Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

You are here: Home / Economics / Tax Policy / A Tax Cut They Don’t Like

A Tax Cut They Don’t Like

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These guys are just going all-in on the class warfare:

News flash: Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes. Impossible, right? GOP lawmakers are so virulently anti-tax, surely they will fight to prevent a payroll tax increase on virtually every wage-earner starting Jan. 1, right?

Apparently not.

Many of the same Republicans who fought hammer-and-tong to keep the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts from expiring on schedule are now saying a different “temporary” tax cut should end as planned. By their own definition, that amounts to a tax increase.

The tax break extension they oppose is sought by President Barack Obama. Unlike proposed changes in the income tax, this policy helps the 46 percent of all Americans who owe no federal income taxes but who pay a “payroll tax” on practically every dime they earn.

There are other differences as well, and Republicans say their stand is consistent with their goal of long-term tax policies that will spur employment and lend greater certainty to the economy.

“It’s always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn,” says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, “but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again.” The Texas lawmaker is on the House GOP leadership team.

He’s right. The payroll tax is far more effective at stimulating the economy than giving the Koch brothers and the Wall Street money boys more money to buy another yacht.

This is all about making sure the economy is as bad as possible for 2012, protecting the rich, and making sure the Republicans can pretend they are the party of “fiscal responsibility.”

Reader Interactions

65Comments

  1. 1.

    Davis X. Machina

    The official Progressive™ position is that it’s a bad tax cut, because the shortfall into the trust fund has to be made good from general federal revenue, and g.f.r is running behind receipts.

    So it ties SS to the deficit, and just gives Obama the opening he’s always wanted to kill the whole SS program, which is why he proposed this particular stimulus in the first place.

    Just reporting what I read…. Me, I’ve got a lot of “Kill the Bill!” merch from ’09 I’m stuck with and am still trying to unload. This could be my salvation.

    Wanna buy a t-shirt?

  5. 5.

    Villago Delenda Est

    “It’s always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn,” says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, “but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again.” The Texas lawmaker is on the House GOP leadership team.

    I agree.

    That’s why the Bush era tax cuts should not only be allowed to expire, for incomes above $250,000, there should be tax increases.

    Time for the freeloaders at the top to start pulling their fucking weight.

  6. 6.

    Observer

    The payroll tax is far more effective at stimulating the economy than giving the Koch brothers and the Wall Street money boys more money to buy another yacht.

    True, but not the point. Picking my nose and staring at the ceiling is also more effective at stimulating the economy than giving the Koch brothers and the Wall Street money boys more money to buy another yacht.

    First of all, the “payroll tax” isn’t actually a tax; it’s an insurance premium mandated by law to be paid out *if* you reach retirement age.

    Mislabelling it a “tax” all these years just plays into Republican hands to kill Social security. The payroll tax cut by Obama was a bad tax cut and the “payroll tax” should be restored.

  7. 7.

    Shlemizel - was Alwhite

    This is just another example in a looooooooooooooong line of attacks in the current class war. Fortunately the media will again be much too polite to point out that there is a never ending assault on work middle-class and poor Americans for the benefit of the wealthy. The Republicans have done everything but make the party motto “Steal from the poor to give to the rich” and those kind understanding people that “report” the “news” sweetly ignore it.

  8. 8.

    ulee

    Very lazy brain is what I’m saying Cole. But it’s your blog. None of my business, but Good Lord, you used to write, now you bake and tell us about your baking.

  12. 12.

    birthmarker

    I am far from knowledgeable in high finance, but isn’t giving the employers the tax break on the payroll tax being discussed? In the name of job creation?

    I was against the employee break, (which I don’t think has been proven to be stimulative) and will oppose an employer break (I guess with a strongly worded letter) which won’t create jobs.

    My theory all along has been that the purpose of killing ss is save the employers their contribution.

    My guess is the idea is to give everyone a 401K style retirement account, with a forced employee payroll tax contribution, which will be further funded with an employer match up to certain contribution levels, (as 401Ks are set up now) with the amount being far south of the current 6.2% ss employer contribution. Thus increasing corporate profits.

    Never forget. Everything done by repubs is done for the benefit of big business. The rest is just noise.

  14. 14.

    Cermet

    This is all about making sure the economy is as bad as possible for 2012, protecting the rich,

    You think? …

  15. 15.

    HeartlandLiberal

    The link to news article on Google does not work unless you login with a Google account. FWIW. At first I thought it was broken, but then realized it was demanding I login.

    Again, FWIW in the current insane state of affairs, this afternoon I faxed a five page letter with the latest polls showing supermajorities say tax the wealthy and create jobs. I quoted Warren (Socialist) Buffet, Paul Krugman, Simon Johnson on the threat of Recession/Second Great Depression, and the fact that Congress is doing everything backwards.

    I quoted the latest polls showing Congress at all time historic low 14% disapproval.

    But at heart, I despair. I truly believe that the ruling class has simply sold out to the super wealthy and the corporations and the Koch Brothers and their decades long commitment to this plutocratic oligarchic corporate revolution.

    In other words, I think the revolution is over. And they have won. And what 80% of the American people say or do literally means nothing to them.

  18. 18.

    Cat Lady

    @John Cole:

    You = Atrios now, with better commenters. I hope DougJ gets a raise, cuz he’s still kickin’ it. You’re right about August though – it used to be just another month, but even the crazy uses August to get its crazy on while no one’s paying attention. It must be the humidity. The whole month is like that scene in To Kill A Mockingbird where Atticus shoots the rabid dog. If only.

  19. 19.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @ulee: If you are going to bitch about him writing what he fucking wants to on his blog, go start your own. Stay only if you’re going to actually talk about the issue, even if you disagree.

    I don’t understand people who will come to a blog to bitch about what is being written about.

  20. 20.

    Scott

    ulee is mad when Cole blogs about gardens and dogs, and he’s mad when he blogs about politics. In other words, he’s yet another of Balloon Juice’s increasing number of unsatisfiable concern trolls.

  23. 23.

    Baud

    I think the real story here is that you were quoting from an AP news article rather than a liberal blog. It’s really something when the AP starts calling out the GOP.

  27. 27.

    scottinnj

    Move along, nothing to see here:

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-trillion-in-fed-s-secret-loans.html

    Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits.

    By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.

  28. 28.

    Baud

    @scottinnj: Apparently, there is nothing to see:

    The Fed has said it had “no credit losses” on any of the emergency programs, and a report by Federal Reserve Bank of New York staffers in February said the central bank netted $13 billion in interest and fee income from the programs from August 2007 through December 2009.

  30. 30.

    marginalized for stating documented facts

    This is all about making sure the economy is as bad as possible for 2012…

    The Republicans got plenty of help on that score from Barack Obama. He has bought into the absurd and ludicrous claim that austerity will stimulate the economy, when economic history as well as all the most revered Nobel laureate economists clamor for more stimulus NOW.

    Obama has staunchly cranked up American military spending despite the documented fact that studies irrefutably prove that money spent on the military generates the least number of jobs per dollar of any way the U.S. government can spend money.

    And then Obama caved on the debt ceiling negotiations, agreeing to a fatal “compromise” which is already plunging the U.S. economy straight into another deep recession.

    The Republicans created this economic disaster, but Barack Obama has done his part to sustain and deeper the economic collapse of America by refusing to place the blame squarely where it belongs on the Republicans, and by constantly trying to meet the Republican sociopaths in the middle when there is no middle. There’s the Republican economic policy, which is to destroy America economically and turn us into the Confederacy Part Deux, and then there’s sane economic policy, which is to do what every responsible American government has done in a deep recession since 1932 — namely, shovel vast amounts of government stimulus spending to get the economy back on its feet regardless of how large the deficits it creates.

  31. 31.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    I’m old enough to remember when politics just went away in August, kind of like workers in France.

    Yep, it was the Silly Season:

    A side effect of stirring up the public in this manner comes when an authentic story is dismissed as a prank, or when a superfluous story is taken as legitimate.
    __
    A 1950 short story by Cyril M. Kornbluth, titled “The Silly Season,” makes use of this concept by having invading aliens stage one strange but harmless event after another. All are duly reported by the newspapers until the public is bored with them, and when a final “strange event” occurs, no one is prepared to accept it as an invasion until it is too late.

    Once again, the Masters of the Universe use a dystopian fantasy (Animal Farm, Brave New World, 1984) as an instruction manual!

  33. 33.

    Cat Lady

    @efgoldman:

    August has always been strange for me – my daughter’s birthday is today, mine is Tuesday and my mother’s is Thursday. I’ve never had my own birthday ever, and when I was younger it has always been wrapped up with back to school (ugh) and no one has ever been around to come to my party or anything. I have a love/hate relationship with August – it’s too hot, the gardens are dead, no one is ever around, and in recent years it’s been hijacked by nutjobs. Corn, lobster and tomatoes are the only reason to live. Right about now I long for October.

  34. 34.

    Derf

    I think I get it now.

    Kristol = Always wrong about war
    Cole = Always wrong about war.

    Kristol = Cole

  35. 35.

    mcd410x

    A payroll tax holiday is bad policy that doesn’t stimulate shit. You want to stimulate demand in this country, put the 9.5 percent of people who are jobless to work. They’ll freakin buy stuff. It’s that simple.

  37. 37.

    danimal

    @Derf: Derf, what the hell are you thinking you accomplish. Besides advertising the need for Cleek’s pie filter, I mean. There is no conceivable reason for this post except to show your absolute idiocy. In case you didn’t notice, THE PREVIOUS POST WAS ABOUT LIBYA.

    God, what an annoying idiot you are.

  38. 38.

    marginalized for stating documented facts

    @Baud:

    So Fox News blames Republicans for creating this economic disaster — is that what you’re saying?

    Are you drunk? Or brain-damaged? Or just wacked out on hard drugs?

    Apparently, anyone who criticizes Barack Obama for buying into too much of the conservative bullshit about the supposed need for economic “austerity” is now…a conservative.

    Wow.

    Welcome to the Bizarro World…

  41. 41.

    JGabriel

    birthmarker:

    My guess is the idea is to give everyone a 401K style retirement account …

    That may be an interim step, but the goal is total impoverishment and early death for everyone but the richest. It’s not only about money; it’s also about power for one class and despair for everyone else.

    .

  42. 42.

    Lojasmo

    @Derf:

    Strange. Though I disagreed with Cole on the bootless Libya intervention, you, Derf, have provided no proof that an intervention less Libyan uprising might not have occurred anyway.

  44. 44.

    wrb

    @mcd410x:

    A payroll tax holiday is bad policy that doesn’t stimulate shit. You want to stimulate demand in this country, put the 9.5 percent of people who are jobless to work. They’ll freakin buy stuff. It’s that simple.

    The magical thinking and intellectual laziness are the tells that lts us know that you don’t stand to be hurt, and don’t give a shit for those who do.

    Yea , just do it.

  46. 46.

    PurpleGirl

    @mcd410x: Not only will we buy stuff, but we’ll start contributing to Social Security again and paying income taxes again (at all levels).

  49. 49.

    birthmarker

    @JGabriel: By “give” in your block quote, I mean “require everyone to have.”

    I don’t think they want us all in poverty or dead, because a) that would be scary, or as PurpleGirl says, b) cut into their sales.

    They just want the money flowing one way, in the right direction, their direction.

    And BTW, I an not anticapitalist. I am for balance. We have lost the balance between the needs of people and the lust for profit. Through 30 years of pro big business policy run amok.

  50. 50.

    hamletta

    @Cat Lady: I have the same thing with February: Everybody’s birthday is in February, and in addition, mine often falls during Lent.

    ulee, you are a putz. I don’t recall any announcement that you’d been named Managing Editor of Balloon Juice, so I’d thank you to shut your pie hole.

    Chiding the blog owner in comments on his choice of subjects is a zero-tolerance offense.

    Start your own goddamn blog. I’m sure we’ll all follow your humorless ass there.

  52. 52.

    ulee

    @hamletta: Hamletta–when did you become managing editor of balloon juice? Usually when one asks people to shut their humorlous pieholes it means they have humorlous pieholes. And Cole don’t need no putze’s defending him. He can do it all on his own, hammie.

  54. 54.

    Frankensteinbeck

    As for the topic of the post, this proves nothing to us. The question is whether this will help get the information to the country at large that the GOP only cares about taxes for the rich.

  55. 55.

    birthmarker

    @Ian: This reminded me of a response on DKos to some bit of inanity, which I could not quit giggling about. Here it is in its entirety.

    So sayeth Flubber. (15+ / 0-)

    Tremble all ye who opposeth Flubber.

    by ElRay on Sun Dec 20, 2009 at 05:52:46 PM PST

    Hats off ElRay, hats off.

  57. 57.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    @birthmarker: Perhaps a new rotating tag line?

    So sayeth Flubber

    I had to quickly edit my own similar blockquote FAIL earlier today. FYWP is a bitch, inn’t it?

  58. 58.

    TenguPhule

    And now thanks to 11th dimensional chess, Obama has finally gotten the official GOP platform to be basically against everything they used to run on, simply because Obama has endorsed a version of it.

    Tax cuts? GOP against it.

    Strong Foreign Policy? GOP against it.

    Jobs? GOP against it.

    Rule of Law? GOP against it.

    USA USA? GOP against it.

    Its Custer’s last stand all over again. Let the scalping begin.

  59. 59.

    harlana

    You know, $500 would do me good, no question. It won’t make a huge difference in my life because it’s such a small amount. Of course, I’m supposed to spend it, but my prop taxes are due first of year so I will probably use it for that. Regardless of how I use it, this is a BAD thing, I am told.

    I am SO glad that repubes are attacking this because it reassures me that they will never let up, and, if anything, harden their positions against the working class to stone by election time. And the country will get to see, if they haven’t already, what they’re all about and it is NOT tax cuts for everyone.

    The fact that this is plastered on the usually inane yahoo’s http://news.yahoo.com/gop-may-ok-tax-increase-obama-hopes-block-124016578.html front page tells me the confused class may catch on:

    But Republican lawmakers haven’t always worried about tax cuts increasing the deficit. They led the fight to extend the life of a much bigger tax break: the major 2001 income tax reduction enacted under Bush

  61. 61.

    birthmarker

    @TenguPhule: Remember the good ole days (2009) when Obama was a socialist?

    You gotta give the repubs credit. They have by far the best propaganda.

  62. 62.

    Matt

    This is all about making sure the economy is as bad as possible for 2012

    This pretty much sums up the problem with this country at this point – in a sane and informed democracy, the only result of tactics like that would be utter electoral defeat. Sadly, the GOP has a substantial base which is neither sane nor informed (the latter thanks to Fux Nooz) who will continue to ignore what’s going on and roll into the polling booth, “Hurr-durr-GHEYZ-GUNS-JEEBUS” to pull the lever for the people wrecking the economy…

  64. 64.

    Tugg Romney

    When you say that the Big O “sought” this extension, you mean that in a Public Option theoretical sort of way, right? Or is that loud roar coming from the left just muddling my thinking again? It’s almost as if they don’t really care either, and if the Right gets the heat, all the better.

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