That’s a wrap, folks.
The vote was 263 to 171…. Most Democrats favored the bill (172 yeas to 63 nays), while a slighter majority of Republicans voted against (91 yeas to 108 nays). Every member of the House voted….
Many lawmakers who changed sides, said they had agonized over the decision amid a torrent of calls and e-mail messages from constituents, and several cited a provision added by the Senate increasing the amount of savings insured by the federal government to $250,000 an account from $100,000.
Several Democrats in the Congressional Black Caucus said they were persuaded to support the bill by Senator Barack Obama, the party’s presidential nominee. But many lawmakers said they were motivated most by fears of economic calamity.
However, as of right now the stock market is basically flat, so no instant recovery of all the value that was lost last week. Furthermore, credit continues to be a serious problem — California is apparently on the verge of taking out a $7 billion loan from the US Treasury, and here’s a report of some local impacts. And the news of 159,000 jobs lost in September (the worst month in five years) can’t be helping things.
This is going to be a rough ride, folks.
A Picture says a thousand words
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p>Heck of a job there Barney!
Barney wont be invited on the booze cruise either.
So sad to be Barney. Such gratitude, huh?
Apparently Barney is feeling the heat! Barney is not happy that folks are holding him responsible for sand bagging investigations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Barney wants everyone to know that this is entirely George Bush and Karl Rove’s responsibility. When Barney was testifying that Fannie Mae was solid and fear mongerers were spreading rumors about “unusual” accounting procedures, it was not really Barney’s voice.
What is the dateline on that photo [any sound track] or are they just laughing all the way to the bank…ya gotta wonder.
The photo was taken just after Bush signed the bill into law this afternoon. It is rather revealing I think. Something about that twinkle in Paulson’s eye. I’ve seen that look before, ususaly in Hollywood productions, but up until this point stories of such grand heists were limited to fiction
More business’s will fail and more banks go bust. The largest problems seems that there is no trist out there for repayment of loans and no one will lend unless there is signifcant collateral. Will be interesting to see what affect this will have on state tax revenues.
Amazing; Record time I think .. One might imagine it could take longer than it did just to assemble that many pages.
Ah well … Let the rescue begin !
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but can someone adjust the image size? Horizontal scrolling is such a drag…
narrow, slender, broad, wide, and expansive.
well, since the mutual fund companies are largely fee based depending on asset values, and assets have tanked since last fall, think we know that answer.
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p>Hey for that matter, hope Obama’s economic advisors are considering that there may be a heckuva lot less folks over $250k to tax.
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p>Got this link from an economist friend of mine:
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p>http://strategerycapital.com/i…
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p>Worth a chuckle…
There’s mention of it here This appears to be what I was afraid would happen, as a “pot-sweetener” for the phony-populist GOP.
Most earning under $200,000, not that rich after all.
Never mind! Should have read more carefully first…
I keep hearing the same thing over and over on the news, little people going to get screwed by the AMt .. blah blah blah.
Now I know i have never gotten hit with it and neither do I know nayone that has.
So I got curious at one point and tried something using this calculator
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p>http://www.hrblock.com/calcs/c…
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p>I found that I could claim any imaginable income and deduction and would still be subject to no AMT tax, None.
I tried incomes in the millions and then writing the whole amount off … AMT=0.
Its crazy.
SO who are these people who are supposedly getting hit with this AMT? Is there such a critter?
Try it yourself …
The AMT was enacted in 1969 to target high income (for that time) taxpayers who supposedly were able to evade paying their “fair share” of taxes.
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p>The problem with AMT is that the dollar amount for which it applies was set in 1969 (around $100k) was never adjusted for inflation. AMT is certainly a scam, but probably not in the way that you are thinking. Taxpayers in high local income tax/property tax states with kids are especially vulnerable (think MA, NY, NJ).
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p>Congress has for the last several years applied bandaid fixes annually w/ the AMT because they didn’t want a bunch of families w/ two incomes where each wage earner pulled down $75k (not exactly tycoons) being blasted by this tax.
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p>In an ideal world, AMT would go away entirely and people would know what tax applies to their income (and Congress wouldn’t have this stealth method of getting extra revenue). Maybe in the future we should have a proviso that any dollar amount specified in any legislation is required to be adjusted for inflation. For the sake of argument, assume a 3% annual inflation rate. Moving $100k from 1969 to 2008 (39 years) brings the 1969 threshold of $100k to $316,703. If you want to take $100k now and discount it back 39 years, you get $31,575. Not exactly “rich”.
I hadnt been manipulating the dependants number.
That is the key.
In order to get hit with AMT you need to have a HUGE family, make pretty good money to begin with and still have to be living a lifestyle that is WAY beyond your means.
The calculator shows that if I pull down 120 grand have 5 kids and pay 10 grand in property tax and another 20 grand in mortgage interest (think mCMansion in weston); I would owe 650 bucks in AMT.
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p>Well Boo flipping Hoo!
I screwed up and left the filing status line as single.
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p>Married filing jointly:
If I pulled down 182,000$ and had 5 kids and lived in the same Weston McMansion I would owe the whopping 650$ in AMT.
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p>Newsflash .. Boo flipping Hoo! đŸ™‚
You have 5 kids making $182k combined family income you ain’t living in a Weston McMansion sport.
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p>That also reflects the repeated bandaids applied as fixes (hence why Congress has to keep doing these patches instead of just getting rid of the damned thing). If you took the naked AMT w/o any of the patches your same example is paying a pant load more.
How about combined $65,000 with two kids? Surely that is abject poverty…Apparently that McMansion is further away than I thought on my most pessimistic days…
has its largest impact on states like ours (hence if you follow those who push hardest for the patch each year, it isn’t the red state congress, rather our delegation). The states most impacted by the AMT are the blue states, not the no income tax red states like Florida, Texas et al. Remember, this isn’t saying the affected taxpayers don’t pay taxes; rather that they have to calculate on a whole separate system, excluding state and property taxes paid. So the similarly situated family in a no state income tax state ends up paying less than someone residing in a MA, NY, or NJ (and also having more after tax income because they don’t pay these taxes in the first place.
Or does it only apply to certain income levels? I don’t think I’ve ever used it.
it should be doing this calculation automatically in the background. I’m certainly not arguing that high end people shouldn’t be subject to the AMT. The problem is that for the middle class, AMT wipes out a ton of things that are usually in their taxes (such as state income tax, property tax, childcare credits, et al). It disproportionately affects the Northeast which have higher tax burdens (remember back when EGTRRA went through that it was portrayed as a stealth attack against the predominately democratic NE since the promised tax cuts, child credits were basically wiped out due to AMT).
It just seems to me that for the amount of time and effort I see getting put into whining about the AMT, the only examples I can find where people are actualy getting hit with it are for people who are either straight out gaming the system or they are just plain living DUMB.
Sure the 5 kid, 180K example isnt living in Weston, or shouldnt be; but to be hit with the amt they would have to be moving there.
Seems all the effort could be better directed elsewhere.
by looking at the IRS’s page on the AMT for this year (obviously before any patch applied):
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p>http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/a…
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p>Do you see any dramatic drop here in threshold limits? It expires, and you have a freakin’ palace revolt from people not making a ton of money. That’s why they have to keep putting the patch in each year.
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p>Remember, these aren’t people who don’t have to pay taxes; this is just a floor put in back in 1969 to target about a 100 filers who somehow managed to not pay federal taxes (coupled with high marginal rates, you also have a myriad of deductions; hence the incentive for TRA ’86 back in the day; lower rates, but not every bizarro deduction that only made attorneys and CPAs rich). When you fill out your 1040, they use the same schedules you do. This is just an extra kicker thrown in from an obselete law. You want to go after high income folks (say BHO’s magical $250k earners) that’s fine. But a married couple each pulling in 60-70k with kids paying property taxes looking at an extra 3-4k taxes this year might not exactly think they’re living off of the fat of the land due to lack of indexing.
I think I get it now.
Is the following assumption correct:
When I use the handy calcualtor to figure out who gets stuck paying, the result created by using a formula that you say has been band-aided and that without the bandaid people of lesser means would be sucked in ….
Ahh ..
I was wondering. It waslooking to me that the people getting hit shoudl be getting hit .. maybe thats not a coincidence than.
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p>If so .. I agree.
Fix it once and be doen with it, maybe index it annualy like they do with the exemptions.
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p>Nonsensical to portray the AMT extension as a tax loss. This doesn’t go through, the middle class would march on Washington on 4/16/2009 and take out any member of Congress (remember these threshold drops certainly wouldn’t affect high end people).
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p>This is the joke of the AMT. You want to be a congressman trying to explain to a constituent why his tax bill with an under $100k income just went up a few thousand bucks?
Our government representatives (?) just demonstrated that there is only one party and it doesn’t represent us. Our crummy little votes mean little compared to the interests involved. It looks as if the threat of martial law was also made. Matched with the cash involved trumps the needs of the majority of people in this country.
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p>I’ll not be voting for encumbents this year or independents. I haven’t the millions it takes to bribe these looters.
needs two patsies.
Whatever happens it won’t be worse than the Great Depression, because of safety nets FDR and LBJ put in place. And even in the Great Depression, there were plenty of wealthy people, even super wealthy people. The Rockefellers and Hearsts and Duponts and Fords never had to spend a month eating pinto beans and cornbread.
During the great depression there was 75% employment.
Today, the percentage of people employed is actualy lower than it was at the peak of the depression (@45%).
Yesterday the government announced that the economy had shed an additional 159,000 jobs in September; yet the unempoyment rate remained unchanged. You need to ask yourself why that was, again.
This type of reporting has been occuring for years and its cumulative effect is staggering.
“People left the job market” is what they tell us, over and over. In droves? To do what? Ebay resellers?
Question everything.
We still have some major bills coming due, no?
I’ve heard that as much as an additional $100B was added compared to the first attempt to sweeten the pot with various pork projects for reluctant members. If this is true how can it possibly be fiscally responsible, especially in a time like this?
is truly comical.
USA might find itself in a real big problem very shortly. Most of our “debt” is owned by foreign government, most notably China. If they demand payment—-that’s the ballgame. USA will be broke, and very vulnerable in MANY ways.
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p>But not to worry—-we should be worrying about Palin’s hair do and her choice of folksy words in her speech pattern.
It was widely reported all week that these 700 billion are largely meant to appease foreign “investors”. Its speculated that the pressure is being applied by the Chinese but Europeans may also be displeased enough to extort remitance. Either way, this sum is barely a down payment on the total we evidently are liable for, and it is likely only meant to buy enough time for the current administration to skip town ..
Todays show gave us a look into the soul of the replacements, regardless who might win the November horse race. I am not entirely optimistic.
However, on a bright note, isnt it refreshing to see apathy finaly melting away? I am pressed to recall an issue that has so many people united and enraged. Change may indeed be coming but that chapter is yet to be written and the characters may not even be aware of their roles yet.