House leader Boehner said, for the umpteenth time: "The American people will not accept — and the House cannot pass — a bill that raises taxes on job creators."
This is exactly wrong. While we don't have governance-by-polls, the American people have said, loudly and with a clear majority, in every poll since forever, that they believe that wealthy people should pay more in taxes. While it is true that we all want job creation, only Tea Screamers and their PTR enablers believe that execs from, say, Goldman-Sachs, are by any stretch of the imagination, "job creators."
This is the pure and simple Republican use of The Big Lie: repeat an untruth enough times and people are likely to believe it. If the Democrats hold their ground on this I believe they will reap great political benefits. The question is: can Democrats actually hold ground on any issue these days?
I personally think that entrusting our parties to the mischief of a secret deal amounting to $ 4 trillion dollars or so is very dangerous. There are too many issues where the Dems are likely to sell out, trading small potatoes like mild "tax reforms" in exchange for vast and devastating cuts in vital social, regulatory, and infrastructure programs. In other words, Obama and the Dems are likely to trade away programs that might actually create jobs and restore the economy, in exchange for a handful of no-brainers like elimination of Ethanol subsidies or even a slight roll-back in the Bush Tax Cuts for The Rich. Taxes on the wealthiest 1- 2 % should be greatly increased, in fact, since they have been making out very well for decades while middle-class income has been basically flat. They can afford to pay a lot more without much discomfort.
I'd be inclined to say: Go ahead and follow the PTR's trickle-down economic policy -- you'll see once again what a crock it is and always has been. But: there are a lot of people who will get seriously hurt if this happens.
Unfortunately, like everyone else except for a handful of leaders meeting in secret, we have no knowledge of what's going on, no input, and no control of highly important issues that effect all of us. As I said to begin with, the Republicans are simply making up nonsense for sound bites, and the Dems are ... well, being Dems; and, there is no way that we can institute a vote of No Confidence if we don't like what these folks are planning for us.
This is not a very encouraging sign for Democracy.
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This is a rather new aspect of our politics: things that are wildly popular are shot down as "non-starters," "deal-breakers," and things that "won't fly." Taxing the wealthy, keeping Medicare intact, and "the public option" (not to mention single payer) were all very popular proposals that were cavalierly dismissed. Max Baucus wasn't even a member of the Republican-Teaparty coalition.
ReplyDeleteIn the past such proposals always received lip service and were then knifed in committee or by some sleazy procedure. Most of the time since the New Deal (at least after having gotten their clocks cleaned in four or five elections) Republicans learned to voice support for all the programs in general while trying to undermine them in secret. It must be gratifying for them to come out of the closet and actually campaign on their beliefs. What confidence they have in their ability to spin things in their own direction. Let's hope that they are being overly confident.
I personally don't see why we need to raise taxes in order to fix a spending problem. But if Obama doesn't want to go along with that, then I agree with McConnell/Reid that he should just go ahead and raise the ceiling himself.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans have two choices - 1) agree to raise taxes even though they campaigned against it, or 2)take the blame for any economic turmoil and/or government shutdown as we get closer to August 2nd.
I'd prefer if they'd agree to support the tax increases in exchange for cutting the corporate rate, but it doesn't sound like that's going to happen.
We'll probably go through a complete collapse before we get serious about evolving into an egalitarian civilization. For a fuller argument download "May Day 2011" at:
ReplyDeletehttp://mayday.karleklund.net