Morning Must Reads: Breaks

President Obama leaves the lecturn following remarks about federal worker wage freezes on November 29. (Reuters/Jason Reed)

Mitch McConnell and John Boehner pre-spin today’s White House superslurpee summit and claim a Republican mandate.

–No deal on repeal of health reform’s 1099 tax reporting provision as the Baucus and Johanns amendments go down. Both sides want it gone, but can’t agree if/how to offset the cost.

–The food safety bill that it was going to be attached to should get a vote today.

–With Chuck Schumer on point, some congressional Dems eye extending the Bush tax cuts for all but 315,000 people making a million+ a year. The left doesn’t love that.

–Eric Cantor says the GOP is prepared to vote against an extension of breaks just for those earning $250k or less.

–Democratic Senators have been reduced to begging Patty Murray to be the DSCC sacrificial lamb in 2012.

–The CBO checks in on TARP, pegs the cost down at $25 billion.

–Health reform’s Medicare Advantage cuts are going through with minimal disruption. The White House does a little dance.

–Tyler Cowen surveys the post-PPACA landscape and is pessimistic.

–Michael Bloombeg’s national numbers aren’t good.

–Gary Johnson tours Florida.

–Joe Scarborough foments a Republican backlash against Palin.

Shots fired in Virginia’s 2012 Republican Senate primary.

–How one private first class in a desert shack allegedly unleashed the WikiLeaks deluge.

–And Tim Carney guesstimates which lobbying/consulting gigs departing Senators will land.

What did I miss?

E-mail Adam

Related Topics: 2012 Election, Barack Obama, Congress, Democratic Party, Health Care, Miscellany, Republican Party, White House
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    Cherokee Zero

    Apparently, Massachusetts voters don’t mind that Elizabeth Warren foolishly identified herself as a Native American early in her academic career–it was, apparently, a case of family pride and wishful thinking about a Cherokee ancestor. That’s good. Warren may be the best public figure when it comes to explaining the depredations of the financial industry and [...]

  • sacredh

    “500 Words” Caption:

    Obama: Well, at least nobody tried to nail me with a shoe.

  • http://derekg.wordpress.com/ Derek

    “NJ must pay $271M for killing tunnel project, FTA says

    TRENTON — New Jersey owes the federal government more than $271 million after canceling a rail tunnel connecting the state with New York, according to a debt notice obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

    The letter from the Federal Transit Administration's chief financial officer to NJ Transit's executive director demands payment of $271,101,291 by Dec. 24.

    It's money the government wants New Jersey to repay for work done on the Hudson River tunnel before Republican Gov. Chris Christie terminated the project. The notification follows a warning letter earlier this month estimating the charges.

    “FTA demands payment in full within 30 days from the date of this letter, hereinafter referred to as the 'delinquency date,”' the letter states. The letter was dated Nov. 24.”

    NJ must pay $271M for killing tunnel project, FTA says

  • charlieromeobravo

    “Eric Cantor says the GOP is prepared to vote against an extension of breaks just for those earning $250k or less.”
    .
    UG. It drives me nuts that the Republicans keep handing the Dems tailor made cudgels like this and they keep failing to capitalize on them. It’s an easy argument: “They’re holding the middle class and low income families hostage so they can give even more money to the people who need it the least.”

  • nflfoghorn

    Mitch McConnell and John Boehner pre-spin today’s White House superslurpee summit and claim a Republican mandate.
    .
    “We won – we get to call the shots for the American People!” Except that they haven’t won.

  • nflfoghorn

    The president kept his head in profile the entire time, finally exiting stage left.

  • freeinpa

    You got to love the federal government trying to extort states to spend money it doesn’t have so the federal government can take credit for doing something. Instead of applauding the state that already has an $11 billion deficit, the Treasury is use fiscal threats that will hamper the state further. The (current) federal estimate is that it will end up cost as much as $13 billion, 49% over the original estimate (keep that math in mind HC reform fans). Even paying back the $271 million still is more fiscally sound than ponying up at least another $2.5 billion (if you are naiive enough to believe that it won’t be higher) by the estimated date of 2015 or $500 million per year.
    .
    Gov. Christie can return the favor and obtain that $271 million by laying off more state government workers and telling them Obama made me do it.

    http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-10-22/hudson-tunnel-cost-may-hit-12-7-billion-lahood-says.html

  • freeinpa

    Tailor made for a tiny extreme liberal population that American determined in early November did not have their best interests at heart.

    .
    The left whines about the wealthy while at the same time whining about freezing pay on over-paid government workers who now earn more than 2 times the pay and benefits than the workers who pay their salaries (private sector)

  • sacredh

    Obama: Gibbs was right. Having the teleprompter lay flat on the lecturn was a wise move.

  • http://derekg.wordpress.com/ Derek

    Shouldn’t be hard to find a debt collector in Jersey.

  • freeinpa

    Liberals in rare moments of honesty give us a peek at the real agenda whether global warming or health care– it’s all about wealth re-distribution.
    .

    Fairness and equal opportunity is a lie–they want equal outcome.

    (OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.

    But this speculation is only likely to grow after a leading member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told a German news outlet, “[W]e redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”

    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/u-n-official-admits-we-redistribute-worlds-wealth-by-climate-policy/

  • newfreedomblog

    Wikileaks shut down in US and Europe. Cyber attacks, imagine that.
    .
    http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/11/30/wikileaks-hit-by-powerful-cyber-attack/
    .
    Will Obama be able to blame the Chinese?

  • conversets

    I know you hate to be bothered with facts, freepee, but…

    From the AP/CNBC poll: “…most people oppose extending expiring tax cuts for the richest Americans. Just 34 percent want to renew tax cuts for everyone; 50 percent prefer extending the reductions only for those earning under $250,000 a year; and 14 percent want to end them for all.”

  • Ivy_B

    Sky News in Britain is reporting on all the new Wikileaks documents they are reading. Several within the last five minutes. However, they are most interested in the ones with the snarky remarks about Prince Andrew.

  • freeinpa

    Buffet believes that because he can easily weather a big tax increase, everyone else has to, or it wouldn’t be “fair”. But what is fairness if it is conscripted? Notice the minor detail Mr. Buffet leaves out in his group survey like actual income earned. Or any clue as to what anomaly is in the tax code that causes his secretary to pay more than he does? In typical liberal fashion Mr. Buffet can pay more but never does. Hey won’t until they make everyone around him pay more, too.
    .
    If Mr. Buffet is such a strong advocate of fairness and a believer in the government spending of taxpayer funds why did he place all of his money into a foundation that will shelter his billions from taxes? If the need is huge and the government is the answer why not cut out the middle man and just send the money directly to the government? Just like his hypocritical stands on corporate jets and derivatives, Mr. Buffet talks out of his hind orifice.

    Warren: That’s exactly right, Tom, and I think the only way to do it is with specifics. In our office 15 people cooperated in a survey, out of 18, I didn’t make anybody do it. And my total taxes paid, payroll taxes plus income tax, mine came to 17.7 percent. The average for the office was 32.9 percent. There wasn’t anybody in the office, from the receptionist on, who paid a lower tax rate. And I have no tax planning, I don’t have an accountant, I don’t have tax shelters. I just follow what the U.S. Congress tells me to do.

    Tom: Buffett is particularly critical of the lower tax rates paid by hedge fund managers who reap millions of dollars from the investments made by others.

    Warren: I do know that the hedge fund operators made a record amount lobbying in recent months, so they give money to the political campaigns, and, who represents the cleaning lady?

    Tom: The hedge fund operators, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others have said it’s going too far. In fact, these hedge fund operators have created enormous wealth for the little guy as well, pension funds and other people who participate in those private equity partnerships.t .

  • newfreedomblog

    “How one private first class in a desert shack allegedly unleashed the WikiLeaks deluge.”

    .
    What also goes un-reported is connections the “private first class” now has with the extreme left of our country. OSI aka Open Society Institute is defending this traitor to our country. One needs to ask themselves how far will we let George Soros go?
    .
    George Soros, the head of the snake which is OSI, behind a traitor to the United States. Now how convenient is that?
    .

    “Although it claims to represent veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Veterans for Peace has helped organize demonstrations directly in support of Bradley Manning, the Army soldier and troubled homosexual activist charged with leaking classified information to WikiLeaks. Officials say his actions undermined the war effort and risk the lives of American soldiers and foreigners assisting the U.S. abroad.
    .
    Veterans for Peace (VFP) is an official part of the Bradley Manning Support Network.”

    .
    Who supports VFP? Yes, OSI, the George Soros funded and radical leftist group.

  • freeinpa

    “I know you hate to be bothered with facts”
    .
    Yes especially selective ones. Is this the same poll that by 2-1 said people wanted cuts in spending (federal services) than raising taxes- period?

  • Art Pepper

    Both sides want it gone, but can’t agree if/how to offset the cost.

    Just cut some more taxes for the rich. That pays for itself, right?

  • charlieromeobravo

    Uh, those two things aren’t mutually exclusive you know. It’s actually possible to do both things, keep the middle class tax cuts AND cut federal spending. The great thing is that if you do both, you come closer to achieving the Republicans stated goals of fiscal responsibility than their plan of keep all the tax cuts does.
    .
    I love it when they claim to be the newly enlightened keepers of fiscal sanity while refusing to do things that are fiscally logical and sane.

  • freeinpa

    Huffington manages to be hypocritical and clueless all at once. Despite the riches she married, the mansion behind gates, maids and opulent lifestyle, she manages to pretend they don’t exist “as the super rich don’t live like the rest of us” in her twisted deranged mind she puts herself. as middle class

    There is a Prius in the driveway. But not much about Ms. Huffington’s 8,000-square-foot mansion, with its maids aflutter, would suggest its owner is the author of a Naomi Klein-worthy polemic titled Third World America.

    Ms. Huffington’s 13th book is a cri de coeur bemoaning the evisceration of the U.S. middle class and America’s slide toward Third World status. As she describes it to me, “that’s really a country where there are the super-rich, who live behind gates with guards protecting their kids from kidnapping, and the rest of us.”

    The rest of us?

    If the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post seems so unself-conscious about lumping herself in with the proletariat – even though her own L.A. home is nestled safely behind electric gates – it is because she bleeds for the millions of formerly middle-class Americans, she says, who were left downtrodden by the Great Recession

    .
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/how-arianna-huffington-became-miss-america/article1815428/page1/

  • http://erieangel.wordpress.com erieangel

    From Warren Buffet to Ariana Huffington, you seem to be saying that wealth and liberal principals don’t mix. Maybe in your world they don’t. Maybe your worldview is that the haves always keep what they have and however much more they can take and the poor and what’s left of the middleclass can simply fight for the pitence that is left.

  • apr2563

    I think freeper would like all of us to continure to be the sharecroppers to the plutocrats.

  • apr2563

    http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/former-german-chancellor-gerhard-schroeder-calls-george-w-bush-a-liar.php?ref=fpb
    .
    Former German Chancellor Schroeder calls GW Bush a liar regarding his countries committment to Iraq.
    .
    His spokesperson had this to say:
    .
    “We noticed that the intellectual reach of the President (W) …was exceptionally low. For this reason it was difficult to communicate with him. He had no idea of what was happening in the world. He was so fixated on being a Texan. I think he knew every longhorn in Texas.”

  • squirmz

    This post struck a nerve with me. The part about him fixated on being a texan. I have a friend from college that owned a house next to his family compund in Kennebunkport, ME. Besides being a loud obnoxious drunk in his youth. He could not be FARTHER from being a texan. For those of you not in the know. Kennebunkport is a New England bastion of wealth and priviledge. It’s the blue blazer, docksider yacht set. GWB was a full fledged New England preppie. The texan bit was an affection to garner votes in the stupid parts of the country.

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