Is anyone helping him?
President Obama sought to keep Congressional Republicans on the defensive Monday, calling an extension of the payroll tax cut necessary for middle-class Americans and questioning why Republicans who opposed paying for tax cuts in the past now say they won’t continue the payroll tax break unless it is offset with other revenues.
“When they took over the House the beginning of this year, they explicitly changed the rules to say they don’t have to pay for tax cuts,” Mr. Obama said, striking a consciously puzzled tone. “So forgive me a little bit of confusion when I hear folks insisting on tax cuts being paid for.”
The payroll tax cut expires at the end of the year. The White House says that taxes on the average family will increase by $1,000 if the cuts are not extended. While some Republicans in Congress say that they support the extension of the tax cut, the two parties have significant differences over how to pay for it.
“Now I know many Republicans have sworn an oath never to raise taxes for as long as they live,” the president said in remarks to assembled reporters in the White House briefing room. “How can it be the only time there’s a catch is when it comes to raising taxes on middle class families?”
At some point the lies and hypocrisy of the GOP have got to get the media’s attention.
gbear
Because SHUT UP! That’s why.
I blame Obama.
Zandar
No help, Chuck Toddler is too busy complaining about how THE COUNTDOWN CLOCK IN THE BRIEFING ROOM is destroying comity in Congress.
That’s what “getting the media’s attention” about this speech.
Baud
No. Democratic officeholders exist to be criticized, not to be assisted.
MikeTheZ
Its so cute when John gets optimistic for 5 minutes before reality hits him again.
Roger Moore
Is he allowed to do that? I thought the rules said Democrats had to be a bunch of pussies and take whatever the Republicans dished out.
boss bitch
Nope. Democrats bitch and moan about his tactics then when he ups the “fight” they disappear or bitch some more.
I’m generalizing of course.
danimal
This whole debate is the best proof of “11th dimension chess” that I’ve seen. Any arguments that Republicans make against extending the payroll tax cut will limit their flexibility to advocate for extending the Bush tax rates next year. And they know it. Thus, they twist slowly in the breeze, unable to find a way out of their dilemna: How do we deny Obama a victory this year without kissing the Bush rates goodbye next year? BWAHAHAHAHA!
jl
@Zandar: What? No! Those bounders! Using the briefing room for messaging?
YeeGodzzzzzooookssss!
That is worse than fighting in the war room.
I’m glad Todd is on the case.
harlana
I think that 28% of Gingrich supporters are doing the best they can.
boss bitch
The administration has a countdown clock (of the payroll tax cuts) that people can put on their websites.
dogwood
He won’t get a lick of help. Manchin, Tester, Sanders are all no votes. Any Dem who might have the President’s back on this won’t see the light of day. The media loves politicians who go against their own president. Look for guys like the trio above and any other contrary House critters to be all over cable and the Sunday morning shows for the next 3 weeks.
Linnaeus
I gotta be honest, though: talking about raising taxes on the middle class by not extending a temporary tax cut sounds a lot like the kind of reasoning Republicans used to employ and Democrats would denounce. I mean, I get that the president is pointing out that the Republicans’ fetish for tax cutting is only in the service of the wealthiest Americans (an observation that I think is accurate). I’m just wondering what the long-term implications of this strategy might be.
Montysano
This. You nailed it.
And the answer, of course, is a big fucking “No”.
OzoneR
@dogwood: The media loves
politiciansDemocrats who go against their own Democratic president.FIFY
OzoneR
@Linnaeus:
They denounce it because the Republicans are lying about it, not because they want to do it. They try to hide tax cuts for the rich and for corporations by calling them or bundling them with tax cuts for everyone else.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Sez who?
jl
“Gentlemen. You can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAeqVGP-GPM
Sorry. Chuck Todd’s tweet made me do it. His fault.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Zandar:
Benen had a piece this morning about Republicans complaining that Obama never writes, never calls. The aloof bastard never even texts.
Special Patrol Group
Princess Nancy:
That count as help?
Dave
No one fucking cares about the fucking payroll tax.
FoxinSocks
I’ll call my senators. Last time, I got my family to join in too. I like to think it makes a small difference. Everybody I know is living close to the edge, just barely hanging on. We need that tax cut.
El Cruzado
My, but he isn’t fighting back in the exact same way I imagine he should in my fevered dreams and therefore he is betraying everything I once thought he stood for.
Villago Delenda Est
John, I hate to be the one to break it to you, pal, but there is no Santa Claus.
Baud
@Special Patrol Group: Dems on the Hill have been remarkably unified in these fights (notwithstanding a few notable exceptions in the Senate).
Villago Delenda Est
@Zandar:
Isn’t there someone, somewhere, moving a piano in a multistory building that can, you know, have an accident and cause it to drop it on Chuck Toad and solve this problem for us?
Ron
I think this is up there with the concept of “Peak Wingnut”
Linnaeus
@OzoneR:
Okay, I can see that.
I just don’t want the conversation to be all about the “right” kind of tax cutting. Good stuff costs money. To his credit, the president has noted this. This is something the Democrats (collectively speaking) have to find the courage to stand on more firmly.
Chris Wolf
“How can it be the only time there’s a catch is when it comes to raising taxes on middle class families?”
Chris Wolf
@Chris Wolf:
Rouge blockquote.
Steve
I am sick of fighting for tax cuts. You exhaust all your energy fighting the GOP to get something they themselves would support in a sane universe, and then when it’s done you get to congratulate yourself on a victory, but for what? It’s hard to get excited about policy fights when the ball is always in your end of the field. Hopefully sanity is restored in the next election so we can actually help the country again.
OzoneR
@Linnaeus:
@Steve:
I hate to break it to you guys, but even progressives like tax cuts- the right ones.
Arguing for a tax cut is not “playing on their field,” it’s arguing for a policy that either has worked or hasn’t. Has payroll tax cuts stimulated the economy? Progressives think so. So what’s the problem here? Because it SOUNDS Republican?
OzoneR
@Chris Wolf:
By Dec. 15, DailyKos will be complaining he’s never said something like that. Then when you show it to them, they’ll complain he didn’t say it enough.
Yevgraf
I’m watching that Objectivist tragedy “A Christmas Carol” on AMC tonight.
A good Conservative gets positively ruined…
Judas Escargot
@Chris Wolf:
We might hear it in the Obama/? debates next year, though.
dogwood
@Dave:
Plenty of “no ones” care. “No ones” like my brother and his wife, both public school teachers, who took salary cuts the past two years. The expiration of the payroll tax cut will cost them an additional $200 a month. That’s $200 that some local business owner won’t see. Multiply that by thousands of consumers in my small community and it’s a problem. In this slow recovery, reducing demand is dangerous.
PeakVT
Is anyone helping him?
Yes (with varying effectiveness) but those people aren’t considered serious by the media.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Dave:
I do. It makes a difference to me, sure it is a tiny difference, it is about $10.00 a week, (My paycheck would be $486.35 a week as opposed to $497.93 a week as it is now) but over the course of a year that is a big fucking deal when you live paycheck to paycheck. Scuse me but fuck you.
kindness
You can kiss of the whole Village Elder Class. Baging the president is too much fun for them.
The Democratic Party needs to start by organizing getting folks ID cards, especially in those states the neocons are trying to strip people of their votes. Register them to vote the same time. So what, $35 for a state ID & then arrange for transportation for voting? A year ahead is a good place to start.
tulip
don’t count on it.
General Stuck
Don’t know if you would call it “helping him” as in getting anything passed with the psychotic republicans, but they are playing some tag teaming for the election to maybe get some more dems elected next year, so something can be done. and is not letting up with making the wingers obstruct to protect the rich from paying higher taxes.
“tiny surtax” on the wealthy, I love it, as Reid and senate dems turn the populist screws with relentless efforts to put wingnuts in a corner with the only people they care about. The rich.
But Senator Kyl has been designated permanent kamikaze wingnut to scuttle anything resembling a fair compromise.
If this is the deal, then there won’t be an extension of MC tax cuts that run out in a few weeks. So the wingers keep sending lame duck Kyl out to piss in the punchbowl, hoping all the blowback lands on him, and not them, next year.
And Nancy may be the minority leader in the House, but is doing her part, going man o man with the Newtster, personally campaigning for him by making Newt her opponent numero uno, therefore drawing the GOP base that hates her, closer to Newt. Pretty slick politicking all around for our dems.
No governing to speak of, ask the wingnuts about that.
cokane
Tho I like Obama, I’d be okay with the tax cuts expiring. Not saying I agree with the Repub logic, but when tax rates are the lowest since 1950 we need to roll back these recent cuts. First Obama’s then Bush’s. I know, obviously, it won’t work out like that, but oh well. The harm caused by deficits will far outweigh the harm caused by taxes increasing marginally.
A.G.
The President makes a pretty good point which should be hammered over and over. The timing is pretty good, too, with the OWS movement going on. Yes, I know the movement is starting to wear on some people, however it has changed the conversation and Obama fighting for the payroll tax cut combined with the message of OWS will bring more awareness to people- no matter what the MSM does.
Steve
@OzoneR: I didn’t say it was bad policy. But making it the centerpoint of the national debate means we essentially end up having a Republican argument about whether tax cuts are an awesome thing or the awesomest thing. We are losing the fight to keep taxes at a reasonable level on the national, state and local levels, and Democrats continue to be terrified of the subject.
I’ve noticed that Democrats get so excited about the prospect of occasionally using the Republicans’ own talking points against them (“Republicans filibustered the defense authorization! THEY HATE THE TROOPS!”) that they lose sight of the fact that they’re reinforcing an overall argument that generally belongs to the Republicans (military funding is always great!).
OzoneR
@Steve:
We are? Because from my point of view, they’re either fine or too high on the middle class, too low on the rich, which is exactly what the Dems are arguing.
We’re not having an argument about whether or not taxes are awesome or awesomer, we’re having an argument on how fair they are. What you’re saying is we shouldn’t even talk about them because it’s an argument Republicans win.
Jenny
But, Naomi Wolf says Obama is like Hitler.
Why should we help Hitler?
Linnaeus
@OzoneR:
The payroll tax cut extension may not be, especially at this juncture, bad policy. I’m no expert on taxation, but it’s probably more stimulative relative to other forms of tax cuts. But that’s an important caveat, because there are other policies that are even better stimulators of the economy. That said, we are dealing with the Republicans here, so one’s choices are more limited than they would otherwise be.
I’m just trying to think a step or two ahead here. I’m reminded of a talk I recently heard by a Canadian academic about the budget crises on both the provincial and federal level in Canada in the 1990s. He thought that the Canadian situation (and what Canada did to get out of the problem) had potentially useful lessons for the United States. His belief was that the fundamental problem was that government promised, and people expected, a level of social benefits that politicians were not willing to support with commensurate taxation. I think we’re dealing with much the same problem in this country: 21st century (hell, even 20th century) life costs money. And it’s got to come from somewhere.
If the payroll tax debate gets us to a conversation about the fairness of taxation in the US, then I’ll be glad for it. But there’s plenty of pitfalls along the way, and we need to see them.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@cokane:
I would agree with you in good economic times, but these are not good economic times. Every penny the government takes from people who would normally spend it is one less penny fueling the economy. Our tax structure is old and out of date. Pay at the top has gone far beyond the minimum top rate trigger and IMO we need another rate step at the top.
High taxes used to discourage excessive executive compensation as the corporate reasoning was why should they give it to the government when they could spend it improving the product(s), keeping equipment up to date, paying higher dividends to stockholders, paying the employees better and so on? Once the top rates dropped enough you started to see executive pay creep up and worker pay stagnate. Now it’s at the point that the executives are basically raiding the coffers, jacking prices and cutting corners everywhere to grab that cash. Add the exporting of blue collar jobs to the stagnating pay and you have the mess we are in today.
Rates need to be increased at the top, at least until we get out of this mess that some creative rich dudes got us in to. If the ‘rich’ below those top dogs have to pay higher taxes then they should ‘thank’ the assholes they admire and not hate on the the huddled masses they despise.
The rich and powerful fucked everything up, make them pay for fixing it.
Paddy
DWS was on something on MSNBC today and she did a valiant job bucking up PBO’s talking points. But that is all I heard today, at least on MSNBC.
General Stuck
Thankfully, democrats have realized that the blood oath taboo of republicans never raising taxes, especially on the rich, is a huge achilles heel, and weapon. A weapon that can be molded and wielded pretty much at will to define the republican party as what they are. And I know that a lot of you don’t care for this kind of pol battle of engagement, preferring base only rhetoric and policies.
But it is win win. With everything the dems offering having that poison pill of raising taxes on rich people, they can use every GOP talking point against them. And if the GOP breaks somehow, and breaks their Grover pledge, and tea tard pledge, then they will blow up what is left of a cogent political party. And it is more than just good politics for dems to do this, it is also really bad for the country, for one party to not be willing to raise the revenue needed to run the country.
The press and voters are another topic, and it remains to be seen if at some point they get that this shit is serious, and put down the flag pins and baby jeevus worship, long enough to save their own asses along with ours.
Schlemizel
Oh Cole! Your child-like belief in the American media is so heart warming. They will pay attention shortly after the USAF starts a porcine command.
redheadedfemme
@Dave: Well gee, Mister F Bomb, who shoved a poker up your ass?
I would venture to say a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck because of this insignificant little thing called the “Great Recession” would be delighted to have an extra $1000-$1500 a year.
I don’t care either way myself because I have a secure government job and am solidly middle-class (for the moment, anyway). However, I am not so petty as to begrudge the less fortunate.
Karen
@OzoneR:
“DailyKos?”
Try the Balloon Juicers who somehow manage to make everything that happens in the universe about how horrible a person Obama is.
Especially over things he has no control over like hurricanes, earthquakes, making the GOP act sanely and take him seriously, etc.
cokane
@Odie Hugh Manatee: thanks for the thoughtful reply. You make a strong argument. There’s a hidden story going on here that I feel our media are not reporting accurately. Many Democrats, especially some Senators, want to keep the Bush tax cuts, and generally want to keep taxes low on the wealthy. There is a somewhat bipartisan effort in Washington to do this.
General Stuck
@cokane:
I am going to make a prediction on the Bush tax cuts, that if possible, the middle class ones will be extended, or made permanent. IF they can be separated from the rich tax cuts. But if they can’t Obama will let them all expire. either reelected or not.
PurpleGirl
How is that money going to replaced to Social Security funding? Maybe we need the stimulus effect now, but what happens when any of you do retire and your benefit is adjusted down for the lower taxes you contributed because the money wasn’t replaced? Will they be able to raise the SS rates in the future?
I’ve sort of accepted that after 3 years of unemployment, my SS benefits will be a lot lower and I’ll live in poverty in the future. (I’m going to bed now. Play nice with each other.)
Sal
I pass
3 Free Trade deals isn’t my bag.
Sal
I pass
3 Free Trade deals isn’t my bag.
magurakurin
@Karen:
I always assumed that they just come over from the DKOS and She Who Must Be Un-named’s site. For good or ill such people you mention hardly seem the majority here. Most posters here, in my opinion, fit into the category of people who think Obama is doing what he can and about what they expected of him. And are, each and every day, thankful to whatever God, Goddess, Various Diety, or Lucky Charm they have that Grandpa Munster and Bible Spice are not at the helm.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@cokane:
Our income tax system is broken because the brackets are so skewed and out of date. There has been a bit of a shell game going on regarding tax rates and brackets. We used to have many brackets with the top bracket having a high threshold. Now we have few brackets with the top one having a low threshold. Combine the lowered tax rates on the top bracket for very rich and the inclusion of many who were not in the top bracket before and what happens is that the rich pay less and the middle class pays more.
“Simplifying the tax code” has allowed the rich to pay less, rape executive compensation and dump the burden on everyone else. As I see it, revising and updating our tax brackets is the only thing that can possibly save us.
Thanks to Grover Norquist and his simpleton politicians who have signed away their Constitutional powers to him, we are sure to drive right off of the cliff.
ETA: How about updating the first peacetime tax? From Wikipedia: “In 1894, Democrats in Congress passed the Wilson-Gorman tariff, which imposed the first peacetime income tax. The rate was 2% on income over $4000, which meant fewer than 10% of households would pay any. “
Update the level to $4,000,000 and let ‘er rip! :)
General Stuck
@PurpleGirl:
200 billion is a grain of sand on the SS trust fund beach. Though we shouldn’t overdo using that money, but only in the hardest of times and econ conditions. No one will lose any benefits over this amount.
Steve
@OzoneR: Well, we disagree. I don’t think we can fiscally sustain making the Bush tax cuts permanent for everyone making under $250,000. I didn’t feel like the middle class was being taxed into poverty under Clinton and I think we have no choice but to return to those rates. If you think Republicans were correct regarding appropriate taxation rates right up until 2003, and that they’re only mistaken in thinking we should cut rates even farther, I just can’t agree.
Raising taxes on the rich is a great political wedge issue. It’s good policy too but it’s a drop in the bucket; taxes on those earning less than $250,000 are about 90% of the total and apparently there’s a bipartisan consensus that we should keep those cuts forever and ever. So we shouldn’t fool ourselves that by fighting over the remaining 10% that we’re somehow having some cataclysmic battle. Using payroll tax cuts for stimulus is apparently another great wedge issue, but at the end of the day, we’ve basically surrendered to the Republican theme that no one should pay more taxes, ever, except maybe a tiny handful of hedge fund managers that nobody likes. It’s such an unambitious agenda I find it hard to be excited.
OzoneR
@Steve:
the middle class certainly did. But you’re right, they weren’t, but they were also surviving a lot better than they have been in the last decade.
Middle class tax cuts aren’t necessary in a good economy.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Oh, and up the rate to 90%. :D
Schlemizel
@magurakurin:
No no no no no – you do not understand how the game is played here on BJ. No matter what the topic the winner is the first person to preemptively whine about the other side whining.
e.g
I’m sure some obot with be here to tell us all how we are not grateful enough to the bestest President evah!
OR
No, soon the firebaggers will be here to explain why this is all Obamas fault for some reason.
comments like this are 25x more likely than the posts they presume are coming but generally good at adding a lot of butthurt to the thread.
General Stuck
While I understand and accepted Obama extending all the bush tax cuts for two years, under the conditions that existed politically and economically at the time. It is one of my big disagreements with him over his promising to make the middle class cuts permanent. Bad policy, and by no means that is what will happen in the end, which more likely than not, all the cuts will expire, given our deepening crisis in governing between the parties. but he shouldn’t have made that promise.
lol
@PurpleGirl:
The Social Security trust fund is reimbursed from the general fund to replace the lost funds and benefits aren’t impacted. That’s how it was done before and that’s how it’s going to be done this time.
Lots of people on the Professional Left have been concern trolling about how the payroll tax holiday is actually a plot by Obama to weaken the trust fund, but none of them have apparently read the fucking bill. That’s par for the course, obviously, but this is one of those times when they’re saying shit that’s demonstrably untrue.
stickler
@Yevgraf: No, Yevgraf, Scrooge was a Manchester Liberal. Dickens was the conservative (for whom there was still a little noblesse oblige, and distaste for the industrial dystopia the Liberal factory owners were creating in England).
Indeed, Ebenezer Scrooge is arguably a good deal LESS greedy and evil than some of the more notorious Liberal politicians of the day.
Jenny
@lol:
Somebody forgot to tell Kos. He keeps declaring it a huge victory for OWS.
OzoneR
@Jenny:
You don’t get it do you?
it’s a huge victory for OWS AND a political ploy by Obama to destroy Social Security.
Duh
The Republic of Stupidity
Actually, the Republcan position is quite simple…
The best way to pay for the extension of ANY tax cut is to extend the Bush tax cuts… if Democrats would only listen to REASON and extend the Bush tax cuts permanently, they – the Repubs – would gladly discuss all and any further tax cut extensions, as long as they benefit the rich…
Odie Hugh Manatee
@OzoneR:
“It’s a floor wax and a dessert topping!”
Karen
Call me cynical but I was born in 1965 and figured Social Security would be gone by the time I’d be anywhere near the age of retiring. The idea that it could be saved at all seems naive to me.
General Stuck
@Karen:
When and if SS goes under, the country you live in now will no longer exist. Probably replaced by some kind of neo feudalistic shit hole, with camps for the like minded to survive in. In other words, SS is a lynchpin that holds this country together, more than anything else. The sane republicans delude themselves we can exist as is without it. The insane ones want a neo feudalistic state, because they want to be permanently in charge.
In order for SS and us to survive, the sane republicans have to realize they are wrong, and join with democrats to do what is necessary to preserve SS in a viable and stable form.
pattonbt
@OzoneR: Or Democrats who go with a Republican president.
pattonbt
@General Stuck: I’ll take that bet (one I’ll happily lose). I will bet Bush tax cuts get extended in full yet again. Or made permanent.
OzoneR
@pattonbt:
not during an election, no way. The only way this happens is if a Republican Congress gets elected in November and they do it in December.
Marc
@pattonbt:
Obama has made raising taxes on the rich the centerpiece of his re-election campaign. He’s not going to give that weapon up under any circumstances.
Maude
@OzoneR:
Obama has started making fun of the Republicans. This will be a good time.
The tax system is not progressive when the rich pay less. TO restore a fair tax system is what the Republicans are fighting tooth and nail.
If members of Congress earned minimum wage, things would be very different.
Karen
If members of Congress earned minimum wage there would be no members of Congress…
AxelFoley
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Good one, Cole.
Oh, you were serious?
harlana
if i get that tax cut, i plan to have my teeth whitened, if something else doesn’t break around the house in the meantime
i guess that makes me a horrible person and basically a welfare queen
fuck ’em, fuck ’em all – i need this smile
HeartlandLiberal
In the FWIW department, I went to the NYTimes article to read the whole thing. The following paragraph quoted by John is not in the article. Was it removed by Times editors?
““Now I know many Republicans have sworn an oath never to raise taxes for as long as they live,” the president said in remarks to assembled reporters in the White House briefing room. “How can it be the only time there’s a catch is when it comes to raising taxes on middle class families?” “
HeartlandLiberal
The Google found the quote from the original Times article still living at this site:
http://htpolitics.com/2011/12/05/obama-seeks-to-keep-gop-on-defensive-over-payroll-tax-cut/
which attributes its sources to the NYTimes and Herald-Tribune.
Was the language just to clear and impeached the GOP so badly that the NYTimes editors scrubbed it?
I checked the online NYTimes version three times, searching for key words from the missing paragraph, and could not find it.
xian
@Dave: fuck you. I do. My budget is tighter than your asshole.
xian
@PurpleGirl: the money doesn’t need to be replaced, that’s why the cuts “cost” something now. The money still gets credited to the trust fund.
xian
@Karen: that’s what the trickle down folks have always wanted you to believe.
RP
I’m surprised there hasn’t been more discussion of this Ezra Klein piece:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2011/12/we_asked_obama_for_change_got033824.php
I thought it was idiotic.
Lex
@Dave: A grand a year? I damned well care.
cat48
This is all about saving the weak recovery we have. The UK only grew .05% last qtr & expect to be in Recession the next qtr. All of Europe will follow. The Tax cut is paid for & SS will be reimbursed. It’s the bare minimum we can try. Voting NO is voting for a Recession for sure.
Bubkes
@dogwood: If they are public school teachers, they probably don’t pay these payroll taxes anyway (teachers can opt out of social security).
Bubkes
Payroll taxes are the part we contribute to social security and medicare. Failing to collect these is fundamentally different than a tax cut, which can always be offset by spending cuts. In this case, no one is suggesting we not fund these programs, just that we stop paying for them.
There is plenty of GOP hypocrisy (and Dem hypocrisy, too), but this ain’t an example of it.