JC is straight-up trolling again. This was the best deal available at this time. It sucks, sure, but wait ‘til you see the next graphic.

    No doubt he’s trolling.
    But the next graf is gonna have Pumpkinhead for the fucking representative of the Obama Tax Cut Deal.

  62. 62.

    ChrisNBama

    @ChrisNBama: Bwahahahaha! Like those two-year cuts are just gonna go away. And like in two years, during an ELECTION season, Congress and the White House are just gonna let the Bush cuts expire. Back here in reality, we know that ain’t happening. Because if it was, we wouldn’t be having this frickin’ argument about extending the Bush tax giveaways in the first place.

    The NYT’s is reporting that Obama is going to make Tax Reform his re-election plank. If true, then that adds credibility to the argument that the sunsets will be honored and the code will be reformed. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/us/politics/10tax.html?hp

  63. 63.

    Teri

    So let the whole thing expire….and blame it on the G-D Republican Senators! John, you were right, I was wrong. I admitted it in a previous thread and just thought I should tell you in person, so to speak. Good night all and thank you for “opening” my mind so to speak.

  68. 68.

    goblue72

    @ChrisNBama: Ah, I see. So because the NY Times has some article about some rumors that Obama wants to make tax reform his central issue in 2011, that the GOP are just gonna go “oh yes sir, we’ll just go along with whatever you say”? I guess Obama will just whip out his 11th dimensional chess moves.

    The willful naivete in these parts astounds.

  69. 69.

    Moses2317

    I don’t like this compromise, but before opposing it I think three questions have to be answered:

    1. What is a realistic alternative plan for getting unemployment benefits extended for 7 million Americans, the EITC expanded, college tax credits continued, and some stimulus for the economy?

    2. Would we get a better deal on income taxes, the estate tax, unemployment benefits, EITC, stimulus, etc. by waiting until next year when the Republicans run the House and the Democratic Senator majorities shrink?

    3. Who are you going to direct your anger at about the bad parts of this deal? President Obama or the Republicans.

    I think there is no realistic plan for #1, there is no way we would get a better deal for #2, and that we should direct our anger at the party that held the unemployed and working classes hostage in order to get further tax cuts for the wealthy elite, rather than President Obama who did what he felt he needed to do to prevent 7 million Americans from losing their safety net.

    So, I think Democrats should pass something very similar to this compromise (one change I would try to make is including expanded unemployment benefits for the 99ers) and then we progressives need to spend the next two years pinning the problematic aspects of this compromise on the Republicans and changing the political dynamic around taxes and the economy so we can get a much better result when these tax issues come up again in 2012.

    Winning Progressive

  70. 70.

    ChrisNBama

    @PurpleGirl: We do not know what the specifics are yet with respect to the 99’s. There’s some anecdotal stuff floating around the nets, but the legislation is still being drafted. Furthermore, at least extending some UI insurance is better than extending none.

    And it is very possible that this whole compromise will fall anyway. The Tea Party has begun lobbying GOP senator’s to kill the Compromise in favor of a making the existing tax rates permanent. They are still open to the idea of extending UI benefits as long as they are offset.

  72. 72.

    TooManyJens

    @BR:

    When I called my senators today I couldn’t get myself to argue either for or against the deal, so I shouted at them about the lack of prosecutions of banksters.

    I basically told mine: take care of the unemployed, and try to come up with some way to do it without paying the bribe. Weak tea, but what else can we say?

    I don’t even know. It’s worse than your standard hostage situation, really: in a regular hostage situation, the hostage taker has to be careful not to get shot or arrested. What negative consequences could the Republicans possibly face for this? This is why the vote needed to be before the election.

  73. 73.

    Suffern ACE

    Sweet. My potential tax cut almost doubled. Where do I sign on?

    Do I assume that were the bush tax cuts allowed to expire, this would represent everyone’s average net tax increase?

  74. 74.

    The Sheriff's A Ni-

    And the John Cole rollercoaster takes another wild turn! Who knows which way he’ll be barreling next!

  75. 75.

    eemom

    @PurpleGirl:

    and the city/states are being strangled to death too, so I don’t think there’s much of a “safety net” to be hoped for there.

    Contemptuous though I am of Chris Matthews, he’s one of those broken-clock types, and tonight I kind of agreed with him when he said, both we and the WH are fighting for the same people, but we’re both fighting against the guys holding the gun on us. It will be up to the voters in 2012 to decide if those guys get to keep the gun.

    Dunno what Tweety really believes deep down in his little yellow heart of hearts, but you will plz pardon me if I have zero hope of the fucking moronic fuck-me-in-the-ass-again-GOP electorate good voting people of this nation to figure that one out by 2012.

  76. 76.

    Ija

    @Softail:

    It was a voice vote…and my guess is if a lot of voices yell one thing, you may not yell the other.”

    I don’t understand what Gibbs mean by this. If one side have a lot of voices yelling one thing, you ORGANIZE YOUR DAMN SIDE and yell the other thing and fight back. Is he saying that if the opposition starts yelling, you just keep quiet and fold? What kind of stupidity is this? Does he not understand oppositional politics? What is he, 5? Afraid of being yelled at?
    Unbelievable.

  77. 77.

    MikeTheZ

    @ChrisNBama: Aside from the fact that, y’know, the American public has shown a remarkable amount of intelligence and understanding when it comes to tax law in the past…

    …oh, wait, no, that was just in my dream last night. In the real world, we’ll have Sarah Palin telling us how we can vote for the socialist’s tax reform that will redistribute the wealth, and instead they should vote Republican because tax cuts are good.

    MikeTheZ wishes he were +5

  78. 78.

    Chessy

    @Chessy:

    Oh wait, I just followed the link chain. It’s Ezra Klein updating an older graph, making essentially the point I made above, and sympathizing with folks it may outrage.

  79. 79.

    Corner Stone

    @goblue72:

    Course, what do I know. I was beating with a stick by the authoritarian frat boys around here for suggesting the GOP-Obama tax deal was a crap sandwich.

    Funny how that keeps happening here, eh?
    Almost like it’s encouraged by the ownership. Strange, that.

  80. 80.

    frosty

    @WyldPirate: Rules, schmules…

    After I took Confined Space Training I learned why I shouldn’t have just crawled into the 33″ storm sewer to see if the connection I’d mapped to the 48″ really was there. By myself. Without telling my boss or anyone else where I was.

    Sheesh.

  81. 81.

    MikeTheZ

    @ChrisNBama: Aside from the fact that, y’know, the American public has shown a remarkable amount of intelligence and understanding when it comes to tax law in the past…

    …oh, wait, no, that was just in my dream last night. In the real world, we’ll have Sarah Palin telling us how we can vote for the s-word’s tax reform that will redistribute the wealth, and instead they should vote Republican because tax cuts are good.

    MikeTheZ wishes he were +5

  82. 82.

    Comrade Luke

    @ChrisNBama:

    From that article you supplied.

    The objective is to rid the code of its complex buildup of deductions, credits and exemptions, thereby broadening the base of taxes collected and allowing for lower rates — much like a bipartisan majority on Mr. Obama’s debt-reduction commission recommended last week in its final blueprint for reducing the debt through 2020.
    __
    Doing so would offer not only an opportunity to begin confronting the growth in the national debt but also a way to address warnings by American business that corporate tax rates and the costs of complying with the tax code are cutting into their global competitiveness.

    Wow, that DOES sound great.

    Anyone have any extra glue or gasoline?

  83. 83.

    Emerald

    @Moses2317: “ThisIsMyTime” asks a few more questions over on The People’s View.

    If you oppose this deal, then what are your plans to:

    1) pass a $56 Billion unemployment extension law that will allow 2 million people get unemployment Benefit and create 600,000 jobs in 2011?
    2) pass a law that will allow the Average Americans to keep on the average $3,000 a year.
    3) give students and families up to $2,500 in tax savings to help pay for college tuition and other expenses.
    4) pass a 2% employee-side payroll tax cut for over 155 million workers saving a family making $70,000 a year about $1,400 – which translate to providing tax relief of about $120 billion next year.
    5) pass the Earned Income Tax Credit that will give on an average $600 in additional assistance to families with 3 or more children.
    6) pass the Child Tax Credit that helps 10.5 million lower income families with 18 million children with a $1,000 child tax credit per child with the $3,000 maximum credit threshold.
    7) pass COBRA Benefits for those who lost their jobs in the recession, providing a 65 percent tax credit to help cover the cost of health care.
    8) pass Unemployment Benefits for those who lost their jobs in the recession, to help them get back on their feet, making the first $2,400 in unemployment benefits tax-free, when normally 100 percent of those benefits are taxable.

    Because this is our side of the deal. It’s MORE than the Republicans got. And it DOES NOT make the tax cuts permanent.

  84. 84.

    ChrisNBama

    @ChrisNBama: Ah, I see. So because the NY Times has some article about some rumors that Obama wants to make tax reform his central issue in 2011, that the GOP are just gonna go “oh yes sir, we’ll just go along with whatever you say”? I guess Obama will just whip out his 11th dimensional chess moves. The willful naivete in these parts astounds.

    I understand it’s easier to be cynical than to have some amount of faith that progress will occur. This compromise isn’t as bad as it’s being portrayed by the democratic party and its partisans. The alternative is allowing the tax cuts to expire then letting the democrats be labeled as the party that foisted the largest tax increase in American history on the American people during a time of recession.

  86. 86.

    Mark S.

    @Corner Stone:

    You’re obviously not hallucinating cats on your television.

    And you’re right about Krugman. Here’s what he says:

    Look at the Zandi estimates: they show a boost to the economy in 2011, which is then given back in 2012. So growth is actually slower in 2012 than it would be without the deal. Now, what we know from lots of political economy research — Larry Bartels is my guru on this — is that presidential elections depend, not on the state of the economy, but on whether things are getting better or worse in the year or so before the election. The unemployment rate in October 1984 was almost the same as the rate in October 1980 — but Carter was thrown out by voters who saw things getting worse, while for Reagan it was morning in America. Put these two observations together — and what you get is that the tax-cut deal makes Obama’s reelection less likely. Let me repeat: the tax cut deal makes Obama less likely to win in 2012.

    But Krugman is a firebagger and secretly wants Obama to lose.

  87. 87.

    DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective

    Yeah, thanks. I’m just a stupid child, I can’t understand anything until somebody shows me a picture with colored balloons depicting reality.

    What the fuck, John? You didn’t see this cartoon back when your boy Bush signed the cuts in the first place? What, don’t they do cartoon news shows back there in WV?

    What the hell did you think was going on back then?

    You really need to watch more Barney the Dinosaur.

    Psyche! Ha ha. Or something. Also can you please put faces on the balloons? That would help.

  89. 89.

    SFAW

    I guess Obama will just whip out his 11th dimensional chess moves.

    Two things:
    1) He’s moved past 11-dimensional, now he’s up to 19-dimensional. You must have missed the memo.
    2) You forgot to say “He’s playing the long game.”
    2) Try not to think of Cleavon Little saying “Excuse me while I whip this out”
    2) Stop being a sanctimonious purist.

  90. 90.

    Dennis SGMM

    @ChrisNBama:

    The NYT’s is reporting that Obama is going to make Tax Reform his re-election plank.

    That ought to work out at least as well as closing Gitmo.

  91. 91.

    Corner Stone

    I can’t support that, even if they extend unemployment benefits for five years.

    WHAT? WHY DO YOU WANT TO KILL EVERYONE ARRGLEBARGLEMCARRRGHHH??
    You HAVE to!! You STUPID sonofabitch!

  92. 92.

    Joseph Nobles

    Krauthammer has gone ballistic on the Obama-GOP tax cut. He calls it the swindle of the year.

    If Obama had asked for a second stimulus directly, he would have been laughed out of town. Stimulus I was so reviled that the Democrats banished the word from their lexicon throughout the 2010 campaign. And yet, despite a very weak post-election hand, Obama got the Republicans to offer to increase spending and cut taxes by $990 billion over two years. Two-thirds of that is above and beyond extension of the Bush tax cuts but includes such urgent national necessities as windmill subsidies.
    __
    No mean achievement. After all, these are the same Republicans who spent 2010 running on limited government and reducing debt. And this budget busting occurs less than a week after the president’s deficit commission had supposedly signaled a new national consensus of austerity and frugality.
    __
    Some Republicans are crowing that Stimulus II is the Republican way – mostly tax cuts – rather than the Democrats’ spending orgy of Stimulus I. That’s consolation? This just means that Republicans are two years too late. Stimulus II will still blow another near-$1 trillion hole in the budget.
    __
    At great cost that will have to be paid after this newest free lunch, the package will add as much as 1 percent to GDP and lower the unemployment rate by about 1.5 percentage points. That could easily be the difference between victory and defeat in 2012.

    That doesn’t sound like Br’er Rabbit asking not to be thrown into the briar patch. That sounds like desperation.

  93. 93.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Softail:

    their taxes have gone up by several hundred thousands of dollars.

    I’m gonna guess he said “several hundred OR thousands of dollars.”

  95. 95.

    Ija

    There’s always somebody who wants to make tax reform his central issue. Tax reform is like the magical pony at the end of the road. Tax reform and eliminating inefficiency. Always popular when you are desperate.

  96. 96.

    GregB

    Please think of the producers and all they sacrifice in this season of giving.

    Then kick a homeless man and call him a parasite.

    Have an Ayn Rand Christmas.

  97. 97.

    BombIranForChrist

    But … but … we must support Obama, because … Palin! OMIGOD Palin will be Preznit now! Nooooooooooooo! Why does John want Palin to be Preznit?

  98. 98.

    Suffern ACE

    @Ija: Wait. Why am I suppossed to get behind someone who wants to eliminate efficiency. That’s like someone running on adding waste, and favoring earmarks.

  100. 100.

    SFAW

    I understand it’s easier to be cynical than to have some amount of faith that progress will occur.

    Do tell. Why would you say that? I mean, it’s not as if the Administration has ever told the Left to FOAD.

    This compromise isn’t as bad as it’s being portrayed by the democratic party and its partisans.

    Partisans? What, are you channeling Broder?

    The alternative is allowing the tax cuts to expire then letting the democrats be labeled as the party that foisted the largest tax increase in American history on the American people during a time of recession.

    Did Mitch and Orange Julius pay you a lot to say that? Or does parroting Rethug bullshit talking points just come naturally to you? Here’s a hint: you and your Rethug brethren will do that no matter what the result of the “compromise” bill turns out to be.

  101. 101.

    Ija

    @Suffern ACE:

    Inefficiency. Sorry. Mistyped it the first time.

    Although in this environment, even if Republicans do run on eliminating efficiency, they’ll probably still win. The country luuuves them.

  102. 102.

    SFAW

    This may have been the death blow.

    Thanks? I think. Not to be too whiny or anything (I know, that’s atypical for BJ), but to which are you referring, and WTF do you mean anyway?

  103. 103.

    Dennis SGMM

    @Ija:
    How in hell does anyone believe that Obama can accomplish tax reform when he couldn’t even raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans? I shudder to think of what kind of blowjob he’d have to give the Republicans to get even the shadow of tax reform.

  104. 104.

    The Sheriff's A Ni-

    @SFAW: So if we kick the tax cut can down the road for two years, the Republicans will still say the Dems enacted the largest tax hike in history. Oooookay.

    I repeat: Whatever happened to the reality-based community?

  105. 105.

    Chessy

    @Joseph Nobles:

    At least Krauthammer admits outright that he’s willing to trade another 1.5% of Americans out of work for political gain:

    At great cost that will have to be paid after this newest free lunch, the package will add as much as 1 percent to GDP and lower the unemployment rate by about 1.5 percentage points. That could easily be the difference between victory and defeat in 2012.

  108. 108.

    Mark S.

    @Joseph Nobles:

    Kraut:

    the package will add as much as 1 percent to GDP and lower the unemployment rate by about 1.5 percentage points. That could easily be the difference between victory and defeat in 2012.

    They’re not usually this blatant that they want this country to suffer. DIAF would be too good for Krauthammer; it’s got to be something a lot slower and more painful.

    ETA: Chessy beat me to it.

  110. 110.

    D. Aristophanes

    @Moses2317:

    1. What is a realistic alternative plan for getting unemployment benefits extended for 7 million Americans

    A stand-alone bill to try to extend them in the lame-duck session and if they use the filibuster to punt, using whatever soft-sell/hard-sell on Boehner that’s necessary to get him to extend them, and if none of it works make whatever lemonade you can out if it by relentlessly pinning the Scrooge label on the GOP for all to see.

    the EITC expanded, college tax credits continued, and some stimulus for the economy?

    Same as above, but good luck. At any rate, UI extension is the real stimulative part of the compromise, and where we should focus the lion’s share of our efforts.

    2. Would we get a better deal on income taxes, the estate tax,

    Yes, by definition, because they would expire and that is not a bad thing with regards to two of three elements – the rich people tax cuts and the estate tax cut. Even the middle class tax cuts don’t really get felt that much on the individual level though collectively they could offer some good stimulus. And once the next session starts, either the GOP would have to give us even more of what we want or face the veto pen and/or a Senate defeat with a bill that just offers tax breaks. So if they want us to pass the rich people tax cuts, we make them tie in EITC, UI extensions etc. to sweeten the deal. At the very least we could demand the compromise Obama got but should demand a helluva lot more.

    unemployment benefits, EITC, stimulus, etc. by waiting until next year when the Republicans run the House and the Democratic Senator majorities shrink?

    Still have the Senate, still have the veto pen.

    3. Who are you going to direct your anger at about the bad parts of this deal? President Obama or the Republicans.

    Republicans.

  111. 111.

    SFAW

    So if we kick the tax cut can down the road for two years, the Republicans will still say the Dems enacted the largest tax hike in history. Oooookay.

    You haven’t yet learned that it (or some variation) is their mantra, and that they will use it whenever/wherever they think they can get away with it. And, given the highly-developed critical-thinking skills exhibited by most of the electorate, “whenever/wherever” is, in this case, functionally equivalent to “all the time”.

    I repeat: Whatever happened to the reality-based community?

    We’re still here. Where did you go off to? Ponies’R’Us Land?

  112. 112.

    WyldPirate

    @Dennis SGMM:

    Goddammit, Dennis SGMM. Now you’ve done it, you racist. You emasculated the president and have him huffing on dongs, now.

    Obots are afraid to come in here now. Even they can recognize a bunch of sharks in a feeding frenzy. LOL

  113. 113.

    WarMunchkin

    I agree. I thought about this for a really long time. It’s a stupid choice, and it’s really dumb that we got to this point, not that we have to make the choice. But what ransom is too much to pay for a policy that everyone knows will hurt the economy in the long run?

    We’re boxing ourselves in. Sure, we can help the millions of unemployed people who desperately need UI (though there is no tier V), or we can deal with the same thing down the road, when the economy will be even more depressed. Since when was “you’re allowed to help poor people, but only if you give ten times as much to rich people” a fair deal?

    ETA: Got an e-mail from my Congressman saying he’s opposing it. I’m off to write him some good arguments he can lay out.

  114. 114.

    The Sheriff's A Ni-

    @Corner Stone: Uh, even the GOP can’t say the Dems are responsible for a historic tax increase when there isn’t any increase at all. The Richard Pryor ‘who you gonna believe’ act only goes so far.

  118. 118.

    freelancer

    Good Riddance to Thursday, December 9th.

    This day has been fractally bad, from the fact I bit my lip, to my friend with a virus affecting her heart, to the fact that her insurance is fucking around on her actually getting treatment for it, to my co-worker having car trouble, to my own job insecurity, to this larger state and national embarrassment.

    freelancer +4

  119. 119.

    The Sheriff's A Ni-

    @SFAW:

    You haven’t yet learned that it (or some variation) is their mantra, and that they will use it whenever/wherever they think they can get away with it. And, given the highly-developed critical-thinking skills exhibited by most of the electorate, “whenever/wherever” is, in this case, functionally equivalent to “all the time”.

    For Christ’s sake, they’re politicians, not Jedi! You can’t claim a tax increase when everyone and their grandmother saw them extend the tax cuts! Or you could, but you’d get laughed right out of the debate by the non-27 percenters.

    We’re still here. Where did you go off to? Ponies’R’Us Land?

    I’m still here in the reality-based community, not the insulting asshole community. Feel free to join us at any time.

  120. 120.

    The Sheriff's A Ni-

    @Corner Stone: You have a link for that?

    In any case, tying the HCR mandate to a tax increase is a lot easier jump to make than tying the continuation of a tax cut to a tax increase.

  121. 121.

    Chessy

    This chart would be more informative if it showed the % of taxable income each bracket was getting back out of the deal. At a quick glance, for instance, the lowest tax bracket gets more than quadruple under the compromise vs the GOP proposals, while the wealthiest bracket gets back a little than 34% more.

    Obviously, where this all would look the worst is if you compare everything to the original Dem proposal, but they need some adjustments since they were planning to address the AMT and the estate tax too (just not as generously for the wealthiest), and then there’s also the simple fact that they just don’t seem to have been in the cards.

  122. 122.

    Dennis SGMM

    @Corner Stone:

    Last time I had the stomach to look, 40% still believe that Saddam had WMDs and 28% think that G.W. Bush was a great president.

    You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons. …

  123. 123.

    SFAW

    Uh, even the GOP can’t say the Dems are responsible for a historic tax increase when there isn’t any increase at all.

    What, are you just visiting this country from Outer Slobovia? Because anyone who’s been here longer than six months knows that the Rethugs will say ANYTHING to engender fear or anger in their target audience. As the saying goes, it’s how they roll.

  124. 124.

    Rudy

    @Chessy:

    No, I get the fact that we still have (at least somewhat) a progressive tax system and that cuts to said system will benefit the wealthy more.
    I have no idea how the Kos community might have ‘fiddled’ with it. Another column was added but it is not using a different variable for its values (per capita vs. total, etc.) as far as I can tell.
    More than anything I’m questioning either the data or the compromise. I don’t have enough input to make the distinction at this point.
    I don’t think it’d be additional from the estate tax portion as that would not hit all income levels when all are showing a sizable tax reduction in column three (UNLESS the population cohort is so large at the bottom that it’s raising up death benefits for the whole group, possible, but it feels wrong).
    I also don’t think it’s the payroll tax holiday as the incremental discount would be equal for all groups above the 106k current cap.
    If you’re arguing Ezra Klein just made numbers up for the third column, that is entirely plausible, I can’t speak to info from someone else. I’m just trying to figure it out to my own satisfaction.

  125. 125.

    Ija

    @The Sheriff’s A Ni-:

    Uh, even the GOP can’t say the Dems are responsible for a historic tax increase when there isn’t any increase at all.

    Of course they can, most people don’t know the difference between tax cuts expiring and their tax being raised. All they know is that, hey, I’m paying more tax than I was last year, what’s the deal? Most people forget that they have been paying less tax for a while now.

  126. 126.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Mark S.: You’re chortling about someone else’s comment-thread domination with WyldPirate? Isn’t that like chortling about someone else’s turtle-like appearance with Mitch McConnell?

  129. 129.

    SFAW

    For Christ’s sake, they’re politicians, not Jedi! You can’t claim a tax increase when everyone and their grandmother saw them extend the tax cuts! Or you could, but you’d get laughed right out of the debate by the non-27 percenters.

    Your naivete is breathtaking. They’ve done similar things before, they’ll do it again.

    I’m still here in the reality-based community, …

    Isn’t it pretty to think so. Wrong, but pretty.

  130. 130.

    WyldPirate

    @Mark S.:
    haha..sharks are out. I’m having fun watching the manic-depressive (or trolling sides against each other) swings of our board host.

    Flip will be around. He’s a good egg and a good, fair debater.

    It should get comical unless the ‘bots all take their ball and go home.

  132. 132.

    Mike M

    If Democrats truly feel so strongly about this issue, then why don’t they use “the nuclear option” and end the filibuster in the Senate immediately. The Republicans were willing to do it over judicial nominess, so why isn’t this an important enough issue for the Democrats.

    Blaming it on Obama is a ridiculous excuse for the failure of the Democrats to exercise their majority powers in the Senate.

  135. 135.

    Martin

    Ok, here’s the calculus as I see it:

    Obama works on this compromise because he has to. He simply can’t do the ‘draw a line in the sand’ deal on this because the public will excoriate him for raising their taxes and not delivering something on jobs, and he can’t get the jobs without the GOP. His situation is that simple.

    Now, he had to know this would blow up with the left. Nancy wasn’t invited to some of these talks for a reason. He also had to know it would blow up with the right. You know it was the best deal he could get because everyone hates it. It might get filibustered by both Sanders and DeMint. How cool is that? And now Obama is hinting toward tax reform next year. He knows the agreement is probably fucked.

    Right now the only real path forward through a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate with a really shitty filibuster rule is the path he’s taking. But conditions change in a month. They change in 3 ways:

    1) We have a Republican House.
    2) The tax cut ‘extension’ argument becomes pointless – they’ll have already expired. So if you want to have a tax negotiation, pretty much anything goes, from the baseline of the old rates under Clinton.
    3) The filibuster rules in the Senate could change leading to different dynamics there.

    Now, come next month, everyone still wants to do something dealing with taxes. Fortunately, a GOP House is easier to deal with than a GOP Senate. Everyone’s vested interests are much closer to home than in the Senate and they don’t have as much procedural crap where one House member can declare themselves king. So, it’s the better of bad scenarios.

    The pressure now really falls on the Senate to fix the filibuster. The Dems can’t negotiate between chambers if they know that their Senate efforts will just get killed.

    My guess is that the Dems will get a better deal in Jan than now, but they can’t not work toward a deal now because they really don’t know – and they sure as fuck can’t look like they’re not trying. I’m not an 11 dimensional chess guy – but events in DC are always more conspiratorial than they look and simultaneously less controllable. So it’s not 2 dimensional chess either. Maybe 4 dimensional – on a boat, so the piece might move around without notice.

    But I’m a big fan of crisis. Nobody need to fucking do anything until they have to. Businesses don’t hire until they need to, so don’t make their lives easy – make them hard, with a reward. Congress has the same problem. Blowing up the tax cut debate is probably going to help. Everyone is pissed. The outcome will probably be good. Rather than dick around the edges with the tax policy like we have been doing, maybe we’ll do it right instead and do real tax reform, simply out of desperation to fix the problem. Congress has done it before. They work in counterintuitive ways sometimes.

  136. 136.

    Chessy

    @Rudy:

    I definitely don’t think Ezra made them up. I just don’t think they’re showing anything shocking. As for the increase within the wealthiest brackets, beyond the Estate Tax bit, they also did the AMT reform. That should have some effect on some of the mid-upper brackets.

  138. 138.

    FlipYrWhig

    Chart looks kinda funky, with numbers I wouldn’t have expected. I’m writing an exam tonight but I’ll be curious to see what other people say about them.

    I think my standard reaction to most everything major that has happened in the Obama term applies: not what I’d do as benevolent despot, but hard to improve when faced with a solid block of saboteurs. If anyone can give Democrats a killer app for how to run against obstructionism or how to make Republicans feel shame or how to entice red-state Democrats to act like blue-state Democrats, I’d be all for those.

  139. 139.

    Ija

    Have we now accepted the notion that tax cuts are definitely stimulus? Reading some of the people on the left who support the plan, this seems like the conventional wisdom now (tax cuts = stimulus). Was I high during that time or did we not have a great big fight during the Bush years about the stimulating nature of tax cuts? I guess that fight is over now.

  140. 140.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Martin: Interesting take. I don’t have a lot of faith in Senators disarming themselves of Filibuster Power, though. But remember that last week (already? early this week?) I was wondering what the PR/optics would be if Senate and House progressive Democrats got credit, or blame, for blowing up the deal. Would it be a way to flex progressive muscle against or at least distinct from Obama, in a way that might benefit both sides? Or would it just get processed without that distinction, as “Obama and Democrats raise all taxes, rub hands gleefully at prospect of ill-gotten gains from decent hardworking white folks”?

  142. 142.

    Chessy

    @Ija:

    Have we now accepted the notion that tax cuts are definitely stimulus? Reading some of the people on the left who support the plan, this seems like the conventional wisdom now (tax cuts = stimulus). Was I high during that time or did we not have a great big fight during the Bush years about the stimulating nature of tax cuts? I guess that fight is over now.

    Have Dems ever said tax cuts and credits aren’t stimulative? On its face any amount of money that gets reinvested back into the economy is stimulus, we just argue that some ways of injecting that gov’t $ back in are far more effective than others. We also in general reject the supply sider’s argument that raining money on the wealthiest is an effective way to lift all ships, and the mantra that tax cuts generate enough revenue to pay for themselves.

  143. 143.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Ija:

    Was I high during that time or did we not have a great big fight during the Bush years about the stimulating nature of tax cuts? I guess that fight is over now.

    It’s stimulus, it’s just piss-poor bang for the stimulus buck. So people who are OK with the deal aren’t saying, “We should totally do this excellent plan because of how effective tax cuts are as stimulus!” Instead it’s more like, “Tax cuts are weak and sucky stimulus, but any port in a storm.”

  144. 144.

    WyldPirate

    @Ija:

    Have we now accepted the notion that tax cuts are definitely stimulus? Reading some of the people on the left who support the plan, this seems like the conventional wisdom now (tax cuts = stimulus).

    I think the argument can be made that they are stimulative depending upon who gets them.

    I think 25% of the maintenance of the current rates goes to the top 2%. Most to the top 0.1%. The rest goes to the bottom 75%. I could be off on these numbers..

    A case could be made that ending the cuts for the bottom 98% could be destimulative. I can agree with that as it makes sense. I lot of folks have to spend every dime they make to get by or get the kids through school.

    The top 1% I don’t think are very stimulative and particularly the the one for the millionaires. Shit, a lot of those cocksuckers are paying 15% on capgains taxes. Now that shit is evil.

  145. 145.

    Ija

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Or would it just get processed without that distinction, as “Obama and Democrats raise all taxes, rub hands gleefully at prospect of ill-gotten gains from decent hardworking white folks”?

    This, of course. Honestly, how many people actually pay attention to the ins and outs of Congress? By election time, most voters won’t remember what it was he wanted that was different than the Democratic Congress.

  147. 147.

    Calming Influence

    I’m a pragmatist. I think half a loaf is better than none (with the caveat that it depends on “loaf of what?”). The deal Obama made may be better than any deal that would have resulted from a more public negotiation, or any deal that results from Dems rejecting this deal and trying to force the GOP’s hand. And I really don’t want to see unemployed Americans not get an benefits extension, because I’m a FUCKING LIBERAL at heart, and I’ve taken in homeless people and helped them get on their feet.

    Here’s my gripe: this was a back-room deal. There appeared to be zero effort by the W.H. to engage congress or the public. This was “I’m the President, I know what I’m doing, this is the way Washington works.”

    I want to know what his starting position was. I want to know what he said was non-negotiable. I want to know what the Republicans conceded.

    I want to be reassured that he actually fought for the things that the people who elected him expected him to fight for.

    He said the other day something along the lines of “between a fight and compromise, he chose compromise”. It’s not one or the other; you fight for what you want, and compromise for what you can get.

  148. 148.

    Brachiator

    One of the fun things about the proposed compromise is that it would allow 100 percent bonus depreciation for business assets. But the effective date would not be Jan 1, 2011, but Sep 8, 2010. Unless business owners have a hot tub time machine, they would not be able to go back in time in 2010 and buy a lot of equipment to write off, although a few people may be able to squeak in a few items in the last weeks of December.

    But whenever you see an odd enactment date in legislation like this, it means somebody paid a big bag of money to benefit a powerful constituent.

    Oh, well. And this proposal is supposed to increase the deficit by the tune of $857 billion? Except, of course, when it comes to giving the richest taxpayers the biggest tax breaks. I wonder how the GOP will spin this. And of course, the Democrats will never call them on this.

  149. 149.

    D. Aristophanes

    @Martin: Good points, Martin. This rush to do taxes right now or OMFG! the world will end tomorrow! bullshit is not smart. In recent memory such nonsense gave us TARP and the Patriot Act as I recall. When people start screaming, you’ve got to take this deal that I just loosely sketched out to you a couple of minutes ago! – you’re almost certainly about to get played.

    Let the GOP stew for awhile on not having a big juicy tax fight scheduled for the run-up to the 2012 election. Let ’em have some alone time with how much they want rich people tax cuts and lower estate taxes – and what they’re willing to trade to get them. Let them start pondering the power of an unherdable Senate and the veto pen, and start sweating about what they are ACTUALLY GOING TO DELIVER to their voters in the next year and beyond if the Dems decide to play party of no to their big sloppy mandate. All while their new crazy teabagger friends waste time trying to nullify the 17th amendment or make Obama show his birth certificate or whatever jackassery they’re sure to get up to. They’ve got their own purity trolls to deal with now, let’s not forget.

  150. 150.

    johnny walker

    In Soviet Russia blog trolls you! After Cole’s admitted trollpost the other day I can’t help but wonder if he just figured he’d wind up a different portion of the commentosphere instead. Just kidding. I buy the change of opinion; the deal is pretty shitty.

    It is weird how nobody seems to be accusing Cole of hating(/not caring about/whatever) the unemployed. Maybe that’s just a function of the time of day, or maybe some of the little mini-authoritarians we have around here don’t feel comfortable popping off like that without what they see as a frontpager setting the tone. Either way it’s nice.

  152. 152.

    Emerald

    @Martin:

    My guess is that the Dems will get a better deal in Jan than now

    The House writes tax law. The House will be controlled by Republicans in January. Insane teabag Republicans.

    There will be no deal at all in January. This is it.

  153. 153.

    Martin

    @Ija: Well, there’s no question that all else being held constant, the maximum economic expansion state would be with zero taxes. So, yes, tax cuts are absolutely stimulative.

    The problem is that all else isn’t held constant. So you need to figure out two other things:

    1) What do you *lose* due to the tax cuts that is also stimulative. If you cut spending which expands the economy by 1% in exchange for tax cuts that will expand it by 0.5%, well, you’ve now killed stimulus.
    2) What *could* you do instead with the tax revenue other than tax cuts that would be stimulative, and would that be more stimulative than the cuts.

    And ‘stimulative’ is a really deceptive discussion to even have. What are you trying to stimulate? Usually ‘stimulus’ means GDP expansion. Tax cuts do that, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to other things that we want – jobs, a larger tax base, etc. GDP expansion isn’t really the most serious problem we have, and it’s not the problem the voters care about. They care about jobs, and they care about improving wages and benefits at the low end of the income spectrum (which will also expand the tax base, etc.) That’s an entirely different kind of stimulus, and one that taxes affect in a different way. For that, you don’t want to lower taxes. The lowest earners don’t pay hardly any anyway (other than payroll and sales, which is why payroll holiday is appealing) and the middle and upper middle don’t need the cuts because they have fucking jobs already.

    On the spending side, extending unemployment is okay, but voter don’t want that. They want a fucking job. Better is to put money directly into jobs – infrastructure, education, shifts in industries, etc. and tax credits to encourage employers to raise pay on low-wage workers and provide benefits. Those are hard things for employers to take back once they’re given out, so they tend to stick.

  154. 154.

    Corner Stone

    @johnny walker: You obviously missed my comment at #88:

    WHAT? WHY DO YOU WANT TO KILL EVERYONE ARRGLEBARGLEMCARRRGHHH??
    You HAVE to!! You STUPID sonofabitch!

  155. 155.

    catpal

    but but I heard Sen Lamar Alexander (TN-Asshole) – say on NPR today that letting the Bush Tax Cuts Expire – “you’ll be extra-taxing the Job Creators then!”

    Unbelievable.

  157. 157.

    D. Aristophanes

    @Emerald: So wait, are you saying that the new teabagger-infused GOP House isn’t going to want to lower taxes? Because they are. And when they cook up a nice little bill to pass along to the Senate, they are going to find that the Senate is controlled by Democrats. And the White House by a Democrat. And I suspect that they will find that what they want in their greedy little teabag hearts isn’t what those with the power to stop their desires in their tracks want. Then they will have the choice of stomping their feet or else trying to figure out ways to get the Senate and the White House to give them some portion of what they want.

    This is how deals get made. This is how the Obama compromise just got made, so it’s not like this is a new idea that would have to be invented in 2011 or anything.

  158. 158.

    Triassic Sands

    @ChrisNBama:

    Well, as long as it’s President Obama who is negotiating tax reform with the Republicans I’ll feel totally secure. We all know what a hard bargain he drives.

  159. 159.

    Martin

    @FlipYrWhig: Yeah, I’m not terribly optimistic about that either. They don’t need to end the filibuster, they just need to do two things:

    1) eliminate the ability to block the start of debate, only the end of it.
    2) make the filibuster non-perpetual. It can stay at 60 to start, but extending it needs to cost something – either a lower standard, or more people actively involved.

    Filibuster was never supposed to stop legislation dead, just buy you time to make your case. I really like Merkleys proposal. It stops the abuse from the minority, but it also gives them something meaningful in return – an absolute right to bring a reasonable number of amendments. That’s a good faith compromise.

  160. 160.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    My guess is that the Dems will get a better deal in Jan than now, but they can’t not work toward a deal now because they really don’t know – and they sure as fuck can’t look like they’re not trying.

    Nope. By letting things run into December, the Obama and the Democrats probably gave up any negotiating strength they might have had. But no one could wait until January to work on a tax plan. No one.

    They had to do something before the end of the year to prevent immediate 2010 tax increases related to the alternative minimum tax and some expiring tax provisions.

    The IRS commissioner also sent a letter warning the Congress that any retroactive tax legislative would result in delays in the IRS being able process 2010 tax returns.

    On the other hand, Republicans and it looks like some Democrats were clearly playing politics in trying to save their skins by refusing to talk about taxes until after the mid term elections. And here Obama may be taking heat for the benefit of some Democrats who were too chickenshit to support a more proactive stand on taxes until they figured out whether they still had a job by winning re-election.

    Unfortunately, between the posturing and politicking, the American people turned out to be the biggest losers.

  161. 161.

    Martin

    @FlipYrWhig: Oh, and I don’t see a problem with Dems pushing back against Obama. Congress and the WH should have some independence from each other. It doesn’t mean that Dems are weak or in disarray, it just means that they have different priorities, and that’s how it should be. That’s better for voters.

  162. 162.

    dollared

    OK gang, some reality:

    1. The balloon chart is meaningless. All of the balloons are big at the bottom because the top 1% makes so fucking much money. It really should not change anybody’s mind.

    2. We all need to accept that the Senate will be Republican in 2012. The seats at risk are all on the Demo side. So no filibuster reform. Please.

    3. So we need to get to holy war now. Take the deal, and then spend all of 2011 and 2012 making proposals to FIX THIS SHIT. NOW. And not the Obama NYT New Flat Tax.

    The US is in the worst situation since 1931. But not because of this deal. Take it and get to work on fundamental change.

  163. 163.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    .
    .
    @John Cole:

    I can’t support that, even if they extend unemployment benefits for five years. That’s just insanity.

    My work here may be close to finished.
    .
    .

  164. 164.

    D. Aristophanes

    @dollared: I’m not sure how ballooning our deficit now so that we may fix it all with politically toxic pain-causing measures while having less actual political power to originate the fixes … is the best path for us to take.

  165. 165.

    Uriel

    @WyldPirate:

    But, but..it was “the best deal we could get”.
    And no one could have anticipated…
    And Republicans are mean….
    And it’s nobody in the Democratic Party’s fault….
    meh…fuck all the excuse making, incompetent sonsabitches.

    Just out of curiosity, you do realize that regardless of what that particular pict-o-gram might speak to- inequity of result in the current proposals, say, or the blatant artificiality of conflating of the middle class with people making >$250- that at least four things is doesn’t speak to in any way, what-so-ever, are these facile points you’ve raised here. Right?

    I mean, you do have the basic level of self awareness required to comprehend that your little laundry list of patronizing talking points is in no way contradicted, invalidated or even diminished by this rather crude usa-today graphic?

    Non-sequiturs- they’re not just for wing-nuts anymore.

  166. 166.

    Suffern ACE

    @Brachiator: From what I can tell, they also decided to wait until after the election to do anything about spending. So on top of the legislation like the DREAM act and the DADT-repealing defense spending bill, they are rushing through huge spending bills. Honestly, I do have to ask – what do we elect these people to do?

  167. 167.

    Martin

    @Brachiator:

    Unfortunately, between the posturing and politicking, the American people turned out to be the biggest losers.

    Well, I don’t agree. Were the American people the biggest losers under Clinton’s tax policy only to be saved by Bush?

    It certainly won’t help expand the economy, but if the argument is that tax cuts aren’t terribly stimulative then by the same token tax increases can’t be terribly harmful. The necessary stimulus is going to happen on spending, not on taxes. I don’t see how their ability to get spending today is any better or worse than it will be in January.

  169. 169.

    FlipYrWhig

    @dollared:

    2. We all need to accept that the Senate will be Republican in 2012. The seats at risk are all on the Demo side. So no filibuster reform. Please.

    But, you know, I think at this point I’m willing to accept Republicans being able to implement their shitty things with a majority of the Senate as long as Democrats can implement _their_ (slightly less) shitty things with a majority of the Senate. We can’t have a legislative body that just chokes on its own stupid rule-set and keeps coming up with new sketchy practices to protect its right to do nothing. Majority gets to do stuff, then public votes on how that stuff affected them. I’ll take it. No more of this arcane procedural stuff that no one really understands and just leaves citizens jaded and voting on personality and innuendo. If you get a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate, congratulations, you just passed legislation, and you own it.

  171. 171.

    dollared

    Yup, just read Dean Baker (who should be our president, just for the level of sarcasm he would bring to the press conferences).

    It is what it is. I hate, hate, hate the estate tax part. But fix the debt limit part, pass it, and then start sending tax fix bills to the house, week after week. Number the days that the working class is held hostage. Make yellow ribbons to put on the backs of Subarus for when Clinton rates are restored.

    We really can’t wait for Obama to some day wake up and realize that all of his fellow citizens are poor. We need to wage class warfare in earnest.

  173. 173.

    D. Aristophanes

    @the farmer: Thanks for the link. I certainly welcome Baker’s reassurances should the compromise go through as-is. Still think we should hold out for more of the good kind of deficit spending he describes in the column.

  174. 174.

    Lupin

    That thing you hear in the back of your mind is the nagging and growing realization that the US of A is truly and irremediably f*cked and on its way to becoming India or Brazil, and the country we’ve known for most of our lives is gone for good.

    My advice remains the same: decouple from Washington and politics (unless you opt to become a career politician); there’s no hope to come from there. Run for the hills, figuratively; become self-sufficient; if you’re an entrepreneur, start a security business, the rich will need plenty of it.

  175. 175.

    Martin

    @D. Aristophanes: Obama seems to be looking at the deficit commission tax structure. It lowers the nominal tax rate for *everyone* but raises the effective tax rate, mostly for the wealthy. Here’s what Durbin said about it:

    On the revenue side, I insisted that the commission look at our tax code where each year we spend more than $1.1 trillion on deductions, credits, exclusions and tax earmarks. To put it in perspective, those tax expenditures exceed the amount we spend each year on domestic discretionary spending and exceed the total amount we take in federal personal income taxes.
    __
    The commission dramatically reduces these tax earmarks and uses these funds to reduce our debt and to lower our personal income tax rates. We restructured critical deductions for health insurance, mortgage interest, charitable giving and retirement credits to make the tax code fairer and provide valuable tax relief for middle-income and working families.
    __
    Current income tax rates of 15 percent, 28 percent and 35 percent are reduced to 12 percent, 22 percent and 28 percent. Middle-income Americans will enjoy a much deserved tax cut.

    Not stated is that cap gains get taxed as regular income in the plan. I’m paying 15% on my long term cap gains. The wealthy would be paying 28%. At most they now pay 25% under AMT.

    This plan got Republican support. Everyone wins – the right can claim that they lowered the tax rate, when in fact the wealthy pay more taxes because it wipes out most loopholes and deductions.

  176. 176.

    joel hanes

    Well, there’s no question that all else being held constant, the maximum economic expansion state would be with zero taxes. So, yes, tax cuts are absolutely stimulative.

    I think this is flat false.

    The maximum economic expansion occurs when taxes are high and the government uses tax revenues to create the high-leverage infrastructure that enables growth : highways, good schools, public health, civic order, security, honest markets (SEC), the Internet (ARPA research).

    That’s how it worked in the 50’s and 60’s, both on the national level and for some important states (California).

  177. 177.

    ruemara

    I’m not sure how this chart squares with the WaPo chart they posted
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/business/comparing-the-tax-plans/?hpid=topnews

    It doesn’t come off well based on balloon comparison, that’s for sure, but I’m not sure what the metric is behind it. No. I don’t think DKos did anything wrong, I just know enough about statistics to know you can break things down a lot of different ways. I’d love to get all deficit huffy, but I’m sorry, I simply don’t give a rats ass, as long as poorer people get something that can give a bit of ease. Just 13 months is offered? Well i don’t see anyone else making a fucking overture to give me something better. Anyone have something better in the House or the Senate? Any fucker standing there with a goddamn plan or is it just the idiotic grins of people who think this is a fucking football match?
    I simply don’t care and all the progressive joyful whooping over this chart just solidifies my belief that the less you have, the less anyone has your back-left or right. Not a single congressperson I’ve called had a goddamn clue what the hell they were going to present as an alternative. Fucking nothing. You think I give a shit that a country that can hand billions over to Xe and AIG is pissing it’s pants at the freaking crumbs that it needs to spread around so the upper crust of America isn’t garroted in their beds due to actual class war breaking out? Not an iota.

  178. 178.

    Chuck Butcher

    @Martin:

    the wealthy pay more taxes because it wipes out most loopholes and deductions.

    You think they might figure that out? If so, why would they let their lap dogs, GOP, do such a thing?

  179. 179.

    Martin

    @joel hanes: Did you even read past that sentence?

    The problem is that all else isn’t held constant. So you need to figure out two other things:
    1) What do you lose due to the tax cuts that is also stimulative. If you cut spending which expands the economy by 1% in exchange for tax cuts that will expand it by 0.5%, well, you’ve now killed stimulus.
    2) What could you do instead with the tax revenue other than tax cuts that would be stimulative, and would that be more stimulative than the cuts.

    So yes, I spoke directly to that. Tax cuts don’t exist in a vacuum – there is an opportunity cost there. Use that tax revenue on things that have greater stimulative effect.

  180. 180.

    Uriel

    @dollared:

    OK gang, some reality:
    1. The balloon chart is meaningless. All of the balloons are big at the bottom because the top 1% makes so fucking much money. It really should not change anybody’s mind.

    Thank you.

    I mean sure, on the one had it sucks. On the other hand, remember that that last balloon is an average that, while it includes the asshole down the street with the new jag and the trophy wife, also includes Oprah, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. None of whom give a rats ass about that 130k break. To them, it’s trivial.

    No, the people who are really pushing for this shit are the ones making 250k-1,000,000 and are looking at getting back around 7k to 24k- which is a pretty sizable return. Or the imagined “mid-to-upper middle class” as various self-appointed paragons of the left on this blog have argued, based on the fact that they have friends in this bracket who are super cool and suffer under the dire curse of literally having nothing more than “the same stuff we all have but better.” The horror- or some such.

    Many of whom, I’m sure, will show up here to castigate the very same people they defended in earlier threads.

  181. 181.

    Jark

    Too bad. Seems the DFHs played Cassandra to Democrats and centrist fools, yet again.

    So, just try real hard to understand: Barack Obama is a Reaganite. Barack Obama is a Reaganite. Barack Obama is a Reaganite.

    Try it. It’s refreshing…

    …oh wait, John Boehner said something stupid.

    Barack Obama is our only hope!

  182. 182.

    WeThePurple

    I have seen this chart in a bunch of places now and it is a bit misleading as to where all the money is going because it intentionally omits the fact that there are a lot fewer people in the $1,000,000+ category than say the %50,000-$75,000 range. I did the math based on census info and you get the following for percentage of total tax cut benefits:
    Democratic Plan
    <$200,000: 83%
    $200,000-$1,000,000: 15%
    $1,000,000+: 2%

    Republican Plan
    <$200,000: 64%
    $200,000-$1,000,000: 15%
    $1,000,000+: 21%

    Compromise Plan
    <$200,000: 67%
    $200,000-$1,000,000: 14%
    $1,000,000+: 17%

    Obviously the amount the super-rich get is obscene, but that graph makes it seem like people that make over $1,000,000 are getting more than half of the money and they aren’t.

  183. 183.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    RE: Unfortunately, between the posturing and politicking, the American people turned out to be the biggest losers.

    Well, I don’t agree. Were the American people the biggest losers under Clinton’s tax policy only to be saved by Bush?

    I think you are misreading me. I have consistently argued that Obama should have stood his ground and let the Bush tax cuts expire. But he should also have left himself enough room to force the GOP to deal with expiring 2010 tax issues and the AMT before the end of the year.

    But it is also becoming clear that Democrats in the Congress really did not have his back. In short, most of the Democrats supposedly fuming over Obama’s compromise spent the latter part of the year scurrying to save their own asses instead of coming up with any comprehensive alternative to GOP stonewalling.

    It certainly won’t help expand the economy, but if the argument is that tax cuts aren’t terribly stimulative then by the same token tax increases can’t be terribly harmful. The necessary stimulus is going to happen on spending, not on taxes. I don’t see how their ability to get spending today is any better or worse than it will be in January.

    More than 21 million taxpayers could have been hit with an average $3,900 tax increase if Congress does nothing until January. I would bet you good money that this would have been politically harmful as well as economically harmful. And you seem to be focusing on the macroeconomic issues instead of thinking about millions of people trying to figure out how they were going to come up with extra money to pay the government, since withholding would not have covered the additional tax increases.

    And I don’t see much stimulus coming from anywhere. The Bush tax cuts didn’t do squat while Bush was in office; there is no reason to believe that they will do anything in the next two years. Obama’s first stimulus was not much more than a holding action. Many states used the money to try to preserve jobs, not create new ones, and California used most of the money for budget gimmicks. About the best part of the new tax benefits were the increased education credits, but the benefits from this will mainly accrue in the future if people are able to parlay their education into good jobs.

    Obama’s compromise tax proposal includes increased bonus depreciation, but businesses are still having trouble getting credit and capital to do either purchasing or hiring. There is a huge cognitive dissonance between a lot of the talking about the economy and what is actually happening.

  185. 185.

    amk

    Cole, did you visit dkos today by chance ? That’s the only explanation for this fucking piroute on a dime.

  187. 187.

    Bob Loblaw

    For the record, the originator of the chart is Ezra Klein, not a poster on the Daily Kos. And it’s entirely apolitical, in the sense that it makes no effort to segregate partisan inputs to the overall package. It’s just a simple graphical indexing of the progressivity of benefits by income. It has no information on the relative stimulative effects, or any other complementary metrics to judge the bill as a “success” or politically “progressive.”

    I do enjoy watching the propaganda war and the bleats about conspiracy theories and data manipulators. My favorite graphical manipulation so far was from a deal supporter (Emerald, I think it was) who tried to claim that extending 98% of the Bush motherfucking tax cuts as a wholly Democratic position that the Republicans were somehow forced to compromise on, rather than a bipartisan and uncontroversial component of any theoretical extension deal since forever. It’s like trying to say the Republicans were forced to compromise on the AMT patch. Just shameless.

    @amk:

    Cole, did you visit dkos today by chance ? That’s the only explanation for this fucking piroute on a dime.

    You went out of the sphere of acceptable knowledge! For shame, Mr. Cole, for shame!

    …Actually, pretty much every major wonk blog carried Ezra’s chart today. Just fyi.

  188. 188.

    the farmer

    #176 ruemara

    Any fucker standing there with a goddamn plan or is it just the idiotic grins of people who think this is a fucking football match?

    Yeah, thats pretty much a lot of whats going on in this blog post. The whole fighting progressive theater thing here being to some extent just a bunch of people flailing away at their own shadows in order to win some symbloic rhetroical victory in a blog thread. As you say, having a “goddamn clue what the hell they were going to [actually] present as an alternative” without the Republicans laughing at them doesn’t seem to matter as long as they strike a tough fighting pose in their mirror. I’m sure all those people who lose their unemployment insurance so true progressives can stick it to the [rich] man will be very impressed to learn that all these mighty fight night progressives won some symbolic midnight victory in some blog thread on the intertoob somewhere. Or something. So, what else is new.

    *

  189. 189.

    LikeableInMyOwnWay

    Democrats in the Congress really did not have his back. In short, most of the Democrats supposedly fuming over Obama’s compromise spent the latter part of the year scurrying to save their own asses instead of coming up with any comprehensive alternative to GOP stonewalling.

    I think that is pretty much the story right there. And the louder those assholes bitch about the compromise, the more sure I am that they are using it to deflect attention from their own epic failure.

    Tax measures can only come from congress. Congress doesn’t work. All the rest is just posturing, responsibility avoidance, and blame shifting by professional liars.

    The fact that a lot of people on the left are falling for it … just adds insult of our intelligence to the injury of shitty tactics by adversaries. Between 8 years of Bush, and the current crop in congress, the country is borderline ungovernable right now.

    Just short of half of registered voters didn’t bother to vote a month ago. I imagine all those non voters are sitting back and blaming someone else for their miseries too.

  190. 190.

    Uriel

    @chuck

    Sorry, my ipod’s freaking out, so I can’t reply properly. But yes, i’m simplifying off of a simplified chart. I’m sure Oprah and Gates are getting more than the pict o gram suggests.

    On the other hand, on a proportional scale, i’d bet my assumptions hold out. And they surely do on a “Who’s bithching about this” level.

  191. 191.

    Peter

    @Emerald: Man I could watch the Lawrence O’Donnell clip in that post all day. I loved the part where Hamsher finally opens her mouth, a blatant lie falls out, and O’Donnell immediately and forcefully calls her on it.

  192. 192.

    Martin

    @Chuck Butcher: I know I’m considered a bit nutty on this point, but I don’t believe that most Republicans are on a suicide pact to cut top taxes at all costs.

    Right now, the >$250K income earners are regularly banging into the AMT more than the nominal rate and they know this. If you’re in the 39.5% bracket, you’re doing everything you can to shift income to cap gains and pick up deductions so that you get caught by the AMT. They complain bitterly about the AMT because they want their taxes lower yet, but that’s the target rate for quite a lot of top earners and they know this. Lowering the nominal rate and eliminating deductions and even eliminating the AMT if you simplify the tax structure enough may not lower their effective tax rate, but it’ll lower their tax expenses and make their investment/income decision making a lot easier. That’s not worthless.

    The GOP doesn’t seem to be boundless in their support for a lower top effective rate, and their interest in my experience is in a simplified and stabilized tax structure, with at least part of the goal being to minimize economic distortions as people and corporations react to the tax structure. I don’t think any of those are bad goals, provided that they don’t make significant changes to where the tax burden falls. There does seem to be support from the GOP (not all of it, but enough of it) to aim for a top effective rate in the 25%-30% range. Right now, the rate for those above $250K could be as low as 17% as Warren Buffet claimed to earn and as high as 34%, with those lower on the income ladder more likely to pay toward the higher rate because they are taking income as salary where once you really get up into the big numbers, it’s all cap gains. Now, nobody thinks this is fair – even Republicans. But this is a distortion of that top tax structure, and the Dems are proposing to make it even more distorted. Granted, most of the distortions were introduced by Republicans, but assigning blame doesn’t fix taxation, and they aren’t exactly defending those introductions either. I don’t think anyone should argue with a tax structure that ensure that Warren Buffet and Bill Gates pay a higher tax rate than someone in the $1M income level, provided that the total revenues generated by the >$250K earners comes out no lower. Even Gates and Buffet are asking for this. Most of the other CA billionaires are as well.

    Even their defense of the lowest cap gains rate seems to be calculated. They like that it’s down at 15% because they believe that it’s stimulative. If the AMT is going to catch them at 26%-28% anyway, then what’s the harm? (Though clearly it’s not catching everything if Buffet can roll in at 17%) Let them prefer the long term investment over other uses for the money – charity, mortgage interest, etc. knowing that while they may not realize that 15% rate, they’ll never get 15% off of the other places they park their money, so it’s still the best deal out there. So if that wealth is going to accumulate, accumulate it somewhere more rather than less stimulative and let the AMT catch it in the end. So their support for low cap gains even seems to be hedged.

    And something in Obama’s proposals that people seem to be missing is that it caps deductions at 28%. Now, this serves to further complicate the tax code, but it does bump that top effective rate even more than it would seem, so if you’re up in the top two brackets, your deductions will be discounted and you’ll wind up with more taxable income in addition to the higher tax rate on that income – up to 11% more income, worst theoretical case. So this could even raise taxes on some people below $250K. The devil is always in the details…

  193. 193.

    NobodySpecial

    @the farmer: There WAS NO ALTERNATIVE to present.

    There is nothing the GOP will accept from Democrats short of total surrender. If you didn’t notice Kyl with START, Collins with DADT, and now Boehner with the UI deal, their entire plan is to take everything and hold it up until the Democratic lower house is ousted and then hammer Obama for two years with bullshit.

    The only reason they even went as far as offering up 13 months of UI is because they wanted their precious tax cuts to be permanent. 13 months from now, had Dems actually voted for the POS bill, they would just deny UI again and all the same people would be hurt.

    And you wouldn’t say a goddamned thing about it. Other than maybe to blame ‘the left’.

  194. 194.

    Brachiator

    @Emerald:

    Plus, without this deal your taxes are going up by about $3,000 next year.

    This is a HUGE distortion of the facts. Congress had to patch the alternative minimum tax or up to 21 million taxpayers might see an average increase in their taxes of up to $3,900 in 2010. Not 2011. The AMT patch is an extra bit of tax business that the Congress has fudged on for the past few years. It is unrelated to the Bush tax cuts.

    And we will never know for sure, but I don’t believe that the Republicans would have been stupid enough to refuse to deal with this had Obama let the Bush tax cuts expire.

    But either way, anyone, anywhere, who says that a $3,000 tax increase would have resulted just from letting the Bush tax cuts expire is lying.

    Two million unemployed people will be out in the cold (alas, it doesn’t help the 99ers though.

    This is an overstatement. And what happens the next time if the economy is still stagnant and another extension of unemployment compensation is needed?

    More people will suffer as a result of this lame ass compromise. It may be the deal that had to be done, but it is not the best deal possible by any means.

  195. 195.

    dollared

    @Uriel,

    We are in sad agreement except on one point: I don’t think that the Lords and Masters of the Repubs are the $500k-$1M guys. Take it from me as a guy who works with a bunch of those – they tend to fall both ways politically.

    The real evil bastards in this game are the Old Money, Oil, Big Ag, Wall Street and the Hedge Fund guys. And specifically what drives them are the big numbers. I saw a great post on the Carlyle Group, and the difference between Bush cuts and what they should pay is — wait for it — $280Million.

    What would a few amoral assholes do for $280M? Anything, legal or illegal. It’s all they care about, and that private equity group in their shabby offices in DC (I went there to pitch a deal once) made as much money last year ($1.3B) as 2,600 top-flight surgeons.

  196. 196.

    Martin

    @Brachiator:

    I think you are misreading me. I have consistently argued that Obama should have stood his ground and let the Bush tax cuts expire. But he should also have left himself enough room to force the GOP to deal with expiring 2010 tax issues and the AMT before the end of the year.
    But it is also becoming clear that Democrats in the Congress really did not have his back. In short, most of the Democrats supposedly fuming over Obama’s compromise spent the latter part of the year scurrying to save their own asses instead of coming up with any comprehensive alternative to GOP stonewalling.

    Ah, yes, I did misunderstand. And I agree on the position he should have taken here. Unfortunately, I don’t think Democrats broadly would agree with that. That’s not just Congress, but everywhere. Democrats really are not quite as honest about their own taxation as they would like people to believe – many rank-and-file Dems like lower taxes every bit as much as the GOP.

    I put the blame for this on Congress as well, though. By doing nothing, they pretty much forced Obama to talk about it and he had to set a proposal that was appropriate to come from the WH. Congress should have said they’d let the cuts expire, but here’s all the stuff that they would do instead – things directly related to the economic issues we’re seeing. They failed to do that, and I’m afraid Nancy takes most of the blame there. She had the clear calendar, she had the big majorities, and the House is supposed to start the tax legislation. I’m a bigger Nancy fan than I am an Obama fan, so it pains me to say that.

    Obama’s compromise tax proposal includes increased bonus depreciation, but businesses are still having trouble getting credit and capital to do either purchasing or hiring. There is a huge cognitive dissonance between a lot of the talking about the economy and what is actually happening.

    I agree on your other statements about stimulus. There was some okay stuff in his proposal, but mostly it was fallback solutions. Unemployment is the last line of stimulus, and it’s being touted as the first. Jobs are the first. Better than nothing, but that’s really what it is.

    I’m not sure about the credit problem. Is that really the case? I keep hearing it mentioned, but I don’t see evidence of it. I see a lot of venture capital here. I see a lot of corporations with large cash positions using those positions to secure production by paying up front so that suppliers can expand. Maybe the problem is that it’s all in the wrong sectors. I know that VC here has moved a fair bit. The PC/software/online services guys are drying up pretty fast. Money is now in mobile and solar/green. But I don’t think the amount of VC has really gone down. And truthfully, those other guys deserve to lose their funding. They’re fucking retards at actually making a business of their business. As was said

    The things you do more often are the things you’re going to get good at. So if you get really good at spending money, you’re going to be really good at spending money. If you have to work on making money from day one, you’re going to get really damn good at making money. And that’s what you need to be as an entrepreneur…

  197. 197.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @joel hanes:

    Lowering tax rates on the rich had the effect of reducing business investment and allowing them to take and bank the money instead. Why invest so much in your business for the additional deductions when the lowered rates and loopholes allow the execs to take it home? Combine that with the exporting of much of our manufacturing and industrial base, which allowed them to reap even more ‘profits’, and you have the reason we have the highly unemployed, low-paid workforce of today.

    Why should your company give you a pay raise, allowing a bigger business deduction for them, when they can just take the money home? Taxes can be used to modify the behavior of businesses and the wealthy that can be detrimental to the economy, IMO that alone justifies having them. Businesses did quite well when taxes were high and they couldn’t export our jobs. One argument about high business taxes is that the money would be used to build a solid society with a well educated workforce and strong infrastructure that they would benefit (and profit) from. Why would they want to pay taxes for this if they no longer need it due to outsourcing?

    Our economy is being taken apart right in front of our eyes and what is really sad is that so many citizens and ‘leaders’ are quite ok with that. They think they have it rough today, that the taxes are too high and jobs are too few and the simple solution to the problem is to give the rich more money. They are fucking stupid, fucking brain dead stupid. Everything that they are complaining about today, EVERYTHING, is the way it is because some voters didn’t stop it from happening. Some voters have repeatedly put the same fuckers back in power, over and over again, cheering them on because they beat the evil liberal candidate. Many of these same voters who are bitching so loud live in the very districts that these same senators and congresscritters represent. For some reason these voters are so fucking stupid that they can’t see that they are THE problem. They are THE ONES who enabled their politicians to collude with other politicians to steal their good jobs and pay. The politicians and rich crooks did the crime and many of these fucking whiners are the ones who enabled them to do it.

    Like I keep saying, stupid is beating the shit out of smart. This country full of stupid people who refuse to see the reality of what surrounds them and instead hate on the very people who are trying to help them while at the same time enabling those who seek to sell them out to the highest bidder.

  198. 198.

    the farmer

    #193 NobodySpecial

    The only reason they even went as far as offering up 13 months of UI is because they wanted their precious tax cuts to be permanent. 13 months from now, had Dems actually voted for the POS bill, they would just deny UI again and all the same people would be hurt.

    Really. Ok, so you think it best the true progressives put the hurt on the unemployed now – deny them 13 months (over one year) of relief (to make some ideological/theoretical point) – and 13 months from now slink back and … uh, do what exactly? Tell the unemployed everything will be fine once Dennis Kucinich is inauguarated in 2013?

    *

  199. 199.

    Ija

    @Mark S.:

    Thank you for that PDF. That is one of the arguments we had back in January 2009 before the stimulus passed, right? About the multipliers and how the multiplier for direct spending is higher than tax cuts. But I guess Republicans probably have their own economists who would have different numbers for the multipliers.

  200. 200.

    the farmer

    I’m really glad a lot of people here don’t run soup kitchens:

    Yes, we have soup. A lot of cans of soup in the in warehouse. But its EVIL corporate canned soup. And we can not in good conscience give you EVIL corporate canned soup because that would mean we were caving in to the EVIL canned soup corporation. Come back in 13 months and we might have some awesome canned soup from the NoBodySpecial organic soup farm in Vermont. You won’t be sorry. No MSG!

    *

  201. 201.

    Ija

    It’s like a never ending cycle:

    1. The rich monopolize larger and larger share of the pie
    2. The rest of us get poorer and poorer to the point that more
    and more people need government services to survive
    3. In order to pass legislation to help those who need the
    government services, Democrats need to make a deal with
    Republicans, putting more money in the hands of the rich
    4. The rich get an even larger share of the pie
    5. More poor people who need government services
    6. More deals because someone has to be the grown up and
    not let people suffer
    7. Repeat ad infinitum

    Of course the size of the pie is not fixed etc etc, but the pie is also not going to increase indefinitely.

  202. 202.

    Mark S.

    @Ija:

    But I guess Republicans probably have their own economists who would have different numbers for the multipliers.

    Oh sure. There are plenty of economists who will tell you the way to stimulate the economy is to cut taxes on the rich and do away with all regulation. Many of them work for fine institutes like this one.

  203. 203.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Ija:

    The pie hasn’t grown but rather we’ve been borrowing pie from other countries.

    Our pie ran out long ago.

  204. 204.

    NobodySpecial

    @the farmer: No, I think they should bring up UI as it’s own bill and make the GOP vote on that. The point of having majority status in government is to get shit done. If Republicans want to block UI benefits, make them responsible for it. Don’t bury it in the middle of a tax bill. How hard’s that?

  205. 205.

    the farmer

    The point of having majority status in government is to get shit done.

    The Dems don’t have a workable majority status as long as the Republicans in the Senate can filibuster everything. A numerical majority isn’t enough because of the crazy rules. ie: the DADT vote yesterday. You’re talking majority status in some theoretical fantasyland.

    If Republicans want to block UI benefits, make them responsible for it.

    Ok, go ahead. They don’t give a fuck. And they are going to give even less of a fuck next year. They’ll just accuse Dems of denying UI benefits.

    *

  206. 206.

    chaseyourtail

    Shit John, if I wanted to see Daily Kos crap, I’d go over there. As it is, I’m trying to avoid that toxic dump of a site.

  207. 207.

    Ija

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    And the people in charge of worrying about the borrowing of the pie doesn’t seem to care that this deal will increase the size of the borrowing. Where is the Deficit Commission in all this? Because it is tax cuts it’s suddenly okay to increase the deficit?

    I’m so depressed I’m going to make an apple pie and eat the whole lot today. Our pie days are numbered, people. Eat pie while you can.

  210. 210.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Ija:

    We hear about austerity measures that are being taken all around the world and we know things are screwed up. So what do we do? Borrow more only to give most of it to those who don’t need it.

    If they don’t get the tax cuts then we get austerity. Sooner, that is.

  211. 211.

    jaywillie

    A Dem House caucus that just got wiped-out to the tune of 63 seats lost doesn’t have a lot of political leverage at this point, which just underscores why they should have grown a pair and taken it up before the midterms instead of refusing to act unless the Senate went first. They knew then exactly what we found out from their kabuki vote on the middle class cuts just last weekend – you still need 60 votes in the Senate and Republicans are going to filibuster the shit out of anything and everything.

    So why not have that vote before the elections when you could use it to draw a sharp distinction with Republicans and blame the Senate GOP for standing in the way unless the rich got their tax cuts, too? Sorry, but the Dem House leadership is just clueless at this point, evidenced by the fact that they show up to the fight after their faces have been used to wipe the mat clean.

    And, of course, they have the vote and they still don’t take the opportunity to savage Republicans over it, instead picking a fight with the President of their own party, who has the enviable position of choosing between letting all the cuts expire in January or negotiating to get 60 votes to break a Senate filibuster.

    As for alternatives being offered, using the bully pulpit and shaming Republicans are not solutions, especially when Republicans have absolutely no shame and are convinced that saying no to everything has worked.

    And anyone who thinks that you can let the cuts expire and Dems won’t get blamed for letting taxes go up on the middle class apparently hasn’t been paying attention to that wonderful Dem messaging and cohesion as evidenced by their strategy of running away from themselves and not defending what they did in 2009-10 during the midterm campaign when, again, they were too craven to have this fight before taking an electoral beating.

    But now that the Johnny-come-lately’s aren’t tucking tail during an election, they start throwing their weight around, increasing the likelihood that there is no deal and the matter gets pushed into January.

    Since Dems don’t know how to fight or win a messaging war, they’ll of course be preoccupied blaming the President for letting it get to this point, while the Republicans savage them for letting the cuts expire and assume the position of the heroes riding in on their lily white steeds to save the day with a lot of shallow rhetoric about preserving the cuts for “all Americans,” again putting the President in the enviable position of either vetoing whatever the GOP House sends to the Senate (and that will pass because that’s when dipshits like Landrieu will drop the charade and vote with the GOP to “get something done to preserve the tax cuts,” bemoaning the wretched partisanship that forced their hand) or forcing him to swallow the cuts for the rich in order to keep his promise to maintain the middle class tax cuts.

    Only by then you won’t get all of the other parts of the deal that have led people like Ezra Klein, who came up with that chart, to say that the deal is worth it (no doubt Klein is a Caesar-worshiping member of the cult of Obamabots).

    And, honestly, if folks want that whole “shame those who have no shame” and use the bully pulpit strategy to work, then you have to echo those sentiments instead of braying on endlessly about how Obama took your unicorn into the basement of the White House and let Republicans do things to it that would make a priest caught with an altar boy blush.

    If any lefty ideologue doesn’t like being in this situation then maybe you shouldn’t have spent the last year advocating for not voting for the Dems to teach them a lesson and taking a giant shit on everything they and the President were able to get done in the face of unrepentant GOP recalcitrance. Maybe you should have learned to take what progress you can get and sell it so you can build off of it in the future instead of holding people to ever-changing ideological expectations that can’t possibly be met given the political paralysis preventing more from being done.

    Gravel/Nader 2012 (for any splitters, I’m totally open to Nader/Gravel as well)

  212. 212.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @jaywillie: “If any lefty ideologue doesn’t like being in this situation then maybe you shouldn’t have spent the last year advocating for not voting for the Dems to teach them a lesson and taking a giant shit on everything they and the President were able to get done in the face of unrepentant GOP recalcitrance.”

    These ideologues like to refer to themselves as progressives when in reality they are ‘all or nothings’. Progress means moving forward, however little it may be, but moving forward nonetheless. If you retreat you lose ground, it’s that simple. If you sit out an election, encourage others to do the same and then bitch about the results afterward…

    then you are a part of the problem, not the solution.

  214. 214.

    Mike M

    Yep – this is it. This is the point where Obama just loses almost all the people who elected him. There’s no justification for this. None. This is not why he was elected and he has betrayed with astonishing speed almost every promise he ran on. This asshole is giving away the store faster and dumber than even Bush. Its sad how in over his head he is. Break out the pom poms and shout down the reality based community all you want – this chart says it all. This guy has no idea what he’s doing.

    Did anybody see him at the press conference stating the Republicans compromised by allowing tax cuts that were in their party platform. FUCKING CLUELESS.

    Let’s just elect President Palin and tear down this empire once and for all. Once we’ve finally hit bottom we can start to rebuild, hopefully with some hard lessons learned.

  215. 215.

    Jon

    I’m not sure how this chart changes anyone’s mind. We all know that the agreement is not equitable. That is not the point – the point is that we are unable to get what we want. The President recognizes this.
    The problem is that this chart (without the last column) has been making the rounds for long time now, and it didn’t make any difference. It didn’t motivate the Democrats to vote on this before the elections, and it didn’t give them the ability to overcome Saturday’s filibuster. Sen. Brown says that he is willing to spend the holiday trying to overcome a filibuster. Believe me, I would love to watch that – I would stay up ’till midnight on New Year’s Eve watching that, and if they succeeded, I would celebrate ’till dawn – but who really thinks that they can overcome a filibuster? What has happened in the last year that makes anyone think that they can overcome a GOP filibuster, whether or Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve. In fact, I don’t think that even all of the Democrats will vote to overcome a filibuster (Webb, Manchin?) So instead, we will wake up New Year’s day with a huge headache.

  216. 216.

    Suck It Up!

    Who knew progressives were so passionate about reducing the deficit? Seems like the #1 concern for the past two years is making sure that Republicans don’t “win” on anything.

  217. 217.

    Suck It Up!

    Oh and this outrage over the UI extension from some of you? Yeah, where the hell was this over past several months? More fire from the left on KO’s suspension than over getting help for 99-ers. Spare me. before this deal, no one was pushing for help for the unemployed, nor for any of the other tax cuts that Obama prefers (besides the old bush tax cut).

  218. 218.

    kay

    @eemom:

    We scoff about ponies and unicorns—but what miracle is going to unfold that puts all those people to work before then…..especially with the “deal” rigged the way it is to perpetuate jobs being outsourced??

    But, eemom, you were honest enough to play it out to the worst-case possible result (Republicans let all the tax cuts expire).

    What just happened then, worst case? Obama kept one promise (raise taxes on over 250k) but he broke another. He raised taxes on below 250k. He said he wouldn’t do that. I know that’s not technically true, Congress raised taxes on those under 250k, but he said he wouldn’t allow that to happen. What if it happens?

    Worst case, you’re asking him to keep the promise that’s important to you (and better policy, honestly) , but break the promise he made to everyone who makes less than 250k.

    It’s still a broken promise, right? If they all expire, he breaks that promise.

  220. 220.

    magurakurin

    Let’s just elect President Palin and tear down this empire once and for all. Once we’ve finally hit bottom we can start to rebuild, hopefully with some hard lessons learned.

    Nach Hitler kommen Wir, eh? That worked out so well the last time someone tried it. Of course 56 million people had to die, but Germany is a nice place now.

  221. 221.

    Alex S.

    @Martin:

    I agree. Obama knew he was damned either way, so he did the best thing for himself: to appear like the reasonable mediator between egoistic extremes. If he loses, the Bush tax cuts expire. If he wins, he has got a bipartisan agreement to increase the deficit (basically a free vote on the debt level extension) It’s a pain for those who will have to live on food stamps or sell their house now – but there is a deep crisis, economically and politically. You can kick and hit and scream, but it doesn’t change the fact that some things just aren’t possible now (like DADT – the votes just aren’t there, thank you, Martha Coakley! Fuck you, Scott Brown!).

  222. 222.

    kay

    @Martin:

    I put the blame for this on Congress as well, though. By doing nothing, they pretty much forced Obama to talk about it and he had to set a proposal that was appropriate to come from the WH.

    Democrats in Congress have another problem, and it’s consistency. They were all really mad that Obama didn’t “lead” on healthcare, and left it to Congress. That exposed them politically, and nearly everyone in the country was disgusted watching Congress trade and haggle and so forth.

    He did the tax issue differently. He campaigned on it, alone, for three months. He then presented them with a detailed proposal.

    They have to decide. They can’t scream when he allows Congress to work unimpeded (we’re leaderless!) , and then scream when he doesn’t (we were locked out!).

    It looks like blame-shifting.

  223. 223.

    Alex S.

    @Mike M:

    I saw a poll, a reliable firm, but yeah, just one poll that showed a 66% support for these tax cuts, or let’s say, this compromise. I suspect that most independents simply automatically trust these bipartisan agreements, for some reason. So Obama doesn’t lose all the people that elected him. In fact, he might gain support among moderate Republicans, the few that are left. But well, progressives are another matter. I don’t know if the UI extension is worth it for classic liberals, the few that are left.

  224. 224.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    Has someone pointed out how come the taxes on the lower class are supposed to go up if this chart is showing them going down? I’m missing something here.

  225. 225.

    tworivers

    @NR:

    The problem is a government that is increasingly tilted toward the plutocrats without a force to counterbalance it. The Senate is really the center of this problem.

    I for the most part agree with this, although i think both Obama and congressional Dems misplayed this issue big time. They had a populist issue that they could run with, an issue in which they could draw a very clear distinction between themselves and the Repubs. They all agreed on it, and public asentiment was firmly on their side. And yet somehow they managed to blow it. It boggles the mind how incompetent they are.

    The sad thing is, the movement towards a plutocracy is only beginning. The Roberts court’s decision in Citizen’s United is only going to make this FUBAR situation that much more f’ed up.

    Thanks you John Roberts, brave defender of democracy plutocracy

  226. 226.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):

    I read somewhere that the Making Work Pay tax credit ($400.00) will be gone with this deal. If you look at the chart, if you get less than $400.00 then in essence you are getting less/paying more.

  227. 227.

    kay

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):

    I think the 40 billion to the working poor and lower middle class is really, really important, in a real, tangible way. Working poor absolutely rely on an end of year chunk of money. Money isn’t just a straight calculation of numbers. 3,000 dollars means a LOT MORE to someone who makes 15k a year than 10,000 does to someone who makes 250k a year. 3000 to the 15k a year person means survival.

    It’s the single large chunk of money they get or ever have, and they get it only once a year. They use it for everything from buying a beater to get to work to purchasing dentures.

    It’s absolutely essential. They’re screwed without it, for a whole year. They cannot survive without it.

  229. 229.

    Violet

    @magurakurin:
    She’s gonna be President anyway. People are going to die when she’s President no matter what. Might as well get it over with. At least the late night comedy would be good. Until they’re given the death penalty for daring to make fun of The Queen.

  230. 230.

    Hugh

    Once again I read a post after a million comments are already up and don’t have time to read them all.

    That chart does hit one in the guts. Even my parrot is screaming about it. No she isn’t. She’s just screaming.

    The issue is corruption. That’s what all of this is about. Our system is rife with it. The Republicans are completely bought. The Democrats are half-bought. We’ve had very corrupt times in our history and less corrupt times. How did we get out of very corrupt times into less corrupt times? Teddy Roosevelt? FDR? How does the system correct? This is a real question. Do we need a major economic catastrophe?

  231. 231.

    SFAW

    Of course 56 million people had to die, but Germany is a nice place now.

    I’m sure Gilead will be, too.

    Well, for right-thinking people it will be. The rest? Not so much.

  232. 232.

    SFAW

    Once again I read a post after a million comments are already up and don’t have time to read them all.

    Well, if you REALLY cared about John’s feelings, you’d make the time.

  233. 233.

    Hugh

    Am I a network liberal or cluster liberal? Am I part of the professional left? Am I a firebagger? Am I an Obot? So difficult to know.

  237. 237.

    jinxtigr

    @Martin:

    And something in Obama’s proposals that people seem to be missing is that it caps deductions at 28%. Now, this serves to further complicate the tax code, but it does bump that top effective rate even more than it would seem, so if you’re up in the top two brackets, your deductions will be discounted and you’ll wind up with more taxable income in addition to the higher tax rate on that income – up to 11% more income, worst theoretical case. So this could even raise taxes on some people below $250K. The devil is always in the details…

    Interesting. Very interesting. This just jumped out of the noise for me. I’m really tuning out the hysterics because I just can’t cope with the drama of it all, but little details like this catch my attention. Really? How much does it apply to, and how much deductions are, say, Exxon taking on taxes? I smell a trick, and it’s a trick in my favor, because I’m not really operating on a basis where I can bury my tax liability in deductions.

    Even if I ended up paying more, if really big corporations ended up paying more still, I’d count that a win- a judo move. Don’t the really wealthy make superheavy use of deductions, to the point they’d be affected by this change?

  238. 238.

    Brighton

    Two things:
    Show me the chart in real dollar terms, so I can see where the stimulus is going;

    Show me what percentage of the ultra-rich income is capital gains, which is taxed at 15% still. This chart is just wage income.

  240. 240.

    D. Aristophanes

    If you sit out an election, encourage others to do the same and then bitch about the results afterward…

    A canard. Nate Silver has shown that Dem voters turned out as they always do in 2010.

  241. 241.

    Ajay

    Gosh John, I am surprised you are sold…That Cultish thing doesn’t really work(for either side and I am not saying FDL is the way to go).

    I think most of those ticked off at Obama for this would still vote for him but this is just silly to cave in like this. Much better to give a real good fight and loose than do what O has done. It also dampens enthusiam for turnout during voting.

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