The Senate passed legislation yesterday that adds $8.50/100K to the price of most mortgages in exchange for a brief 60-day extension of the payroll tax.
How many members of the 1% depend on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac when they buy their gated mansions and luxury condos? The message of this robbing-peter-to-pay-paul gesture is primarily symbolic, and the symbolism is awful. A tax on the 1% (million-plus incomes)? Off the table. A tax on the 99% (hidden in mortgage fees)? Across-the-board approval.
Patrick Leahy and Bernard Sanders of Vermont voted “No”. John Kerry joined Scott Brown in voting “Yes”. This should tell us something.
Here are some ways we should encourage the 1% to pay their fair share:
– Eliminate the capital-gains tax advantage altogether — treat all income the same for tax purposes.
– Significantly increase the estate/gift tax rate for estates in excess of $10M.
– Impose a 70% marginal tax rate for incomes in excess of $250K/500K (individual/joint).
We Democrats should be advocating for these, while painting clear pictures of the benefits this increased revenue will provide for the 99%. My own top three? Health care, publicly-funded college education, and energy/transportation infrastructure.
It appears that the priorities of Democrats vary from yours.
I agree that this entire approach is appalling, and I agree (sadly) that Democrats led the way. Having said that, the first approach of the Democrats was better: a tax increase for the very highest-income taxpayers.
It was the GOP who stopped this much better way of funding a needed break for working men and women. It was the GOP who again threatened to shut down the government. It was the GOP who, today, reneged on their promises of only a few days ago.
We have the worst government that money can buy.
Corporate tax burden
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2741666269255.154797.1485417164&type=1#!/photo.php?fbid=2912660384001&set=a.2741666269255.154797.1485417164&type=3&theater
Kind of clear who is winning the so-called “class warfare” isn’t it. Hint. It isn’t flesh and blood ordinary citizens. How did you get that embedded??
…if desired since you can edit your post at any time.
their unemployment and would lose the payroll tax cut. In addition, their was the annual “doc fix” which is needed to insure that more doctors do not drop Medicare patients. Not doing the first two also has the effect of slowing the economy – which hurts the 99%.
The Democrats wanted to get this done paying for it by increasing taxes on the top 1%, but absolutely could not pass that in either the House or the Senate. I agree 100% with your list of how this should be paid for, but really don’t see how it gets even one Republican vote .
I do think, if only to make the point, the Democrats should have put that – and the idea of not paying for it at all – to a vote. It would never pass cloture in the Senate and might not even be allowed a vote in the Republican controlled House, but it would have made clear where the parties stand. (I do understand that the Republicans would have insured this wasted a week or two of time.
But, at some point, there is a need to consider things that can pass – and it is possible that even this will be rejected by the House. I did not Senators (other than Reid) speak of being happy with this deal. It is clear that Leahy and Sanders voted “no” as a protest, but I would bet that had either had the deciding vote, they might have voted “yes”.
The alternative was not a year long extension paid by the taxes on the 1%, but the payroll tax returning to the regular amount and the provision for allowing 99 weeks of unemployment not extended. You don’t mention that other than Leahy and Sanders, only the rightmost Democrat, Manchin, and 7 Republicans voted against this.
I agree with you analysis, and come to a different conclusion.
You are right, the proposals I offer would not get a single Republican vote. That is the point. They should be on the table ANYWAY, and we should be pushing them HARD. We should force every Republican to be on TV at every opportunity, explaining over and over again why the RICH need a low tax rate while the nation rusts and corrodes.
The Democrats should have forced a vote on a 1-year extension BEFORE the threatened shutdown, and the Democrats should have followed Bill Clinton’s example and made sure that every American knew why the government was shutting down, why their payroll taxes were increasing, and who was responsible. President Obama and Harry Reid should have been on EVERY news outlet naming names.
The evidence is all around us that the approach we are taking hurts the 99% anyway. A definition of “insanity” is repeating the same behavior over and over expecting different results. President Obama and the Democrats are acting insanely.
I did say that we needed to force those votes – and I agree that we should have our best out there explaining our position, which is popular and is easily defended.
The point where I disagree is that this is not 1995, when the economy was pretty good. If the government shut down now, the people most hurt would be the people who have the least. But, I do worry that having to get up “hostages” to do every thing that would have been done without the blink of an eye lash in normal times is a problem.
What it shows is how much we are losing by losing the speakership.
I think we can all enthusiastically agree that this is not 1995. đŸ™‚
I recall that we had the speakership between 2008 and 2010, together with a Democratic president, and we got rolled then just like we’re being rolled now. I think we need to change our behavior, because we cannot expect the GOP political terrorists to change theirs.
For example, we should make VERY CLEAR that when the House votes tonight, it is the GOP who is imposing a new tax on working men and women and taking away unemployment benefits from those same workers. The GOP has betrayed all of us, and that needs to be shown.
The dishonest narrative that “Congress is gridlocked because of hyper-partisanship” needs to be replaced with the truth: The right wing of the GOP is holding America hostage to their extremist (and, in many cases, simply looney) views.
The problem with “saving the hostages” (to stretch the metaphor) is that America — and especially the mainstream media — ignores the terror the right wing has created time and again; very real terror that such brinkmanship creates in all too many Americans. And so it happens again and again.
Paying the ransom is almost always a bad idea, because the terrorists come back time and again. Sooner or later, the (metaphorical) blood of the hostage is likely to be the price paid for stopping the terror.
And we have the same lame three leaders who are far too cautious to push for the right thing to do morally and politically and that is articulate a broad, pro-working class package that combines government jobs programs with payroll tax extensions with reforms that prevent too big too fail and get money out of our government. This would appease the angry Democratic base and is broadly populist enough to appeal to many disaffected independents. Continuing to meet Republican theivery halfway is not working.
I once defended the short term tactics of getting what you can from the new Congress, and in some cases I still think it was the right thing to do, in 2012 we need to get them on record opposing anything of benefit to average people so we can nail them with it and regain power to advocate on behalf of the people. Lets also dump Pelosi and Reid when we do regain it.