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June 30, 2011 02:22 AM UTC

Cory Gardner Sounds The Retweet

  • 17 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Fox News and the rightiesphere swung into action today at an apparent live one:

The chief economic culprit of President Obama’s Wednesday press conference was undoubtedly “corporate jets.” He mentioned them on at least six occasions, each time offering their owners as an example of a group that should be paying more in taxes.

“I think it’s only fair to ask an oil company or a corporate jet owner that has done so well,” the president stated at one point, “to give up that tax break that no other business enjoys.”

But the corporate jet tax break to which Obama was referring – called “accelerated depreciation,” and a popular Democratic foil of late – was created by his own stimulus package…

Within a few minutes of President Barack Obama’s mention of this tax break as something he wanted eliminated during budget negotiations today, the Heritage Foundation had a story up titled, “Obama Blasts Private Jet Tax Breaks Created by His Own Stimulus,” and the dudgeon-fest was on. Joined in by Colorado’s own Rep. Cory Gardner via Twitter:

So, there are a few problems with this–first of all, sacrificing a provision of the much-reviled “failed stimulus bill” for the purpose of deficit reduction should be a good thing, right? Of course, if you admit that this (or any) particular provision in the stimulus bill was maybe okay–remember that Republicans have pledged to fight any eliminations of tax breaks–then you have to admit that a few others probably were okay too, and then you have to concede that a large percentage of the stimulus actually consisted of tax breaks like this one and then…oops! You can’t really attack Obama with it anymore, can you?

So that’s one problem. The second problem, reports Matthew Yglesias over at ThinkProgress, is that the hated commie American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) didn’t create this tax break.

The truth is that, much as you would expect, the White House negotiating team isn’t nearly that stupid. The source of the confusion is that congress passed a “bonus depreciation” law in 2008 as an economic stimulus measure, and ARRA continued it. This depreciation is a broad (albeit temporary) provision that includes to a wide range of capital goods including both commercial and corporate aircraft. By contrast, the tax break at issue in the negotiations is a 1987 provision of the tax code that allows corporate jets to be depreciated over a five-year period rather than the seven-year period required for commercial aviation. This is not something Barack Obama created, not something Barack Obama has ever supported, and not anything that has anything to do with the stimulus bill. It is, instead, a small but real subsidy that distorts the economy at the margin by encouraging large firms to invest in corporate jets rather than paying for commercial airfare.

We may be in for a dozen rounds of this kind of myth-making. The White House has put on the table the idea that we should raise tax revenue without necessarily raising tax rates. That means closing loopholes. But congressional Republicans say they’re opposed to any increases in tax revenue. Now everyone knows that the tax code contains lots of unjustifiable loopholes, so the White House can gain a strong rhetorical upper hand by highlighting specific loopholes. Since the GOP has committed itself to defending each and every loophole no matter how absurd they’re going to need to engage in a lot of desperate smokescreens like this to avoid engaging directly with the core question.

The third problem: before it’s over, Gardner will be fighting for these very same tax breaks.

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17 thoughts on “Cory Gardner Sounds The Retweet”

  2. Are we to believe you are not getting your talking points via a highly organized message machine of which you are an integral part?

    I mean this partly as a compliment. A lot of money is riding on you guys!

    3. Don’t look now, but ColoradoPols secretly gets some of its debunking information from a left-wing think tank that is rumored to go by the name of Think Progress.  They don’t want you to know this, because if they did they’d say so in the diary.  Oh, wait…

      The difference between the Left and the Right these days seems to be that the Left is willing to state up front just where their information is coming from, while the Right tries to sneak into conferences or create shell corporations to hide their sources.

    4. Will Gardner and dicks like you defend corporate tax breaks for everything from corporate jets to jacuzzi’s or are you going to attack Obama for continuing tax breaks that started under Bush?

      Come on dickhead  give us the non-talking point Republican perspective on corporate tax breaks.  Be real here now and tell us in your own words was Obama a bad person for continuing tax breaks that Republicans don’t want to eliminate?

      I bet you can’t put together a coherent reply to why we need corporate tax breaks for jets but Obama is a bad person because they were continued under ARRA.

      Since you, Einstein and everyone else can’t unravel such doublespeak maybe you can attack Colorado Pols as being part of a vast left wing conspiracy.  That ought to be a little piece of propaganda fluff that a shallow thinking person like you can use to avoid talking about how you want tax breaks but Obama is bad for continuing them.  What a fucking joke argument.  “Look at the birdy.  It’s a vast left wing conspiracy.  Don’t pay any attention to how all over the map conservatives are on tax breaks and how unserious they are about deficit reduction”.

    5. I was going to make a comment about what a yawner this story is (a Congressman, or perhaps an intern, retweeted something! Everybody panic!) but you managed to inject enough nuttiness into the comments that I’m no longer bored.

      1. Gardner is a hard core believer that tax breaks are a good thing but it is bashing the ARRA legislation and Obama for continuing them.  It is childish to the max and shows how crazy and unserious Republicans are about creating jobs and controlling the national debt.  Instead of being a statesmen Gardner comes off as a boorish ideologue who tries to gin up a gotcha criticism of the president instead of actually working to address these issues.

        It is partisan politics instead of effective government and then fools like Acrapo try to divert attention away from this charlatan’s scam by blaming the entire story on a vast left wing conspiracy.

        The little chickenshit never came back to provide any evidence of his vast left wing conspiracy theory but that’s what you expect from a chickenshit.  He is an apt representative of the entire chickenshit Republican Party.

        1. I saw a retweet. I retweet things I don’t agree with frequently if I think they’re worth a read. The biggest issue here for me is that Gardner thought anything on Drudge was worth reading, but still not surprising.

          If he starts putting it into his own words and genuinely reserving time out of his schedule to bash tax breaks, it’ll be a story. I realize Pols wanted to talk about this issue early on so as to refer back to it when inevitably the R’s come back defending these breaks after attacking them, but it’s a weak Colorado tie-in at best.

          1. Your desire to be evenhanded is getting the best of you. I don’t think there is any doubt Gardner (or staff) RT’ed that because it was the talking point of the day. There’s no way he “didn’t agree with it.” And as it turns out, it’s bullshit. He is justifiably called out on it.

            1. Someone who works for him, or maybe Gardner himself, clicked a mouse twice to share an alarmist piece of trash on Drudge. I just fail to see how that’s at all newsworthy. I doubt Pols would have reported on it had there been a more significant Colorado connection. Reporting that a Republican retweeted a Republican talking point is like running a feature headline every time a Republican votes for Republican legislation.

              It’s not news that they’re better at staying on the same message than the Democrats typically are. It’s also not news that said message is usually batshit crazy.

              1. but if Gardner owns the twitter account then he is responsible for what get’s posted on it just like Anthony Weiner.

                If Gardner is committed to keeping every single corporate tax break in America forever while decrying the horrible government debt and then rips Obama for having tax breaks in the ARRA legislation then he should be able to explain his reasoning.

                His surrogates like Arapaphony should likewise be able to explain how Obama is a bad person for continuing what they constantly covet.  I’m just trying to find out why Gardner thinks it is important enough to post such a bizarre statement.  After Weiner, I find it hard to believe that representatives are letting staff use the Twitter account without clearing it first.  I’m a tacky person but I’m not as tacky as this twisted crap.  They can’t explain what they are talking about so all they can do is smirk and pretend it isn’t a big deal.

                1. But so’s you don’t think I’m a hypocrite, recall that I didn’t feel Weiner’s “scandal” should have been a BFD either.

  3. ** rightiesphere (from the first line of the diary)

    ** kneejerkesphere

    ** talkingpointsphere

    ** talkingoutofbothsidesofmouthsphere

    ** gotchasphere

    ** veearejustfollowingordersphere

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