President (To Win Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
See Full Big Line
(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
See Full Big Line
(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
See Full Big Line
(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
See Full Big Line
(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
See Full Big Line
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
December 07, 2010 02:38 AM UTC
117 Comments
Loading ...
we’ve gotten “Hype and Cave”.
Obama cares more about what his enemies think than his friends.
When Gingrich, et al, vowed to shut down the federal government, Clinton called their bluff and cemented an impression of Republicans in voter heads for years.
Obama had an even better opportunity here and blew it.
Bad politics, bad public policy.
Karma’s a bitch, eh?
been a President (or a candidate for President) that wasn’t arrogant?
…but he seems to be at the top of the charts, IMO. Even progressive Dems are saying that today.
In terms of getting cooperation from the R’s, I think he made his bed already. “Hey, I won” is eventually going to come back and bite you.
extending UEC benefits and avoiding increasing taxes on the spending classes (lower and middle) during the Bush recession — is getting done.
The rest stinks.
It’s gotta suck for Obama; being the only grown-up in room full of selfish adolescent bullies.
What a great deal. Extend the tax cuts for 2 years so we can go through this same charade right before the next election. Yeah, that’ll help the Democrats, won’t it?
If this passes and they still don’t repeal DADT, then I’ll work for any Democrat who will primary Obama. I’ve had it.
If this gets structured so that the portion of tax cuts for those making over $250,000 per year is the part that automatically expires in two years — then the campaign debate will be about extending only those tax cuts only to the wealthiest Americans (as opposed to all Americans in the midst of a huge recession).
That doesn’t mean that Harry Reid and the kids won’t fuck this up — that remains to be seen.
(mea culpa — I would have liked to have seen all of the 2003 tax cuts expire for everyone, myself included. I can understand that their are good economic reasons right now for not allowing that to happen.)
But according to the synopsis above, all of them would expire in 2 years. Which means we haven’t laid the groundwork for a debate over the zillionaire tax rate. Instead, we’ve laid the groundwork for the same debate we just had … and lost.
I’m holding out hope for a rebellion in the House.
Bombast aside, the economy still needs stimulus.
Tax cuts are stimulus — albeit rather weak ones, but stimuli never the less.
unemployment benefits are very strong stimulus, because they almost all get spent, and spent quickly.
So at a time when Republicans are denouncing stimulus, they have agreed to a weak one — tax cuts — and a strong one — unemployment comp.
Call it one and a half victories for the economy and kudos for Obama for not letting the partisan bombast obscure his judgment.
Don’t worry, we’ll still have time to shoot the rich after the recession is over.’-)
You’re acting all adult and rational. I want to be juvenile and pouty.
Seriously, though, I am irritated that Obama won’t engage in any messaging. At all. This was a prime opportunity for him to paint the Rs as the party of the plutocrats, but noooooo.
What actually just happened is the GOP traded regular people to save their rich. Nothing wrong with getting it on the books before pointing fingers. Like an evil villain that laughs too soon. How many of the general public don’t know that the Dems still hold majorities?*
OTOH – There’s also still time for the Dems to roll over and thank the GOP, too (from official vote to election day). Then we’ll have plenty o’time to be really pissed the hell off.
*I’m aware of why our majority isn’t a fix. My point is that most people will think Obama is a genius (if a nice Dem comes along to point it out) for getting this done when the GOP has retaken the House… in six weeks.
As Atrios mentioned this morning, Obama will get the blame for the huge new deficit, and Bush will get credit for the tax cuts. And Obama has put himself on the line for getting the plan passed. Everyone views this as a Republican victory and a broken Obama campaign promise.
He’s beaten by people who haven’t even taken power yet. They took a completely unreasonable position and Obama by his deference made it reasonable. Giant tax cuts for the rich is now the bipartisan consensus.
I think if Obama had been fighting the Civil War, he would have given the South anything they wanted, throwing in Pennsylvania and Ohio to boot, and called it a compromise because at least Boston still didn’t have slavery.
have been in place for many years now and obviously haven’t had a stimulus effect on jobs. Why should they suddenly start creating jobs now,V? In fact, there is the biggest wealth gap between the top and the average that we’ve seen since the Great Depression. With all the talk about cutting the deficit and getting debt under control ending disproportionately humongous tax cut for the top who don’t need it and aren’t investing it in anything that creates well paying jobs here in the US is a logical, small painless step to take. The rich wouldn’t suffer an iota. The job situation wouldn’t change for the worse. Please remember that these tax cuts were never supposed to stimulate anything in the first place. They were sold as a way to return some of that too large surplus to the people because the people know how to spend their money better than the government. Remember? The same old greed thinly veiled as concern for the people who got tiny cuts and less in real earnings.
The problem is, nobody in the administration ever got serious about taking control of the message and Dem pols were so afraid of the successful R message might, they didn’t try to counter. They just all ran and hid. If Dems had been spending the time since the 2008 triumph building their own message machine and hanging tough with their message and enforcement among the ranks with the toughness and swagger Rs have mastered, we wouldn’t have been creamed in this election and even the Blue Dogs would be hearing from their constituents the new D generated common wisdom that would have replaced the R pack of lies; that it was time to stop coddling those who don’t need it, don’t care and don’t create jobs and make working Americans and a vibrant middle class the top priority.
Instead all the pols heard was exactly what Rs wanted them to hear combined with the ravings of the tea party. The pressure has been all against the Dem agenda ever since we handed them the presidency and both houses of congress in 2008. The Rs successfully turned all those mildly moderate Dems and their very cautious, reasonable agenda into radical lefty extremism and the Dems didn’t have the guts to use plain, easy to explain facts to turn the tables. Now it’s too late and yes, Obama didn’t have much choice. And it certainly isn’t the fault of what’s left of the left. He’s not losing the indies, the middle, the new young voters who were inspired in 2008 because of the left. Time to face facts. He’s good at getting elected. He’s been lousy at leading and if he doesn’t learn quick the only reason I’ll vote for him in 2012 will be to stop more righties from being appointed to the Supreme Court.
Oh and, by the way, our health insurance has become even less affordable. Health care reform so far seems to be a combination of the worst of both worlds for the majority in the middle. Happy days. I’m tired of looking for ways to put the best face on this stuff. If it were a matter of just needing to be more patient to give wonderful plans time to work, that would be one thing.
But that’s not the case. We aren’t headed in the right direction too slowly. We just aren’t headed in the right direction at all. The banks, financial institutions, insurance giants and all the other big corporations are still crushing us and young Americans are still dying in foreign wars, fighting enemies financed by our “allies” without making us or the world any safer than if they had never been sent there at all. As far as I’m concerned it looks to me like we’ve all just been choosing between selfish R pigs and abject D cowards at the polls, with too few exceptions.
Colorado senate race?
Yes, the tax cuts have been in place for years. That doesn’t change the fact that ending them, even for the rich, would dampen demand at a time when we need all we can get.
It’s fine to argue that every tenth person with a net worth of over $1 million, chosen by lot, should be shot. That — or a tax hike for the rich — might be a great step toward social equality. But neither firing squads nor tax increases are good economics at this time.
Corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars in on-hand cash. I believe Goldman-Sachs alone is sitting on about $800 billion in ready investment capital.
The thing about money is, the rich already have it. Giving them a tax break won’t significantly change their spending habits. It won’t employ another person, because they’re already spending the money they feel they need to spend, and direct employment spending comes out pre-tax (no savings there…).
You’re letting your resentments blind you to the numbers. Not even the rich are foolish enough to take their tax cut and burn it in the fireplace for the sole purpose of increasing their carbon footprint. They either spend it or save it. If they save it, it becomes a source for future capital investment.
Do we have a capital surplus at the moment. Sure. We also have record low interest rates, partly as a consequence. As I said, the tax cut extension for the rich is the least effective of the three tiers of stimulus, but to argue that it has no impact at all is to put Pitchfork Ben Tillman’s economic theories above those of John Maynard Keynes. And that is something I won’t do.
It seems more and more that most of the money put into liquid investments winds up going ’round and ’round the treadmill, generating more artificial money for the same people, until the whole thing falls down when someone’s illusory house of cards collapses.
How many rich people lost how many millions of dollars (and the market how many trillions) during the 2007-2008 collapse? I think someone estimated the available CDO market at something on the order of $60 trillion, which is a ridiculous figure.
I’ll restate my position for your comfort: extending tax cuts to the wealthy generates virtually no economic growth, and prevents us from doing any number of more productive things for our country.
that the tax break for the rich has done or is doing anything to help the economy for anyone other than the rich themselves who are not spending it to create jobs. Period.
I think your economics are wrong. The policies that have been in place have brought about more poverty, a shrinking middle class with stagnating or decreasing income and a growing gulf between a tiny elite at the top and the average American that is incompatible with the survival of the American way of life and government.
There isn’t a shred of evidence that revoking the tax cut for the wealthiest would hurt the economy and we have to make cuts somewhere. Sorry V, I just don’t believe that you are correct on this one. Bottom line; the cuts were never meant to be stimulative in the first place and the tax cuts for the rich have not been, are not now and won’t be in the future any significant source of stimulus. We may as well be flushing all the money we’re putting into the top 1%’s pockets down the toilet and they don’t need it and aren’t creating jobs with it.
Their spending habits are much more affected by the end of the era of quickly growing home values and easy credit than by having a few K more to sock away. Folks who are now stuck in million+ dollar homes that have lost a third of their value instead of being able to sell for a hefty profit and buy up on easy credit are a much bigger drag on the economy than anything that would result from a few more percentage points in taxes.
Wealthy people really don’t stop spending when their taxes are raised a little but when you can’t afford to get out of the mortgage on your 3 million dollar home or use it as a piggy bank, that puts a crimp in your style.
As for the mega-wealthy who comprise a fraction of a percent, nothing has or will put a crimp in their style so it will have no effect on jobs one way or the other whether their taxes are raised or not. Spending on their break will just drive up debt and deficit with nothing, no stimulus worth mentioning, to show for it.
And the General Theory of Money and Interest is as valid today as when Lord Keynes wrote it.
I stand on the obvious.
You show me how the huge Bush tax breaks for the rich have contributed to job creation. Keynes isn’t god and his theory isn’t perfect and inviolable. I believe what the facts tell me and they don’t tell me that continuing the same failed policies will make things any better. They haven’t. That aren’t doing it now. All stats point in the opposite direction. The middle class and the entire economy is much worse off than before the Bush tax cuts for the top.
Those are facts, not theories. In theory they could be spending that money to create jobs and stimulate the economy but in fact, they aren’t. The rich used to invest in great manufacturing and industrial projects that created jobs. Today, they don’t. They create fantasy wealth for themselves.
but no point in continuing this discussion. I would have preferred the package without the lagniappe to the rich, which is less than 20 percent of the tax package, but the whole package, including the extension of the unemployment benefits, was vital.
The president did what he had to do and the nation will be much better for it.
But must say you haven’t offered a single refutation (or is it refudiation nowadays?) of any of the facts I presented and your calling my facts ideological bias doesn’t make it so.
On the contrary, you haven’t presented a single fact to demonstrate that your view is anything other than ideological bias. Absolute faith in an economic theory formulated in a different world with a different economy than the one in which we live today doesn’t qualify as “fact”. I can produce stats with links if you like but agree that just dropping it is probably the way for us to go. We can’t agree on everything, even with those with whom we usually do. And I know how grumpy you can get.
PS Spell check still rejects refudiation. That’s a relief!
I tend to agree with Keynesian economics, but like most economic theories, it makes one major error. It assumes that people, rich or poor, always make rational purchasing decisions. This economic crisis is a clear illustration why that is a false assumption. Low-income people were living above their means in homes they couldn’t afford. The rich were selling those homes to overly-risky buyers. It was kind of like how revolving credit works.
Both scenarios are examples of how people are not rational in their buying decisions. Instead, we tend to live in the moment and make irrational purchases when we let our emotions get involved (like buying a new shiny house because you’re sure to get that promotion next year, or thinking we can get rich quick in the futures market).
Giving tax cuts to the rich doesn’t really hurt anyone. It does, theoretically, allow for more investment. But we live in a global economy now and it is often a better investment for the rich to send that money to a foreign country than keep it here in the U.S. That being said, even making foreign investments produces some economic activity domestically, so long as it was a good and rational investment.
I support the idea that businesses don’t create jobs, consumers do. When a small business first opens, it doesn’t start with a huge staff. Typically, it is one or two people that are trying to satisfy a demand for a good or service. It isn’t until consumers start buying that good or service that the small business can grow and hire more staff.
That doesn’t mean that we should just give the whole bank to the bottom 70% of Americans and tell them to go shopping. There is a balance that we should strive to achieve where the government invests in economic stimulus, but in a way that is a positive investment. An amount that can actually be recouped from an increase in future tax revenue. If the government gives us a tax cut now to get us by, the public should view it as a loan that we will someday have to repay in the form of higher taxes in the future – but good luck with that.
hurt the economy in terms of job creation but it will also not help to preserve or create jobs here it home to any significant extent whatsoever. That makes it a cost we can well afford to eliminate and therefore, in the spirit of starting somewhere, one we certainly ought to eliminate. The only reason for maintaining it is political and allowing it to lapse would not adversely affect the economy, the resulting savings being, if anything, less negligible than any lost benefit. If we can’t start with cuts as painless as that, where will we start?
The Republicans have no heart; the Democrats have no spine.
by reducing tax cuts for the rich. The Republican insisted on deficit spending instead.
The Democrats didn’t even get two years of unemployment benefit extentions in exchange for two years of tax cut extentions.
If the Democrats had stood pat and let all the tax cuts expire if the Republicans were not going to vote for partial extensions, the Republicans would have been forced to deal much more favorably.
The trouble is that too many Democrats in the Senate, Michael Bennet prominent among them, were willing to cave.
If the President could actually count on every SENATOR with a D after their name his hand would have been much stronger!
53 Senators voted for the bill the President campaigned on two years ago. He gave them NO support. Instead he sold them out before the vote even happened by telegraphing to filibustering Republicans that they would pay NO price for holding unemployment benefits and middle class tax cuts hostage.
This IS the President’s hand. He’s not on your side.
That’s not even close. These tax cuts are on a deadline. Taxes will increase during a time of slow economic growth if they don’t move quickly. And this isn’t even the only thing on the agenda for the lame duck. Was he supposed to go into some kind of political showdown?
Let’s even pretend that Obama didn’t “sell out the Senate” and he attacked Republicans every single day for not passing the tax cuts. What exactly would the price they pay be for holding unemployment benefits and middle class tax cuts hostage? Also, how does he reconcile attacking the other party for holding the middle class hostage when his own party joined the Republicans in the filibuster, including several Democrats that are up for reelection in 2012?
And Democrats don’t have enough votes even if they voted in lockstep on everything. The math isn’t there. Republicans can hold every single thing that the Federal government does hostage. And what price did they pay this year in the election?
to pass Bush’s tax cut in 2003. They used reconciliation to do it. Why isn’t 53 enough this time?
Yes, he was supposed to go into a political showdown! This was the centerpiece of his 2008 campaign! This was what all that Joe the Plumber bullshit was all about: all the heat he took on this (despite ultimately endorsing McCain’s position)!
You can get around the filibuster, if you make half an effort.
Reconciliation takes a long time. They have a couple weeks. This still has to go back to the House.
The coach doesn’t turn into a pumpkin on January 1.
could have been carried out in the new senate, do you?
With Harry Reid?
and, Ben Nelson?
and, Michael Bennett? . . .
With not enough time to get it done this session, and no chance of getting it through with your offense players in the next session, what would you do?
Obama took the field goal for a tie. The game goes into overtime. Put two more years on the clock.
but it feels a whole lot more like kicking a field goal when we’re down 35-0 just to avoid a shutout.
Are you arguing that Obama is selling out the Senate or are you arguing that the Senate should have used reconciliation?
Are you saying 53 wasn’t enough this time because Obama sold out the Senate?
So he goes into a showdown. These tax cuts have a expiration date. If he doesn’t get them passed, taxes go up for everyone. Do you really think Obama wins in that situation? From either a political or policy perspective? That’s not a showdown. That’s LITERALLY using the middle class for political means.
And you still haven’t answered how he attacks or contrasts with Republicans when Democrats joined Republicans in filibustering.
and the Senate could have used reconciliation to make Obama’s plan happen. It could have happened at any time.
Not many people (Republicans or Democrats) want taxes to go up on the middle class. One party filibustered them and received not even a little bit of criticism from the President. Had the President even entertained the notion that if Republicans don’t play along, taxes go up for everyone and they get blamed (since Democrats did everything they could to pass tax cuts), his negotiating position would have been stronger. Instead he gave in to terrorist tactics.
And it’s easy to draw a contrast with Republicans, even if a couple of Democrats vote with them. Not every Republican voted for Bush’s tax cuts in 2003, but Bush still used it against the Democrats in 2004. It’s not that fucking hard. The only person preventing Democrats from contrasting with Republicans is Barack Obama who just endorsed the Republican position.
If the bigD senators could have counted on Obama it would have strengthened their hands. But Obama was signaling his backroom deal with O’Connel even before Reid could bring it to the floor in any way, shape or form. Obama undercut any possibility for a Senate victory even before senators had a chance to draw a clear line for Republicans to cross or reject. Thank Hope, Pelosi is as strong as she is. This was an Obama failure, not a congressional failure. And it’s not the first time. I’m hoping for rebellion in both houses. Presidents should lead, yes, but not sabotage their own party and its ideals through behind-the-scenes maneuvering for self preservation. Not to mention abandoning 98% of the American people, who are the real losers in this “deal”.
I voted for the Hopey Changey Thing.
DADT still is the law.
Gitmo still illegally houses prisoners.
Obama is continuing the Bush doctrine on copyright law.
TSA is still an annoying, waste-of-money joke.
We still do not have a decent immigration policy.
Write, talk, walk, write again, talk some more, wear out another pair of shoes. (I’m not a chain myself to a fence or lay down in front of a bulldozer kind of person, but what the hey? Even that scrunches change a little bit forward sometimes.) And keep the faith–in yourself. We’ve got to move our ideals upward. They too often abandon us from the top. But hope is a good thing and change will happen one way or another. It’s our responsibility to make it happen our way. It’s that old First Ammendment thing. We’re the ones who make it work.
Faith, brother. In yourself.
Corporatists completely control the Republicans and a large percentage of the Dems, so this is what you get.
Remember kids, these tax cuts were put in place when we had BUDGET SURPLUSES.
This simply continues the “borrow and spend” policy put in place by Bush and a Republican Congress – the policy that got us into this mess in the first place. Now Obama and most Dems are drinking the same kool aid.
Welcome to Amerika.
they always wanted huge deficits. They don’t mind bankrupting the US in order to get to finally repeal the New Deal!
That’s what the Reagan Revolution and the huge deficits was all about. “Deficits don’t matter” because they served the purpose of dismantling the New Deal.
It isn’t. And the actions in Washington bear this out. Deficit hawks don’t even believe their own alarmist crap. And they certainly don’t act on it. Now those who swallowed their crap can stick their fingers down their throats, vomit it back up and breathe easier. It was and is a sham distraction to sidetrack meaningful progress on getting our economy to work. Don’t want those Democrats to have any successes, do we?
At least this “deal” contains some economic stimulus, which addresses our most urgent threat: a few more dollars for the midle class to spend, creating demand, and a few dollars for the unemployed to spend on keeping their homes or a bit of food on the table, again creating real economic demand. Over $250,000? They had money to create demand anyway. At the upper end, it’ll create no economic benefit at all. That was a deficit busting giveaway. And who always pays off national deficit debt? The middle class of course. It’ll just take you longer. China and Saudi Arabia appreciate your efforts.
Rebellion in the House and in the Senate is a good bet. By loudly advertising beforehand that he was already working on a compromise (and remaining deafeningly silent about support for either Pelosi or Reid) he prematurely cut their legs out from under them. The deal making wasn’t his to do at that stage. It was theirs–if and when their strong initial stands failed. He assured their failure.
Has Russ Feingold established an exploratory committee yet? Has he been in Iowa lately?
Twice. Joining Republican to block the president’s middle class tax cuts and then again for people making less than $1m. Joined by several “Democrats” including Nelson and Manchin.
Please explain how the President gets what he wants. Be detailed. I’m interested in how he gets cloture after failing twice (with the help of Mr. Feingold), avoids increasing taxes on everyone, and gets to extend unemployment before the lame duck ends and the tax cuts expire.
I’d say Obama got what he wanted. He wanted self-identified “independents” to view him as “reasonable”, the “only adult in the room”, “bipartisan”, “reaching across the aisle”, whatever, and he wants to be re-elected. He also seems to have swallowed the early assumptions he’d be “great” president.(That’s assuming he know what he wants, distinct from what his advisors want.)
And, not being a parliamentarian, I’d say a vote against cloture is a vote for debate and then furtherence of a motion.
But I could be wrong on both counts, which, without a bit of snark, is a large probability.
First the smaller problem – it’s 2 years of tax cuts which do little for the economy but only 1 year of unemployment which does a lot for the economy. Ending the tax cuts and applying it to effective stimulus would do us all a lot better.
The big problem is this once again is letting the Republicans call the shots. Ending the cuts for the rich and extending unemployment are both very popular politically. We hold the Presidency, we hold the Senate, and for another month we hold the House. And yet we can’t force through something that is both good and politically popular?
I know compromise is required. I know you don’t win every time. But I’d like to see them actually try for once…
David, I respect your opinion as usually being very reasonable so help me out here. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
How is it that Obama is caving and selling out?
Senate Democrats could only get 53 votes for cloture as several Democrats joined Republicans in a filibuster against Obama’s middle class tax cuts on Saturday. Dems made the Rs side, on the record, against the middle class. But what other hand does he have to play other than bringing it to a vote and failing? What leverage does he have over the Republicans? Seems to me that he either give the Rs what they want and get some concessions in return or let taxes increase for everyone during a bad time economically.
And there hasn’t even been a chance to discuss the Republican filibuster of middle class tax cuts on the Sunday talk shows. Republicans took an extremely unpopular position, used brinksmanship to defend it, and were not asked even for an hour to pay any sort of price. Obama declared them the winners before, during, and after the fight.
His hand is that he can let the tax cuts expire. It’s not like they can’t be changed in January. He has refused to use any political power whatsoever to fight the battle over THE ONE THING EVERYONE REMEMBERS ABOUT HIS CAMPAIGN POSITIONS (no tax cuts for people making over $250,000).
You think 90% of America even knows or cares what is said on the Sunday talk shows? Ask your working class neighbor who was on Meet the Press last week. In fact, ask your neighbor to name the title of any two of the Sunday talk shows.
Given the fact that most Americans think Obama raised their taxes, despite the fact that he cut them for almost everyone, I don’t see him winning the “Republicans (and a few Democrats) raised your taxes!” argument. Obama and Democrats are in power. They get blamed for everything and rational facts are not trickling down to the broader electorate.
Further, given that, my guess would be, if you asked the average American which they would prefer: tax increases for everyone or tax cuts for everyone, even the rich, I bet I know which they would choose. Those were the choices in this situation.
And his campaign pledge was no tax INCREASES for anyone over $250k. Not tax cuts.
And his campaign pledge was no tax INCREASES for anyone under $250k. Not tax cuts.
http://www.barackobama.com/taxes/
My point was that there wasn’t time for anyone to actually have a debate about what the Republicans had done, because Obama already declared minority Republicans the victors.
As for your memory of Obama’s campaign pledge, I think it’s pretty fucked up. Obama wanted a tax increase on people making more than $250,000.
From barackobama.com/taxes:
The world is a different place than it was in 2008. And it’s the holiday season. You can’t start a political fight in December. No one cares! Christmas is less than 3 weeks away. Obama would never win the messaging fight. Instead, he would be viewed as the President that raised taxes on everyone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U…
Bill Clinton was no warrior for liberalism, but he took a stand against crazy Republicans in the middle of December and won, right after the biggest Republican victory in most people’s lifetimes.
This isn’t a budget bill. It’s a tax bill. I guarantee Obama would rather have a government shutdown attached to him than an across the board tax increase.
is that “This isn’t six of one, it’s half a dozen of the other.” Aside from the situations not being exactly the same in every conceivable way, what is your argument that similar tactics which have worked in the past cannot possible work in the present? I’ve been giving you a bunch of examples of times when politicians who WANTED things GOT things, and you keep saying the moon was in a slightly different position that night.
If Obama and the Democrats had REALLY wanted to get this done they could have. But it’s not worth the fight at a time when it has no real political benefit and has minimal policy impact. In the grand scheme of things, two more years of tax cuts for the wealthy are not going to make much difference in the economy or in the national debt. This is 100% about timing. Obama wants this as his campaign theme. The voters will decide in 2012 if they want to elect Democrats to repeal the tax cuts or Republicans to keep them. Obama thinks he’ll win that fight.
I’m not sure what you expect from Obama. He’s not a hard left liberal. He’s a moderate democrat. That’s what he ran on and that’s what he’s governed as. For example, the health care reform and its insurance mandate was far more progressive than he ever campaigned on.
Letting the tax cuts on the rich expire is a very popular position. In fact only Obama is popular enough to enact new tax cuts. His campaign position is still the one people support. He’s spending his own political capital to make this very unpopular thing happen, and he will own it in 2012. What could possibly make you think he can still draw a contrast with Republicans on this issue?
Your last paragraph is completely nonsensical, so I will wait until you reread and then rewrite it before attempting to respond to it.
To be clear, I agree that he wanted to let the tax cuts expire for the top 2% and that he said on the campaign stump that this is what he would like to do. However, it is a matter of emphasis.
Obama said in debates that no American making less than $250k per year would see their taxes increase and that he would let the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest 2%. This was often in response to attacks from Republicans saying he was going to increase taxes on the middle class. That’s why it is so nuanced. Obama will “ask” the wealthiest to give back a “portion” yada yada This is a response to a distortion. I don’t see this as a campaign pledge that was as hard and fast as “I will not raise taxes for those who make less than $250k.”
I will point out, however, that the political showdown you are advocating does just that – raises taxes on those making under $250k.
But so that we can move past this point, I’m just going to cede the point. Obama promised America to not give tax cuts to the rich.
Please explain Obama’s political leverage in this situation. How does he make Rs cave? How does he have a debate about what the Rs did when Ds joined them?
there have been Democrats and Republicans crossing over to the other side, and yet people still knew there were differences between the parties. Really, when did you start paying attention to politics? Just last year? Bush pretty much never got all Republicans on board (they were always bitching about Specter and Snowe and Collins and sometimes others), and Clinton never had all Democrats on board for anything. Thus it ever was.
Things are much easier for Obama now since EVERY REPUBLICAN has voted to filibuster middle class tax cuts. Clear party division. And it’s also not like Obama couldn’t have pressured the other 5 Democrats to switch votes, if he’d thought it mattered. (There were 53 votes with NO attempt to whip whatsoever, imagine what might have happened if there had been any actual campaign!)
And Obama forced the Senate Democrats not to? What is your argument?
So Obama somehow “pressures” Democrats to switch votes? How? Be specific how Barack Obama pressures Ben Nelson to switch his vote. Same with Joe Manchin. How would an “actual campaign” have convinced the guy who nearly derailed HCR to switch his vote on this? How would an “actual campaign” have convinced a guy who just won his election campaign by running against cap and trade and health care reform to switch his vote?
Should have voted on this prior to the mid-term elections. Dems punted and now Obama has to clean up the mess. Obama has gotten a lot accomplished over the past couple of years for progressive causes without adequate support from the Dems in both houses. The Dems can’t even get their majorities in order, this is no time to blame Obama for making a tough decision with little options. I’d like to see some other Dems provide cover support for Obama because he’s been left high and dry again and again. The fact that i’m seeing so many progressives on this site attacking their Dem president and Dem Senators (Bennet)just goes to show how undisciplined and unrealistic our party has become.
During the health care reform debate, Obama sat on the sidelines, allowing the fractured Democratic caucus to beat itself to a pulp with the Republican talking points that were being bussed about the country by the health insurance industry.
What some of us wanted was a President who took the bully pulpit and made the case for stronger reform, to beat back the idiocies being peddled by the industry that stood most to benefit from a weak package of reforms.
Same goes for many other agenda items, and especially this tax cut “compromise”. Obama could have stood firmly behind the middle class only tax cut extension, could have shamed Republicans into extending unemployment compensation as a standalone package. Instead, before the House and Senate even managed to take up the tax cut package we could have had, Obama is making noises about compromising on one of his key campaign promises and pretty much abandoning the majority in both houses of Congress trying to get the more sensible package passed.
And we won’t go in to the (failure of the )Guantanamo shutdown, or the ongoing PATRIOT Act abuses, or the failure to prosecute the previous administration for openly admitted war crimes and violations of U.S. statute, or the continuing march toward Copyright Hell, or the apparent misleading info about progress in Afghanistan…
You’ll forgive some of us for being upset despite the progress we have actually made.
because I still think Democrats are better than Republicans. But now that it’s all over, why not criticize Obama? He’s lost again and again. He’s really bad at this job.
George Voinovich
First, all this talk about the economic impact of extending unemployment is overblown, just like the impact of tax cuts for the wealthy. There are only a million people considered to be long-term unemployed. That’s not enough people to have even a minimal impact on the overall economy.
Second, Obama had no choice. If all the tax cuts expire then the Republicans don’t get blamed, OBAMA DOES! He’s the president, he raises taxes (according to average voters).
The tax cuts are extended for two years. The public is heavily in favor of taxing the rich today, and will still be in favor of it in 2 years. Obama is on the side of public opinion on this.
Lastly, Obama didn’t have the votes even if all (D) Senators supported it. So why should those Senators in swing states put their name on a tax increase if it isn’t going to pass anyways.
So I implore you all to calm down and pick your battles. This is a small battle. Obama MUST win re-election in 2012. I cannot handle President Gingrich!
Go look up the margin by which the 2003 tax cuts were passed in the Senate.
This isn’t 2003, it’s December 2010. First, the possibility of reconciliation must be established in the rules of debate from the start. And even then, there are only 3 weeks left in the year. Remember how long it took health care to pass? They don’t have time for reconciliation.
Yeah, they could have started this debate months ago, and they would have gotten crushed even more in the election. Now Obama can say he cut taxes, and then fight this battle in 2012.
That’s the stupidest fucking argument I’ve heard since BJ left the site. The only difference between 2003 and 2010 is that back then President really cared about getting his tax plan passed. We weren’t made of arsenic back then. We were still speaking English back then, and the flag still had 50 stars. What’s so different aside from the fact that the year ends in a zero?
In 2001 Congress passed retroactive tax cuts in MAY. And if the debate had started months ago, and if the election had actually been a referendum on Obama’s very popular tax plan, we might have actually done better.
80% of the public was on Democrats’ side in this battle and they still lost every single thing. (The Republicans don’t WANT permanent extensions. They WANT this battle in 2012 because they think Obama will lose it again, and they’re probably right.)
So long as the terms are still broken into three choices – tax cuts for everyone, tax cuts for just the middle class, and tax increases. Take away the middle, which is what Republicans and some Democrats have essentially done thru the filibuster, and you are left with tax cuts or tax increases.
How do you win that argument with the public?
and undercut those who were trying to win.
One political party was willing to say, “We want what we want, and if the middle class tax increases have to happen and it gets blamed on us, well that’s just fine by us.” Maybe they were bluffing, maybe not. But that was their position, and they won, and anyone who’s paying attention will say “They played hardball and got what they wanted.” Why couldn’t our side have done the same thing?
Is it cowardice? Or do they really just not care about the positions they campaigned on?
Honestly, why are you so angry? How does this compromise negatively affect your life? Obama has made some mistakes, but he’s no idiot. If he didn’t think he had this issue in the bag in 2012, he wouldn’t have agreed on a 2 year extension. If he was afraid of this issue, he would have given the Republicans a longer extention that goes beyond 2012.
The Dems were screwed either way this past election. They had already sacrificed all their political capitol on the stimulus, auto bailout (which worked), and health care. Why waste this argument when you’re going to lose anyways. If the Dems truly do have 80% support for their tax policy, then why take up the issue now? Wait until it matters – 2012.
And my personal life is just fine with or without this. It’s not about me. I’m a Democrat, so naturally I care about other people even if I’m personally doing fine.
I have no confidence that Obama has some master game plan. He just loses too often, on things that seem most important. He replaced real stimulus with tax cuts in ARRA, he sold out the public option in the health care debate, and he’s given up on these tax cuts. Time and again, even when he’s faced unanimous Republican opposition he’s still adopted Republican positions. I just don’t think he’s as good at this game as I used to want to believe.
But tonight you’ve put up the good fight. Thanks for sticking in there and defending (very, very, effecively) your, and my, position. Obama sold out congress even before they had a chance. Knowing he wasn’t behind them, how could they possibly rally the forces necessary? Why is he so enamored of “deals”? Why isn’t he in love with the ideas of fairness and what’s good (progressively speaking) for our country?
Thanks for your posts and your continuing hold on those things called “ideals”. “Integrity”? “Guts”?
I do. I just feel like this is a case of hate the game, not the player. It’s the GOP that have effectively turned a Democratic majority in the Senate and made it an effective minority by requiring 60 votes to do anything. If Obama is to do anything other than grandstand, I’m just wondering what you would have done differently.
All you hear from the right is how irresponsible the stimulus package was and how Obama just wants to bankrupt America. Is anyone going to remember that this deal, to placate Republicans, is going to cost close to the same thing?
They’ll call it “Obama’s great spending spree” or something.
Republicans will take this compromise and make Obama own the $700b+ in deficit while trying to take credit for extending the tax cuts. They’ll be loud and prominent, and unless Democrats change their advertising strategy, it will succeed.
So the ideological and political battle of the moment results in two sides incurring expense we cannot pay for and so must borrow more.
And you thought my platform wouldn’t be popular.
Some many clever Dems, so little time. I hope everyone who is writing negatively this morning also takes the time to read some history books. Look at how many years it took for the American Revolution to start, continue, and finally end. How many years before the Constitution was written. Look at how long the Alien and Sedition Acts were in force. Slavery went on and on, distorting the national politics. There were Northerners who considered throwing in the towel during the Civil War, actively advocated for it, too. Look at TR and FDR and the timelines of how long people advocated before some of those policies came on line. Look at union organizing, civil rights, gay rights, issue after issue. I appreciate the frustration, but I also urge doing some reading at the same time.
reading can also be a cop-out, a call to inaction, sort of like “Oh, this will take some time, so let’s all calm down and smoke a joint and everything will be fine in the end.”
All the things you mention, and I would say women’ suffrage took even longer than anything on your list, were only changed because passionate, committed people continued to act and to speak out incessantly against the injustices of their day. They didn’t change because they read book. The only things the books may have helped with in their youth was to inform their consciences and their morality.
it can be taken too far. That was rather condescending. I’m pointing out that a large dose of perspective is in order. Go check out DailyKos for an even bigger dose of “Alas! Alack!”
as if that isn’t something condescending to say. The pot calls the kettle black.
The more incredible part of the Obama tax cuts for the ultra wealthy is the start of defunding social Security. The so called payroll tax is what funds social security. Obama is purposely defunding ss. Which is what the Republicans have long desired. The one tenant of the Democratic Party, social security is now on the table for destruction.
SS is self funding, by cutting the funding the R’s can “privatize” it.
and once they gut SS, then it’s medicare, medicaid, etc, etc. The Holy Grail of the Republican party is to dismantle the entirety of the New Deal.
They’ve already succeeded with the help of centrist Democrats in dismantling the financial regulatory regime FDR put in place and look where that landed us.
They also succeeded (thank Rupert) in dismantling the limits on cross-ownership of media outlets in major markets and the limits on the percentage of the population which can be reached by any single broadcast entity. Because they want to be able to spread their propaganda far and wide. It is a proven fact that if people here a lie repeated frequently enough, they will come to believe it as a truth. This is why Republicans are so disciplined about staying on message. They get their talking points from he same sources and never deviate.
What is shocking is against this seemingly invincible array of money and power, there are small success stories of ordinary citizens standing up and fighting for their beliefs and their own interests against the powerful and winning! Those are the stories I hang on to.
I mean, that would solve our Republican “problem” pdq.
Would Fox flip or die in the process?
You know, the Greenspan deal was made back when I had just started working. I’ve been paying extra into SS my whole working life. Since it doesn’t go in the red for a while, I don’t mind getting something back. I agree, it doesn’t make much sense to me either, but if it means that raising the maximum income level that pays SS comes sooner, I’m ok with it.
Republicans and Democrats have been raiding SS for decades. The impact of this on SS is nothing compared to what has been a long-standing practice of ‘borrowing’ the surplus revenue from SS payroll taxes. Al Gore is still the only major politician I’ve heard seriously talk about protecting SS revenue, and now he’s mocked about it. Where’s the ‘Lock-Box’?!
The Social Security surplus is parked in T-bills. Where else would you put it?
They put the money in a safe Treasury bill, which is good. However, the day will come when the government has to cash in those t-bills and where will that money come from? Each year, the SS revenue collected needs to be budgeted as an expense. Instead, we just convert the money to t-bills and spend the cash. In other words, we write ourselves an IOU.
Yes, T-bills are essentially an IOU, but if the government were completely debt-free, Social Security would still need somewhere to park its excess intake. (Emphasize “excess” – as in, “in the black”.)
If the government isn’t providing that parking place, then the Social Security fund would need to find an alternative stable investment – probably some kind of money fund, or perhaps highly rated municipal bonds, or even (shock!) utility stocks. All highly conservative investments from which the money is not likely to disappear.
T-bills are the best place to put Social Security money to my mind. The interest gets paid back to the SSI fund on schedule, the fund gets a bit of extra cash, and a bit less of our taxpayer dollars are spent paying overseas debtors.
What’s not to like?
I’m not sure that if the government ran a surplus for many years and so did Social Security, even to the point of completely retiring the national debt, are there any other government backed bonds which it could invest in.
The scariet thought in my mind about privatizing social security is the incredible bubble which would be created as all this new money flooded into any other investment market. It boggles my mind to think of thoise trillions flooding the stock market, or bond market, or residential or commercial mortgagae market. it would be very dangerous indeed.
current money coming in pays for current outlays going out. T-Bills work pretty much the same way. We sell new bills at whatever cirrent rate the market bears and use at least some of those proceeds to pay back the principle on previous T-Bills. At least I believe this is how it’s done. I do not believe other than the interest component that there is any other net expenditure from the general fund to pay off old T-Bills.
is that the funds go into the Social Security Trust Fund where they are used to purchase t-bills. The revenue generated from purchasing the new t-bills is used to pay benefits to those receiving social security. But for decades, the government has been collecting more tax revenue than it is paying out. That means that they are purchasing more t-bills than the number of t-bills they must sell. The end result is a surplus of t-bills.
So, the question is what happens to the revenue generated from the surplus of t-bills? It has been used for general fund purposes like funding agencies.
If this was not happening, we wouldn’t have a social security crisis at all because retirees would essentially be getting back the t-bills their tax revenue had been converted into. But, instead, we do have a crisis because we have converted the surplus revenue from babyboomers into debt.
A good article from NPR touches on this:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money…
of social security taxe4s collected against social security payments outlaid is what goes into the trust fund and buys t-bills. It does skew the market for the t-bills as it is a huge buyer due to the historically huge surplusses.
Now that the current account is running a deficit (currently and for the next two or three decades) it is drawing down that trust fund by not purchasing any more t-bills and using the proceeds from the t-bills bought previously to pay current social security beneficiaries.
where does the government store the proceeds from the previously bought t-bills? If they buy t-bills with the surplus social security taxes that money doesn’t just disappear. The government is taking the revenue and saying, we’ll pay you back with a little interest when it’s time to collect your benefits. But what are they going to pay you back with?
This is why future social security obligations are recorded as debt rather than a future expenditure. They sell themselves an IOU (t-bill) and place the revenue generated from it in the U.S. Treasury. Those funds can then be spent.
But now that there is no surplus in social security taxes, the government has to pay out those old t-bills. However, they don’t have the available funds to do it so they must either cut spending from somewhere else, borrow from foreign nations, or print new money.
the government has to pay out T-Bills when they come due to whomever bought them. It is not an issue of Social Security or not, it is simply the way it works. We also pay to China, Japan, South Korea and India as well. They are the top foreign holders of US Treasury debt. The alternative to this process is hopefully unthinkable (although some on the very fringe actually speak of it as a possibility these days…)
Although, the problem is that it is politically unfeasible, and bad policy in my opinion, to cut enough spending to pay out those t-bills in the coming decades. So, the alternatives are raising SS taxes while either maintaining or reducing benefits (also not feasible), printing new money eventually leading to inflation, or continuing the practice of revolving debt where we take on new debt to pay back old debt. The problem with revolving debt, is that you end up paying more interest with every new layer of debt creating a snowball effect.
The Social Security shortfall isn’t about T-bills, or the general fund debt. As jpsandscl and I both note, the only reason SSI is tied to T-bills is because it’s got a surplus of funds, which it is now drawing down (as planned) to pay for the baby boomer generation’s retirement. There’s nothing abnormal here, and the only problem with SSI is that it appears it might under-collect (or over-estimate interest payments from the T-bills) and come up a bit short for a few years. That’s a projection based on current conditions, and it becomes a problem 25+ years in the future.
If you’re worried about the debt from all those T-bills, raise REGULAR taxes to pay the REGULAR debt recorded in T-bills and/or cut REGULAR spending to do the same. Changing SSI won’t do a thing to alleviate your concerns.
and there is evidence here that the problem for Social Security is not nearly as dire as we’re being told. In fact, within an 80% probability factor, the Social Security outlays could wipe out the trust fund sometime between 2035 and 2085!!! Most of us are not likely to live that long and at that time horizon too many factors become unknown to make these projections that meaningful.
It is equally likely according to that graph that by 2025 SS outlays alone will add 2% of GDP to the deficit each year, and by 2085 that could be as high as 5% of GDP. That’s 5% in deficit spending that doesn’t even exist today. How is that sustainable?
Also, from a 2001 CBO Anlaysis:
So, back to my original point, rather than save the surplus SS revenue for future benefit payments, we spend it.
we run a deficit on SSI now instead of in 25 years (if ever)?
And you’re not getting the bit about the GDP deficit issue: those T-bills would be sold to someone regardless. They’re sold to cover government debt obligations – we have those, so we sell T-bills. I’d rather they be sold to the SSI fund, where their 2-5% of GDP interest payout goes back to the people paying taxes, than that they be sold to China, the Middle East, or even Japan.
What is buying t-bills if not saving it? How else would the government save it? Stick it in the Fed bank and maybe the Fed pays interest? Against what? The interbank loan interest the Fed gets paid?
This makes no sense at all to me. T-bills are a form of saving and investing. They are investing in the full faith and credit of the Unites States of America. That used to mean something very powerful indeed. Even today, it is still recognized as the most secure investment instrument in the world. When investors look to run to safety for their money, the buy US government debt. It is the safest bet out there.
A bond is not an asset when you issue the bond yourself because then it just becomes a transfer of money from one account to another. We could save the revenue by investing it in liquid assets (and that doesn’t have to be private assets).
There are ways we could save the revenue without using t-bills. I’m not sure what the best option is but just off the top of my head we could purchase foreign treasury bonds from the EU. We could use the Federal Reserve as well I suppose. The important thing is that the investment is an expenditure on something that can be easily liquidated and that is very low risk. But, it’s too late now, so it’s really a moot point.
“because then it just becomes a transfer of money from one account to another”
That sounds like just about every single bank transaction to me. Or do you strictly work on a cash basis cunninjo?
US retiree benefits on the EU? How is that superior again? Why are their T-bill or whatever the equivalent s superior to ours again?
It’s not complicated. Let me explain how bonds work. One person sells a bond to another. The one buying the bond invests money in hopes that it will collect interest and be worth more in the future. The one selling the bond collects the revenue and spends it NOW in hopes of investing it in something that will have a higher return than the interest they must pay on the bond. If this works properly then everyone wins.
Now when we look at the social security situation, the U.S. is both the purchaser and the seller of the bond. So while the social security surplus is collecting interest on its bonds, the U.S. Treasury is investing the revenue collected form selling the bond. How does it invest the revenue? That is the key here. This would work fine if the revenue was being invested in something that was liquid. But it isn’t. The U.S. Treasury ends up spending its revenue on whatever Congress tells it to through appropriations. And how much government spending is both liquid and offers a return that is higher than the interest on the bonds?
The question for you is, if the SS surplus is not being spent, where does the money go? What’s the point in converting to a T-bill? The ONLY reason any company, government, etc. issues bonds is to raise revenue that it plans on spending NOW. Thus, we are spending SS surplus revenue.
On your second point, I’m not in any way saying that EU bonds are safer than T-bill, but they are still safe. And, they are liquid and prevent us from accruing debt. Instead, the EU takes on the debt and is liable to repay us with interest. Not us repaying ourselves with interest.
or the other. You can’t keep jumping back and forth and have it both ways.
so now you say hat it would be better for the Social Security trust fund to buy European bonds so the Europeans can invest that money today in the hopes of getting a better return on the funds. Why again is that better than investing it in the US of A?
I think the crafters of the law stipulating that SS trust fund could only invest in American government instruments were very wise indeed. They saw that this money, kept in the United States, could help in the short term as the funds were used to help pay for government expenditures, and in the longer term as the t-bills were paid off to pay retiree benefits.
Sounds almost ingenious to me.