The President has threatened a veto if Republicans unnecessarily attach a decision on an oil pipeline to a bill concerning a payroll tax. Of course, the Republican controlled house said ‘fuck it’ and just went ahead and did what it wanted anyway. It probably won’t get to the President because it will die in the Senate, but I hope he holds his ground if it does find its way to his desk. It isn’t that I don’t think the pipeline should be put in place – it should – I just don’t think it should be attached to a tax bill. Moreover, this is a great opportunity to show that the Republicans don’t give two-shits about tax cuts. They merely care about tax cuts for their donors ‘job creators’. (Where are all those jobs, by the way? In fact, where have they ever been? Bueller? Bueller?) Since this tax cut is for the middle class, and because it will spur at the very least some activity since 70% of the economy is driven by the consumer (gasp! alert the papers! we must let the Republicans have this information for the first time in their lives!) and this puts more money in the hands of the consumer, the Republicans aren’t interested.
Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: Payroll tax cut, President Obama, Republicans really are shitbags |
For the Sake of Science 
The Rethuglicans claim tax cuts supply jobs, yet the Bush tax cuts happened and then there was a loss of >2.5 million jobs. Since the Obama stimulus there is a gain of >2.5 million jobs.
But those numbers don’t exist in Supply-Side Fantasyland. Some liberal must’ve made them up!
Those numbers only exist in top-down, demand side fantasy-land actually.
Even if you were correct, that still comes out to around $320,000 per job. How can anyone stand back, look at that and say it’s an effective way to create jobs? We would have been better off to send 6 times as many people checks for $50,000, and that would have cost less.
But by all means, keep thinking what you are thinking.
So you think the fantasy of supply side voodoo economics will do it? Oh wait, libertarians don’t actually think, they just say lower taxes, smaller government.
Nice false generalization.
And there is simply no reason why the administration decided to put the pipeline on the back burner anyway. It’s a shout out to environmentalists in an election year.
Yay pipeline!
First, I believe the pipeline is a good thing for the country. Second, eclectic crap gets put together in bills all the time by both parties, so why anyone cares if it happens this time seems odd. Third, I believe corporate America donates pretty evenly to the two parties, with a slight edge to incumbents; they aren’t stupid and they know how to play the game.Fourth, a payroll tax holiday just fucks over the future recipeints of SSI or the taxpayers, take your pick. It just defers taxes, creates interest costs, and generally muddies the field. Fifth, trying to boost consumer spending with gimmicks like this will have no long term benefit to the economy…it’s like cash for clunkers all over again. Our economic woes aren’t going to be solved by trying to get everyone to run up their personal debt – they are more structural and systemic than that. Americans need to learn to wean themselves off of the government in a multitude of ways, if only because when the government goes tits up (which it will), it won’t drag us all down with it.
Our government is corrupt, our major financial institutions are corrupt, and many of our multinationals are corrupt. We’ve made it so that when private risks are taken, gains are private but losses are socialized. The solution (contrary to the OWS’s) is not to socialize gains, but to privatize the losses as they are supposed to be. The proper role of government is to make sure everyone has access to honest facts about the risks.
Public risks, which should be few and far between (face it, we aren’t electing these teleprompter jockeys to be our investment advisors) should never privitize the gains, and by definition the losses are socialzed.
Well put.