Will They Stay or Will They Go?

“Plus, the only people the ping-pong strategy hurts is House members (and the Senate) themselves as they would be forced to work right up and potentially through Christmas Eve.”
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This is terrible.

Jay, thanks for this. Some here might think your opening sentence is snarcastic but I believe you’re serious. Are some reps (from both parties) more interested in going home than in doing their jobs for US, or at least cut / paste a deal that will won’t offend everyone? I’m seriously asking, not rhetorical. Besides, do you think all (or enough) R’s in both chambers will hold tight? Or are TP ideas of debt / spending reduction taking hold, meaning that some of them might recognize their contradictory platform: Tax Cuts™ is their main pillar (or only one) but if they really want to cut deficit they’d have to let the cuts expire …since they won’t find enough to cut next year that will get past Senate holdups / Obama veto? Thanks for your thoughts, Jay.

I keep seeing people say, without a lot of support, that Obama is hobbled going into 2012 or in this case that his coattails have been curtailed. It may well be true but I think you have to consider that the 2010 voters were not the same people as the 2008 voters.

In 2012 Obama will be on the ballot again. Presumably the younger and more enthusiastic voters who tend to skip midterm elections will return with him. Not to mention a new group who were 14 or 15 when Obama was elected.

None of this is to say that 2010 was Obama’s year or anything. But midterm voters tend to be older, whiter and more conservative. With Obama on the ballot there will surely be a different turnout in 2012, even if it doesn’t yield different results.

This whole “bloodied Obama” characterization could probably use more thought.

A lot of people have to work through Christmas eve, myself included. Why is it a tragedy if our reps do?

Oh my, their vacation!

How many weeks of vacation do they get a year? Huh?

Maybe it’d be better if they scheduled their lives around doing whats best for us, rather than whats best for their vacation. But, that would be, you know, not popular.

I’m going to go way out on a limb here and predict they (the Democrats) fold.

The Rs will lose votes in both chambers — the Tea Party hates this deal.
Do members care more about their vacations than the tax deal? I think if there was a real chance to change it, they’d willingly sacrifice their vacation. But is it worth foregoing a Holiday to make a point — one that was already made last week when the deal lost a voice vote in the House? I’m not so sure. And the political reality is: they won’t be able to change the deal.
JNS

On what moral grounds do liberals stand when they insist that they have the right to confiscate a person’s property at their death?
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That person has paid taxes throughout a lifetime. In the case of someone with a large estate, heavy taxes. The money, the property, the business, the family farm does not belong to the government. The estate tax is repugnant, and should be unconstitutional. A person has the right to property ownership and the protection of being able to pass it on to whoever one chooses should be a fundamental right.
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No wonder freedom loving Americans hate the progressive liberal agenda.

I don’t care if the bill passes or not before the next Congressional break, I don’t care if Congress gets a break, or if is late, or if they have to pay increased fares. For that matter, I wouldn’t be displeased if Christmas were just cancelled this year. Call me Scrooge, except that redemption in the end is unlikely with me. Bah-humbug.

“On what moral grounds do liberals stand when they insist that they have the right to confiscate a person’s property at their death?”
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Confiscate?
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Liberals are confiscating the mega ritch peoples property? That’s an outrage.
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The case of the family farm is as bogus as it will ever get. Less than a percent is affected by this.

I should clarify. I think the bill is a piece of garbage, and I don’t have any higher opinion of Congress.

Thanks for your reply, I appreciate it. The new TP’s will be worth a watch, esp. Rand Paul, to see if they’ll stick to their guns (not literally) and fight fellow R’s over budget cuts next year.

Over the weekend, spurred on by Bernie Sanders’ speech on Friday, I emailed my senators and congresswoman and urged them all to vote no on this tax compromise. Two of them have absolutely nothing to lose on this–as they’ve lost their reelection bids. But they all need to do what is best for the country as a whole and vote “NO” on increasing the deficit to give tax cuts to the wealthy.

FTW to deconstructiva. I always follow your attempts to engage the Time staff, and am pulling for you. Mark a notch, and thanks to JNS as well.

Good to you, erieangel. I would do the same if my representatives weren’t of the elitist right wing and I had any hope they would listen to reason.

Hey, Jay. I’m going to be working on Christmas Eve. Any chance of doing a story on me and writing about the horror that my life will become because of that? Or do I not matter?

Thanks. The more the reporters engage us, the better the blog. Stuart pointed this out long ago.

BTW, the tax bennies to the rich are not my only objection. The whole bill sucks up to the alarmingly common notion that good government can be had on the cheap. There’s no free lunch, for the rich, for the middle class, for the poor. The saving benefit of economic stimulus to benefit of all are only half served by this monstrosity.

liberalmeltdown, you are absolutely correct. Double taxation may be dear to the hearts of our liberal friends, but to people who have achieved success, it is a penalty for having that audacity. How dare you accumulate wealth? It matters not you have paid and continue to pay taxes on what you have earned….when you die, we are going to confiscate half of what you worked so hard to acquire. Take that, you fat cat capitalist, our liberal dogma will now redistribute that wealth to the non productive members of our society. Incentive to work hard and achieve success? You wont find this directive in the liberal handbook, anywhere.

That person has paid taxes throughout a lifetime. In the case of someone with a large estate, heavy taxes.

Oh, really? Do you know what the current estate tax rate is?

“when you die, we are going to confiscate half of what you worked so hard to acquire. Take that, you fat cat capitalist, our liberal dogma will now redistribute that wealth to the non productive members of our society. Incentive to work hard and achieve success? You wont find this directive in the liberal handbook, anywhere.”
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Not even if you do a 100000 pretend colonoscopies will you ever make as much money to actually have to worry about the estate tax.
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I don’t want your money – and if you want to keep it you’re free to take all your money and move to a perfect ideologue haven like Somalia. If you want to stay then you’re going to have to pitch in like the rest of us including the elderly generation who built our society. You hate taxes but love the country that the taxes made great.
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Don’t worry about the estate tax, the people who are actually effected won’t even notice the fewer billions they never worked one day for to get.

hippo, you are beyond hopeless. You try to make every discussion a mud slinging contest and I refuse to accommodate you. I pay my taxes, willingly and gladly. As a matter of fact, I paid over 157k in Federal tax (after deductions) last year and probably will pay more, this year. No complaints from me, I feel very blessed to be earning enough to pay that much in taxes, but the property I own, has already been taxed and for it to be taxed again upon my demise, is simply unfair.

While a small amount of the ultrarich may have made the money on their own, most are members of the Lucky Sperm Club and their assets are stocks and bonds that have appreciated and never been taxed.

If they were actually smart enough to have made the money on their own, they ought to have been smart enough to get the legal help to assure their kin gets the money in their lifetime or after they die.

And as for Blanche Lincoln’s “poor me” rich small farms, there are less than 5 in the country that fell into that classification in the past year and they were corporate farms, not the small farms she likes to portray.

There is no reason for them to go home. This whole term has been full of posturing while the country suffered. Let them stay there 24/7 until the end of the session.

I guess we should have let the banks go under so some of the people currently in the House and Senate would lose all their money and have an appreciation of what the rest of the country is going through.

The single biggest demographic represented in Congress is the millionaire class! Far too many for the percentage that exists in the country overall.

Getting around the estate tax is pretty easy – I think it’s called gifting. You literally gift it to whoever you want before you croak. If you really wanted to keep your claws on your wealth until death, then hell, you deserve to have it taxed!

6.7, then hell why bother? Is it just class warfare? You have absolutely no right, no claim, no moral grounds to confiscate someone’s property dead or alive.
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It’s none of your business, it’s not the government’s business. It is a private transaction from the deceased to whoever they want to pass their estate to. I don’t care if it’s 5 million or 500 billion, or 5 freaking dollars. Scr@w you! The money has been taxed or not taxed. F off.