In his eagerness to show some “bipartisanship” and turn a position of strength into a position of weakness in order to barter a tax deal with Congressional Republicans, President Obama demonstrated a willingness to break his 2007 campaign promise not to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans (though I suppose now we can call them the Obama tax cuts for the richest two percent), but independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont thinks Americans in the lower and middle classes got a raw deal:
“In my view, it is a moral outrage that at a time when this country has a $13.8 trillion national debt, a collapsing middle class and a growing gap between the very rich and everybody else that the Republicans would deny extended unemployment benefits to 2 million workers who are desperately struggling to pay their bills and maintain their dignity. It is also beyond comprehension that the Republicans would hold hostage the entire middle class of this country so that millionaires and billionaires would receive huge tax breaks. In my view, that is not what this country is about and it is not what the American people want to see. Our job is to save the disappearing middle class, not lower taxes for people who are already extraordinarily wealthy and increase the national debt that our children and grandchildren would have to pay.
“The immediate political task in front of us is to rally the American people so that in the next several weeks we can find at least a few Republicans who will join us in saying no to increasing the deficit by giving tax breaks to the wealthy and no to holding the unemployed and the middle class hostage.
“I believe that we have the American people on our side on this issue. My office, and I come from a small state, has received more than 600 calls today, 99 percent of them in opposition to this so-called compromise that the president negotiated with the Republicans.
“I will do everything in my power to stand up for the American middle class and defeat this agreement.”
The irony for me in the deal worked out between President Obama and Congressional Republicans is that the Congressional Republicans who support this deal – and the hundreds of billions of dollars it will add to our nation’s debt – are the same Republicans who’ve been so vociferous in their opposition to adding to anything to the national debt. According to these hypocrites, adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt is downright awful when it helps the unemployed and the lower and middle classes, but adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt is perfectly okay if the richest two percent of Americans will benefit.
I guess I’m a bit confused with your kind of math…. First of all, we’re talking about the current tax law that is in effect. This law was put in place in 2001. If this law is continued, it’s not COSTING the government anything. The only thing that happens is that the largest tax increase in history won’t be the new law of the land and every economist knows that tax hikes in a recession is economic suicide. The only thing that’s COSTING the government money is the fact that they can’t stop spending.
You should call it like it is Zach. This is a tax HIKE that the demcrats want, not tax cuts. Try to be honest about this.
Its ending the bush tax cuts that they could not believe they passed to begin with. Every economist knows that continuous cutting of the upper end tax bracket has been killing the country by adding more and more to the deficit and starving the beast. very few economists think that we should of kept the tax cuts for everyone over 250k a year.
Democrats voted for the tax cut in 2001. Democrats added the sunset. It’s now the law of the land and has been for 10 years. The economy surged up until the democrats took control of congress…. Go ahead….. let the tax law lapse…. see what happens. It’s what you wanted… right? or maybe you didn’t catch the election results of November.
Democrats didn’t add the sunset; the bill had to sunset in order to pass it through reconciliation (which if I recall is how Republicans got it passed) since it added to the deficit. The sunset provision sidestepped the Byrd Rule, a Senate rule that amends the Congressional Budget Act to allow Senators to block a piece of legislation if it purports to significantly increase the federal deficit beyond a ten-year term.
What’s more, using the reconciliation process allowed Republicans to get the tax cut passed without getting 60 votes.
I saw that it was a reconciliation vote after I posted but regardless, there were still 12 of the 58 votes by dems to pass the bill. You still haven’t explained how this will be a tax cut in 2011 if the law goes unchanged. If the law is continued, nothing changes. If the law is allowed to lapse it will be a tax increase. Can you at least admit to this?
Wow you might want to do a little research before you post such things…..
1. The only people who voted AGAINST it were Democrats.
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=1&vote=00170
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll149.xml
We also have different definitions of an economic surge. 47000 factories closed during the bush years. I would not consider that success. We also ended up almost 11 trillion in debt, also not a success IMHO.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129052425
The roll call was 58 to 33 with 12 democrats in the YEA column. That would mean the dems put the vote over the top with no filibuster. I wonder how many of those factories moved off shore because labor costs were out of control? The Bush spending….. I was never a big fan of Bush’s conservatism or lack there of…. I like Obama’s spending even less.