House Tax Drama

You left out the argument that this raises taxes on the poorest of Americans, that the corn husker kickbacks had to be renewed, that the plan’s main difference is that tax cuts for the rich on income actually go up while bankrupting social security.
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All of what was reported is completely in line with what Republicans & Dem leadership want to be heard. Its just the estate tax. That’s all anyone is upset about. Just that one measly tax. It couldn’t be anything else.

Progressive just brought down the rule for the tax cuts bill because they it didn’t give them enough of a chance to express their lingering anger at President Obama’s deal with Senate Republicans.
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Uhm….what?

Sorry Jay, but I can’t make heads or tails of your first paragraph. What exactly was shot down in the House- the bill that passed the Senate, or the House version with the higher Estate tax rates?
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Also, on your Pelosi article, I would say that the more important lesson of Pelosi’s tenure is to not be in the majority when the sh!t hits the fan. Or are you seriously positing that the Democratic Caucus could have done better in this economic climate if it had just passed milder legislation? I thought all the exit polls were pretty consistent that the anti-Dem wave was about the state of he economy and little else.

Yes guys, sorry. I fixed the first graph. I’m a bit burnt out and bleary-eyed.

Thanks, Jay. I’m guessing you’re at the House covering it live, yes? If so, maybe between speeches you can play youtube clips of Blake Edwards’ greatest hits (RIP) without laughing too loud. But since you’re now TIME’s leading media starlet (sorry Joe, deal with it already) the Sergeant at Arms will cut you some slack.
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Assuming the House makes any change (esp. the estate thingy), does this force an R showdown in the Senate or will both Chambers of horror try a committee compromise? Thanks for your thoughts and due diligence, Jay.

anon Jason Altmire is a Blue Dog if that helps.

“over lingering anger”
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See? Liberals are petty little children who stomp their feet as soon as they don’t get their puddin’
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On the other hand, it might have been a principled stand supporting the will of the people who elected them.
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Nah, I’m gonna stick with puddin’

Jay, don’t want to see you burned out, hope these help during a break…
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http://movieclips.com/akwHW-a-shot-in-the-dark-movie-naked-traffic-jam/
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Someday you must tell us behind-the-scenes stories of how you cover the House live …epsecially next year when Speaker Crybaby takes over.

I figured as much. Amazing that they can think a winning platform involves undercutting their own party’s legislative successes. I’m not really a party-purity kind of guy, but I am curious what makes guys like Altmire run as a Democrat. Certainly not agreement with the party base.

“I want to dispel any notion we want to inhibit your success,” President Obama told 20 CEOs this morning, according to a source in the room.
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See? Even Obama knows who’s really in charge. When will libtards get with the program and start supporting the real leaders of our Great Country: The Corporate Americans!

From Jay’s article on Nancy Pelosi:
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“In the next Congress, Pelosi will preside over a shrunken, even-more-liberal caucus, many of whom feel they lost seats because they weren’t aggressive enough in dragging the President to the left on things like the full government takeover of health care, labor issues and the environment.”
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First, you use the loaded term of “government takeover”.
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When one thinks of a place or thing being “taken over” one thinks of pirate or, possibly, the Russian revolution.
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It was called “single payer” by proponents and journalists alike until Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and Republican obstructionism got hold of the plan.
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If Blue Dogs lose in huge numbers, moderate Democrats take moderate losses and progressive Democrats keep their seats, how can the lesson be that Democrats should have been yellow bellied blue dogs and, therefore, “more moderate”.
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The lesson, as I believe many saw it was that Republicans are better at being Republicans than the yellow bellied blue dogs and that progressive Democrats are the ones who’s constituents know tried their very hardest to do exactly what they promised and got to keep their jobs.
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The “liberal” media?
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Yeah, right.

Co-sign.
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“the full government takeover of health care”?!? Come on. Why not just write, “the politically correct command-and-control bureaucratic red-tape imposition”?
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More suggestions here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4443.htm
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Seriously, though, hang in there, Jay, get some sleep soon. Thanks for keeping us informed about what’s going on over there.

… and another thing. Even if used to describe an NHS-in-the-UK-like system where doctors are emloyed by the government, “government takeover” would be the wrong term to use, just like “death tax” or “partial-birth abortion” or whatever term it was the Bush administration made up when they found out that “Social Security privatization” didn’t poll well, because it’s something vaguely negative sounding that people who don’t like the plan made up.
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But here in reality, there wasn’t even any discussion of a system like that. Some people made noise about single payer, which would be government provision of health insurance like they have in Canada. The “public option,” a government-administered insurance plan that would compete with private plans, actually polled very well.
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The use of the term “government takeover” would be misleading in any universe, but is completely inappropriate by any and all standards in this one.
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The article can be found here. http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,2037516,00.html

“also ups the estate tax level from 55% of estates worth $1 million to 35% of estates worth $5 million or more. House Dems want to see that rate lowered to 45% on estates worth $3.5 million or more.”
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but Republicans want to LOWER the estate tax rate to 35% of estates worth $5m or more, from the HIGHER rate of 55% of $1m+ estates, while Democrats want to RAISE the rate that Republicans want- 35% of $5m+ to the previous Bush-era rate of 45% of estates over $3.5m.
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In other words- Democrats want the ultra wealthiest HEIRS to be taxed at a higher rate than Republicans, which of course, should come as no surprise. Your statement seems to suggest the opposite.

Jay, did you interview Pelosi via e-mail?

They are putting on a good demonstration of how much this bill really, really pains them, before they commit the final act of capitulation.

This whole thing is stupid. The estate tax brings in a minuscule amount of money, so arguing this is about deficits is stupid.
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Ultra rich people don’t care about the estate tax as much as some would think, because by the time they have to pay it they’re freaking dead! The people who are hurt by the estate tax are those that have large family owned farms. In many cases these people find that when the patriarch/matriarch of the family dies they have to sell the farm just to pay the taxes levied on their estate. Personally I think that is most unfair, a blow to the economy and is probably not good for food production (though admittedly probably an issue so small as to be insignificant on the food production thing).
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All of the arguments about deficits are debt that surround this tax issue are total BS, and it’s been ticking me off for some time now.
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First off, it’s not a tax cut for the rich, it’s an extension of current tax rates. It was a cut when Bush did it. Using the language of “cuts for the wealthy” is an attempt by some on the left to use the language of propaganda to win ignorant people over to their side. Argue about whether or not we need more government revenue all you want, but don’t use deceitful language to try to win the argument, that’s the last refuge of the unimaginative who realize they’re on the losing side of the debate.
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Secondly, saying these tax rates “cost” the government is another example of my first point. They don’t cost anything. Costs are spending. You can’t spend what you never had. These tax rates represent a lower income level for the government, not a cost. If you don’t get a raise or a Christmas bonus you can’t honestly say that it cost you the value of the bonus or raise because you never had the money in the first place. The problem here is that Congress has no ability to manage a budget and therefore is always searching for new sources of revenue to pay for their outrageous spending. If I run up a large credit card balance (outstanding debt) is it reasonable for me to demand a raise from my boss to cover it? No, absolutely not. That’s exactly what this is just in much larger terms.
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Third, saying GOP wishes to extend the tax cuts for all are “economically irresponsible” in terms of attempting to get the deficit and debt under control is outright garbage. These tax rates represent about $380 Billion. As explained above, that’s not a cost, it’s the revenue that the Feds could GAIN from not extending the current tax rates. Now of that money (according to the WSJ and other sources) the ultra rich would pay about $80 billion, while the extension of the middle class tax cuts represent roughly $300 billion, or 3.75 times what the rich would pay. So to say that the tax rates should remain the same for the middle class while rising on the rich for the sake of “economic responsibility” is an outright lie. If you want to go down that road then we have to allow the pre-Bush tax rates to return to their original rates for EVERYONE so we can use that $380 Billion per year to help pay off the debt.
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Forth, the idea that $380 billion will make a significant difference is wishful thinking at best. We’re set to run more than a trillion dollar deficit every year for the next few years, cutting that by 1/3rd doesn’t change the fact that we’re still spending somewhere around $600 Billion more than we take in and are borrowing it from the Chinese. Further more we are already about $14 trillion in debt. If and this is a big if given Congress’ proclivity to spend money like it’s on fire, Congress kept its grubby claws off that $380 billion every year and used it to pay down the debt it wouldn’t even cover the interest. That’s right the debt would still grow because compound interest will bite you if you’re not careful. Still even if there was no interest (any one with a brain is laughing at that idea) it would still take 36.84 years to pay off the debt with the higher tax rates assuming that Congress used this money exclusively for that purpose (people with brains are laughing even harder at this notion).
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In short I call shenanigans. The ref agrees. Shenanigans it is.

Call it “single payer”, “government takerover”, “universal” or whatever. It’s still not a system that functions very well. Canadian friend of mine bemoan they’re health care system and do many Brits. My parents friend was killed by easily operable cancer because the NHS in Britain refused to do a CAT scan or MRI until they had done an X-ray every 3 months for a year and a half!
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They’ll all tell you that in the early days the system worked well and they were happy with it, but over the decades it’s become like any other government agency; bloated and mismanaged. In a word; incompetent.
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Further, on some of this polling stuff about the ACA no one should trust the data. The simple fact of the matter is that most people don’t know what it means once it’s applied to the real world.
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A perfect example is a poll done on Libertarians, Republicans, Democrats. Which would you choose? Almost no one said Libertarian. But in a follow up question it was determined that almost no one knew what a Libertarian was. People even asked if it was a liberal librarian.
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And don’t forget the famous petitions that were wildly successful asking people to sign if they wanted to ban dihydrogen monoxide (water) or womans suffrage. Most people signed the papers saying things like Womans suffrage is a terrible thing! Simply because they had absolutely no idea what suffrage or dihydrogen monoxide are but they sounded sorta scary.
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Average people in NYC can’t even recognize a picture of Joe Biden. How can you assume that they even comprehend the basics of universal/single payer health care systems, let alone the costs or the details? And you can forget comparing and contrasting it to our current system or a meaningful discussion of what reforms are actually needed.

“Canadian friend of mine bemoan they’re health care system and do many Brits.”
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I have a relative who is a psychologist and for several years has lived in Canada with her then boyfriend now husband. She adores the Canadian health care system.
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What’s important is not I know so-and-so who says such-in-such, it is overall national opinions.
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The first poll I found supports Canadian health care.
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http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/07/21/17/455-20090721_HEALTHCARE_POLL.large.prod_affiliate.91.jpg
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The next poll, by gallop compares all three countries and England is almost as happy with national health care as Canada is:
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http://www.gallup.com/poll/8056/healthcare-system-ratings-us-great-britain-canada.aspx
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“Average people in NYC can’t even recognize a picture of Joe Biden.”
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Was that Jay Leno?
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When my mother tried out for Jeopardy, Alex Tribec said that the two cities with the most successful applicants were NYC and DC.
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Every city and town has a few morons, but, on average, NYC does very well in attracting very well educated people and very talented business people. I don’t know if that “average” is correct, Sasquatch.
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Besides libertarians and liberal being confused, social democrats and communist are often confused for one another, too. People do not know much about ideology, but, why do they need to know names of ideologies so long as they can understand the issues and call the ideology whatever you want?

“The people who are hurt by the estate tax are those that have large family owned farms. In many cases these people find that when the patriarch/matriarch of the family dies they have to sell the farm just to pay the taxes levied on their estate. Personally I think that is most unfair, a blow to the economy and is probably not good for food production (though admittedly probably an issue so small as to be insignificant on the food production thing).”
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The Wall Street Journal, a publication you said you respect, disagrees with that.
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“The study shows that in 2007, investment real estate — which includes farms, undeveloped land, real-estate investment funds, real estate partnerships and other investments — accounted for only 15% of total portfolios for estates over $3.5 million. Farms are only a fraction of the 15%.

Limited partnerships and business assets account for about 5.5% of their total assets.

So what is in the big estates? Mostly publicly traded stock. The study found that publicly traded stock accounted for more than a third of the assets held by estates of $3.5 million or more.”
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http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/12/16/does-the-estate-tax-hurt-farmers-and-family-businesses/
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“First off, it’s not a tax cut for the rich, it’s an extension of current tax rates.”
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I, personally, do not believe that many are deceived nor is anybody attempting to deceive. Many – not all – of those earning over $250,000 are too well informed to misunderstand this and, if they are that misinformed, their accountants can explain it to them.
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“Secondly, saying these tax rates “cost” the government is another example of my first point. They don’t cost anything. Costs are spending. You can’t spend what you never had.”
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With that argument, the financial meltdown “cost” very few people money since they owned homes and not a stack of cash. So, a fall in house values do not “cost” homeowners money in a literal sense, either. However, in the vernacular, people refer to potential income or potential value as if it were bank account sums or stacks of cash.
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“The problem here is that Congress has no ability to manage a budget and therefore is always searching for new sources of revenue to pay for their outrageous spending.”
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Please, Sasquatch, be the first conservative or fiscally conservative person here to specifically find places to cut where congress was being “outrageous”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget
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If you can’t find enough places to cut where people want and/or need the money to be spent, raising taxes or discontinuing tax cuts is the only means to a balanced budget.
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Without constituents, as a reasonable person, it is hard for anybody to find a significant amount of places to cut. The problem being that Reagan, Bush Sr, Dubbya and, to a lesser extent, Clinton all spoiled us with taxes too low subsidizing today’s tax payers with tomorrow’s tax payers money.
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Sasquatch, you are usually much clearer and more focused than you are today.

@patrick
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No, it was John Stossel that did those studies. I am not arguing that “average” Americans are stupid, to be sure this nation would not be what it is if they were. People have specialties, and have a tendency to be ignorant of things that are outside their specialties or something they rarely encounter.
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How much does your “average” mechanic know about Roth IRA’s and conversely how much does the “average” banker know about fixing and internal combustion engine?
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The fact that they don’t know the answers to these things doesn’t make them stupid. Merely ignorant, and everyone is ignorant about something. For example, I understand the basic concept of an internal combustion engine but I wouldn’t know where to start in trying to fix one because I’m not a grease-monkey or a gear head, I also know very little about inorganic chemistry.
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A lot of people are ignorant about policy and politics because they don’t deal with it on a daily basis. They are in no position to comment on economic or political items, just as I am in no position to fix the engine in a car, the problem is that many of them do anyway because they don’t want to be seen as not knowing the answer.
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“People do not know much about ideology, but, why do they need to know names of ideologies so long as they can understand the issues and call the ideology whatever you want?”
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You have no idea how many people I’ve run into who have been tricked into voting one way or another, nor how many people I’ve run into that do the tricking. When in college I watched a very liberal college professor tell people that if they were ANY of the following they had to vote for Obama: pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, gay, latin, black, asian, pro-legalize pot etc etc down the list. What she was doing was attempting to turn people into SINGLE ISSUE voters. Voting on a single issue is never a good idea, yet it is very common. People will say they’re pro-choice and vote straight party ticket democrat or say they’re pro-gun and vote straight party ticket republican without ever looking at individual candidates.
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I would further argue, as a political scientist that a plurality if not a majority of people actually don’t understand the issues other than in the terms of the propaganda they prefer (R or D) and there are no large educational organizations out there that are totally non-partisan trying to explain the issues. All you have to do to see what I mean is pick up a book like “Contemporary U.S. Tax Policy” (2004) by C. Eugene Steuerle to realize that this is a VERY complicated subject that one must study to understand, and honestly who really sits down and reads a book like that without being forced to?

I agree that manipulation in language concerning politics is as manipulative as language of advertisements or sales. (When I sold cars, a book I read suggest you use the term “initial investment” rather than “down payment” on a car – in reality that just confused people, so it was a failed example that I remember).
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However, there is group intelligence:
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“The sociologist Kate H. Gordon asked two hundred students to rank items by weight, and found that the group’s “estimate” was 94 percent accurate, which was better than all but five of the individual guesses. In another experiment students were asked to look at ten piles of buckshot—each a slightly different size than the rest—that had been glued to a piece of white cardboard, and rank them by size. This time, the group’s guess was 94.5 percent accurate. A classic demonstration of group intelligence is the jelly-beans-in-the-jar experiment, in which invariably the group’s estimate is superior to the vast majority of the individual guesses. When finance professor Jack Treynor ran the experiment in his class with a jar that held 850 beans, the group estimate was 871. Only one of the fifty-six people in the class made a better guess. ”
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http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/excerpt.html
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It is, of course, the media’s job not just to titilate people but to accurately explain things so that we can, in controversial political issues approach the 94% “correct answer” as one would on objective tests rather than to repeat loaded language.
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Now, let me be clear, the “correct” answer would be the answer which would best please everybody together as an all knowing deity-like leader would do, but, instead, we would have to do for ourselves since the media, our tie to the outside world, has been failing to deliver this well.

@patrick
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On the farms topic, I am aware that these people do not constitute a large number of people, but they do exist and they are literally losing their livelihood to the tax structure. There should at least be a provision to exempt these people. Normally liberals argue on behalf of the “little guy” there might not be many of them but they still get the backing of the liberals. I am not willing to throw ANY American under the bus so that Congress can take their hard earned money and use to to study Maple Syrup (one of the ear marks in the recent spending bill).
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Yes the people making over $250,000 are well informed or have an accountant to explain it to them. But the majority of people supporting not extending the current tax rates make far less than that and many are voting to increase taxes on the “rich” out of a form of spite that they call “fairness”.
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“So, a fall in house values do not “cost” homeowners money in a literal sense, either.”
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They took a loss on an investment and I feel bad for them. The simple fact though is that the housing bubble had to burst as did the tech bubble before it. The assumption that any investment will increase in value exponentially forever is insane and that’s what people thought. It was a bubble fueled in part by the government as well, but I digress.
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My point is that people OWNED a house (asset) and lost money on it. It would seem that you assume that the government owns everyones money, as if it were the house that those people you mention owned. Are you seriously suggesting that its not your money, my money or that guys money but the governments money (asset) and that it can do as it pleases with it? Are we really living in a country where the government owns all the money and is just nice enough to let us have some?
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“Please, Sasquatch, be the first conservative or fiscally conservative person here to specifically find places to cut where congress was being “outrageous”"
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I posted this a couple months ago, and I don’t have the notes I took on it so bear with me (currently visiting family), and trust me when I say this totals close to half a trillion dollars.
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Kill the following Departments in the Federal government because they are either wasteful, unconstitutional, redundant or just plain stupid: Department of Education (unconstitutional, redundant), DEA (wasteful, stupid, redundant), Department of Energy (wasteful, stupid), HUD (wasteful, stupid), Department of Agriculture (nothing more than a department of subsidies, should be called the Department of Handouts to Agribusiness).
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Trim the fat (in some cases I’m lumping fraud into “fat”) from Social Security (fraud), Medicaid (fraud), Medicare (fraud), Foodstamp Program (fraud), Department of Defense (fat and fraud, holy crap someone said it), Department of the Interior (fat), Bureau of Land Management (fat), Department of Homeland Security (fat,those invasive and basically useless scanners? I mean come on!) and the Department of Commerce (fat). I’m looking for at least 10% cuts in all of these.
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$500 billion saved, done. I’m sure we can find more savings to be had… like cutting public sector pay 5-10% across the board and changing them from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution plan, that’s probably close to another $500 billion if not more.
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Money saved ~$1 trillion per year. Done and done.

No social security, medicare, medicaid, National Parks, welfare, military? (I guess you mean a very large cut, not the elimination of the military) would be totally intolerable to most Americans.
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On an issue by issue vote, Americans are almost as pro-government as Sweden is. So, I am sure you can guess that most of your hopes would go over like a lead balloon.
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Personally, in a perfect world I believe it would be ideal if our national, state and even local budgets were subject to referendum. The catch being, if you vote for the program, you have to vote for the tax to pay for it.
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I strongly suspect that if that were the case, experimental military projects like Star Wars, foreign military bases, military aid abroad (something like 94% of what is called “foreign aid” is done through the pentagon, not the state department since it is for weapons, not rice for starving children) and much the Navy’s budget would vanish, but, social services and taxes would go up.
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I’ll give you credit, you did answer that question. Not one other person here did.
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As for Million dollar farms being “the little guy” when farmland sometimes cost as little as $2,000 per acre, I think that 400 acres plus farming equipment makes you “the big guy”.If, however, your income is small… hey, call me a libertarian on this one, then the market dictates that you liquidate the investment and get into something real.

As for the tax, it all depends upon where you stand.
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For all citizens there is an admission for being a citizen and some kind of a tax on some people or business in that country (Qatar taxes the oil companies). So, when one earns they expect a percent of either their income decided by the majority of the people who are elected to represent the majority of the people to decide how much.
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Therefore, when Clinton created the highest income tax of 40%, that is where it is until Bush.
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If you say that Bush gave a temporary bribe to wealthy donors, then you say that the 40% is due to the government. If you say that the tax Clinton raised should never have been raised, you would say that that it new money being taxed.
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If it is not new taxation, then it is, again, being given from government coffers where they, otherwise, would be due to go to the wealthiest Americans.
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So, Democrats are living in the present while Republicans presume that the Clinton Tax increase was temporary and are living in 1993, back when the tax increase occurred.
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If you go back to 1980 and presumed (incorrectly since it was not written with a sunset clause as GWBs tax cuts were) then you could say that the government is giving back 40% of their income to the wealthiest since it was at 70% before Reagan and, for the super, super high earners, if you are really, really an anachronism, you could say that the government is giving 60% of multi-millionaires money back since the top bracket in 1961 was 90% if there was a sunset clause.
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Since all reasonable people making over $250,000 per year know that they will pay more unless congress acts, that difference of 10% is considered due to the government.
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Now, starting in 2013, after this extension ends, those people will owe 40% instead o 30% of their income to the government and changing it would be giving money to the wealthiest out of what was originally due in government coffers.
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Like I said, if you are a Republican stuck in 1993, then, no, it is not taking money due to go into government coffers and giving it back. But, if you live in 2010, it is a giveaway to the rich.
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I live in the 2010 right now. Hence, we gave the wealthy back what was due to go into government coffers to finance what the people want government to do.

“In short I call shenanigans.”
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In short, I call it “low hanging fruit” or, “you gotta start somewhere.”

“No social security, medicare, medicaid, National Parks, welfare, military?”
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Actually these were the programs I wanted to trim fat/fraud from not eliminate. And national parks would not disappear, but they would be rolled into being managed by some other department. BLM mainly deals (in the west) with ordering ranchers around on their own property. Ranchers out here are some of the best conservationists to be found, simply put, if they weren’t good at land management their ranches would wither away and die quickly. While the BLM “manages” land poorly and at great expense, they duplicate what the Department of the Interior does equally poorly. One of them has to go and the other has to shape up or ship out.
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The fat in the military is mainly in development of projects that will never be put into use in the first place. A great example is a project that Don Rumsfeld killed, The Crusader Howitzer. This thing was so heavy we didn’t have a plane that could move it and there literally wasn’t a single bridge in the world it could cross safely, making it a useless project that was wasting billions of dollars and also making it worthy of the ax.
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“On an issue by issue vote, Americans are almost as pro-government as Sweden is. So, I am sure you can guess that most of your hopes would go over like a lead balloon.”
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The first half of your statement is debatable, especially in light of the fact that I have stated that most middle class Americans and probably Swedes are too busy making ends meet to have a truly in depth understanding of each issue. Heck, even the professional politicians don’t and that’s what we pay them for! On the second half you are correct, none of these proposals would have any traction which is exactly why we are screwed. People in general are fine with cutting government spending or programs to the bone, just not the spending that they like, and everyone has some portion of spending they like.
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The era when Americans ask themselves not what their country can do for them but what they can do for their country is long dead. Now it’s just “What can you give me for free? I don’t care what it costs everyone else!”
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“For all citizens there is an admission for being a citizen and some kind of a tax”
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Technically this is not true. This country survived on land use fees and other fees with no income tax for more than a century and people seemed pretty freaking happy with it, they immigrated here in droves…
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“Therefore, when Clinton created the highest income tax of 40%, that is where it is until Bush.”
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In the early to middle 20th century the highest income tax bracket was 71% an insanely high amount, which did nearly no good to ease problems of the time, and Clinton’s tax increase was during one of the biggest booms (tech) that we’ve seen in 40 years. Did it destroy it? No. Could it have been bigger without that tax increase? Possibly. On top of that, it’s been shown by numerous studies that in the current predicament we’re in we could tax everyone at 91% and STILL not pay our way out of this.
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“Now, starting in 2013, after this extension ends, those people will owe 40% instead o 30% of their income to the government and changing it would be giving money to the wealthiest out of what was originally due in government coffers.”
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Again patrick it sounds to me like you’re suggesting that it’s not my money, your money or anyone’s money. All the work you did to earn it does not make it yours, it’s the governments and you shall have what they deem you worthy to have.
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It doesn’t matter what the specific rates are. The idea that the government can’t control it’s spending and therefore should just make up the difference by taking it from citizens is garbage. It’s like saying that I can’t pay my bills so it’s OK for me to creep out and night and take money from my neighbors, or that I should just demand the money from my employer.
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If someone has a gambling problem or just can’t manage money does that give them the right to demand more from their employer to cover the costs they’ve incurred? Of course not, that’s drinking for sobriety! All that does is encourage the person to never learn to control themselves, which is exactly what the government is asking us to allow them to do.
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Remember, they work for us not the other way around. Since we employ these morons, we’re being asked to subsidize the fact that they have no ability to manage money, it’s literally that simple. The problem is that almost every American has a spending issue that for them in untouchable, and the net result is that nothing is touchable.
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Entitlement programs are like narcotics, they may not be popular at first but after people get used to them they are next impossible to get rid of or even scale back. Just ask France, Britain, Greece or closer to home: California.
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Long story short; the answer, just like with a poor money manager, is not to increase your revenue, though that may help in the SHORT TERM, the long term solution is to decrease your expenditures and keep them down, something Congress appears totally unwilling to even consider.
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On a final note, what’s going to happen when the economy turns around and interest rates actually rise? The government can borrow money in the form of T-bills and bonds right now at about 1% interest. We’re really screwed when those interest rates rise in a few years and this debt we’re racking up is added to the $14 trillion we already owe.

“In short, I call it “low hanging fruit” or, “you gotta start somewhere.”"
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Spoken like a true politician.
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No offense, but that sounds to me like “Admitting the truth and doing the right thing is hard… so I don’t wanna!”
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To be clear, your belief is that we should by tackling the really hard stuff, cutting programs that have significant popular support and are important to the lives of the vast (but shrinking) middle class in the midst of 10% unemployment, rather than starting with the easy stuff that effects the heirs of a few thousand of the world’s richest families?
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This is a smaller example of why I am so disgusted with the big picture of Obama’s tax deal. Frankly, eliminating the ridiculous tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans has been the Democratic position for the entire decade, was a cornerstone of Obama’s presidential campaign and still enjoys broad public support, with just short of a majority of REPUBLICANS favoring their expiration and overwhelming majorities of Democrats and independents supporting them.
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Yes, it accounts for only $700b of a $4t tax cut extension, but if no one is willing to go to the mat (besides Bernie Sanders) for a policy (the entire Bush tax cut package for the rich, not just specifically the estate tax cuts) that is immoral, unjust, and proven economically disastrous, then clearly no one is going to go to the mat for the tough stuff that actually effects the vast majority of Americans- the stuff you would prefer to tackle first.
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If conservatives are serious about reducing the deficit (I know I know, I’m a comedian. Thank you folks, I’ll be here all week), eliminating Bush’s tax cuts for millionaires is simply the easiest and least economically devastating way to do it. Raising the top marginal rate 3% didn’t cause any of the sky-is-falling predictions that conservatives came up with in 1993, and it won’t this time either.
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Here is a partial explanation of why dramatic income inequality (exacerbated by design by the Bush Tax Cuts) is bad for the economy.
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/12/inequality-and-economic-collapses
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My personal preference, would be to add new tax brackets (I hope I won’t have to explain marginal rates to anyone), starting at either $750,000 or $1,000,000 at 40% and going up from there, with higher rates at $5m, $10m and on up the scale. That way there won’t be any argument about what constitutes “rich,” (at least it would be pretty hard to argue that $750k isn’t rich, even in Manhattan, though obviously conservatives will continue to attempt to make this argument) more revenue is raised to lower the deficit, and the effects of exploding income inequality are partially mitigated with proven benficial effects on the greater economy.
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Win win win except for the poor, unfortunate uber-wealthy who will actually have to start paying for the big government that they consume just as much or more than the masses. Those who have the most to protect are the ones who benefit the most from government, as the great Republican Teddy Roosevelt understood over 100 years ago.

And just to be clear, “admitting the truth” is that defeating the Estate Tax cut is not going to eliminate the deficit?
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I got no problem admitting that. If not, what “truth” is it that I am unwilling to admit to?

Our views of government differ in POV significantly of course.
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With few exceptions, government does something very similar to what the collective electorate ask them to do.
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So, if we were in a hunting and gathering society, for example, when the saber toothed cat comes into the camp ready to eat our tribe’s children, completely unfairly and completely unequally the strongest men are immediately drafted into being the ones to fight it off and, with some luck kill it and feed it to our tribe.
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By the same token, when we have a war to fight, the strongest, healthiest, youngest men are drafted into the armed forces.
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So, when we have bridges to fix, parks to maintain… government services to do needing not brute strength but money, then the economically healthiest pay far more than the one can not pay the bills even before paying taxes.
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To me, fighting against being taxed by a democratic government is as bad as if you drafted in World War II (I pick this one since it was the least controversial war with a draft in recent History – even World War One was much more controversial) and refusing because you simply do not want to go.
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“If someone has a gambling problem or just can’t manage money does that give them the right to demand more from their employer to cover the costs they’ve incurred? Of course not, that’s drinking for sobriety! All that does is encourage the person to never learn to control themselves, which is exactly what the government is asking us to allow them to do.”
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But, we are that government – all Americans. So, to me it is like saying that if a gambler can’t pay the loan shark with the money he has in his wallet, he has to go to the ATM. We are responsible for every dollar our government spends because we, by electing these people chose to spend. If we dislike so much of their spending, then we need to either replace these people or, if we can’t find anybody we like, run for office ourselves.
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It is a common POV among fiscal conservatives to refer to the representatives of the people being a totally outside force as if we never voted for them, never assisted their campaigns, never met them, but, instead, had them forced upon us by a king, emperor or if they fell on top of us falling from a spaceship.
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My POV is that if there are things you believe we need to stop spending money on, then just like anti-Vietnam War protests, Anti-Abortion protests, there should be protests against, say, the Department of Land Management and, if those supporting the spending are fewer than those against it, it will be cut. If not, we must pay for it.
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“A great example is a project that Don Rumsfeld killed, The Crusader Howitzer. This thing was so heavy we didn’t have a plane that could move it and there literally wasn’t a single bridge in the world it could cross safely, making it a useless project that was wasting billions of dollars and also making it worthy of the ax.”
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LOL
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You know more details than I do about the military. Excellent example. I know that tanks designed for tank on tank warfare are still being built in large numbers as are battleships designed to go into combat with other battle ships even though every single country which has a sufficient number of tanks and battleships we are at peace with and can not realistically foresee ever having combat with. For the most part, we are fighting tiny bands of people with AK47s and IEDs and, realistically, have a high chance of seeing this type of combat in the future.
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But we agree. Many things the military spends money on are a waste.
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“Entitlement programs are like narcotics, they may not be popular at first but after people get used to them they are next impossible to get rid of or even scale back.”
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Actually, if you look at the history books, federal housing (housing projects – many run by states), food stamps, social security and most entitlement programs begin as wildly popular as an alternative to the very severe slums of the early to mid 20th century and, as memories of life before entitlement programs fade, popularity of these programs wane.
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It’s a common historical misreading that fiscal conservatives often have that everything was just dandy until in the dark of night some mislead do gooders put in an entitlement program and ruined everything.
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If FDR didn’t put in most of the entitlement programs that he did. actual Marxist and actual Fascists would have been going through the slums and poor towns of America rioting and burning down buildings.
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http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1903_2010&view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=fy11&chart=F0-total&bar=0&stack=1&size=1440_751&title=US%20Government%20Spending%20As%20Percent%20Of%20GDP&state=US&color=c&local=s&show=
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As a portion of GDP, government spending has increased most since the election of Ronald Reagan. So far it has been politicians who claim to be anti deficit who do the most deficit spending.
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As for life as a working class person before FDR… life was far worse than today. That entitlement spending has served this country well far, far more often than not.