John Boehner Is Letting The Inmates Run The Asylum
Things are going from bad to worse for Speaker Boehner and the House Republicans.
It hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for the speaker over the last two years since all his Tea Party freshmen hit town. The good news for him was that he was elected speaker; the bad news was who elected him!
And it is not helpful that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor seems to want his job and is coddling the conservatives in the caucus.
For Speaker Boehner this is like herding feral cats that are getting increasingly wild.
The House rejection Tuesday of the bill overwhelming agreed upon in the Senate (89-10) to enact a compromise on the extension of the middle class tax cuts and unemployment payments was a shock—maybe even to Boehner when his caucus revolted over the weekend.
Anyone who is watching the inmates take over the asylum that is becoming the Republican caucus has got to fear for the country—and the Republican party.
If the House Republicans are responsible for raising taxes this year on the middle class, taking $1,500 out of their pockets as a little Christmas present, they will send the very clear message that they do the bidding of the millionaires and billionaires but put coal in the stocking of working families.
And as America’s businessmen and woman understand, the best prescription for growth, hiring, and greater profits, is a middle class that is well-off enough to buy their products. Starving middle class families does not exactly help their bottom line.
In addition, Republicans cannot make the argument that they are so concerned about the deficit that they want to shackle the middle class but let the wealthiest of Americans continue to get hundred of thousands of dollars in tax breaks that “are not paid for!”
The speaker understands that effectively raising taxes now on middle class families, while continuing huge tax cuts for the richest Americans, simply will not wash.
Such a decision is kryptonite in a political year such as this one.
Hiding behind a conference committee or talking about a year extension is simply hogwash—the Tea Party House members want to kill it, pure and simple.
Speaker Boehner is in real trouble on this one and he knows it; he is better off to cut the crazies loose in his own party, make a deal with Democrats and reasonable Republicans, and move on. It is the right thing to do for the country to prevent a double dip recession and the right thing to do politically. If Cantor tries to dethrone him, so be it, he did the right thing. But, right now, he is getting run over by a right wing caucus out of control.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, December 20, 2011
Inconvenient Income Inequality
Is income inequality becoming the new global warming? In other words, is this another case where the facts of an existential threat lose traction among a weary American public as deniers attempt to reduce them to partisan opinions?
It’s beginning to seem so.
A Gallup poll released on Thursday found that, after rising rather steadily for the past two decades, the percentage of Americans who said that the country is divided into “haves” and “have-nots” took the largest drop since the question was asked.
This happened even as the percentage of Americans who grouped themselves under either label stayed relatively constant. Nearly 6 in 10 Americans still see themselves as the haves, while only about a third see themselves as the have-nots. The numbers have been in that range for a decade.
This is the new American delusion. The facts point to a very different reality.
An Associated Press report this week on census data found that “a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.” The report said that the data “depict a middle class that’s shrinking.”
An October report from the Congressional Budget Office found that, from 1979 to 2007, the average real after-tax household income for the 1 percent of the population with the highest incomes rose 275 percent. For the rest of the top 20 percent of earners, it rose 65 percent. But it rose just 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.
And a report released in May by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that “the gap between rich and poor in O.E.C.D. countries has reached its highest level for over 30 years.” In the United States, the average income of the richest 10 percent of the population had risen to around 14 times that of the poorest 10 percent.
Our growing income inequality is a fact. So is the possibility that it could prove economically disastrous.
An April report from the International Monetary Fund found that growing income inequality has a negative effect on economic expansion. The report said that long periods of high growth, which were called “growth spells,” were “much more likely to end in countries with less equal income distributions. The effect is large.” It continued: “Inequality seemed to make a big difference almost no matter what other variables were in the model or exactly how we defined a ‘growth spell.’ ”
Our income inequality could jeopardize our recovery.
Yet another Gallup report issued Friday found that most Americans now say that the fact that some people in the U.S. are rich and others are poor does not represent a problem but is an acceptable part of our economic system.
If denial is a river, it runs through doomed societies.
By: Charlets Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, December 16, 2011
“A Heart Two Sizes Too Small”: Pretending I Am A Republican
Ok, I thought it would be fun to pretend that I am a Republican. Cut me some slack here. I know what some of you are thinking…this is some mean trick.
No, really, I am trying to figure out what I would do if I were running for president as a Republican. And I understand the problem with going “mainstream” now, as everyone is fighting for the most conservative, extreme wing of the party.
But here are 5 things I would suggest:
Middle Class: First and foremost, I would try and figure out how to fight for the middle class. I would not be talking about stopping a $1,500 tax break for working families, while suggesting another drop in the upper income tax bracket from 35 percent to 28 percent, even after the Bush temporary tax cut from 39 percent to 35 percent. The Republicans are doing everything in their power to pay for the tax break for the middle class in some fashion but do not seem to care much about paying for the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. This is hurting them badly politically and they need to support tax breaks for those who are suffering. So, I would be talking about the middle class by suggesting help for college and trade school, help with job training, incentives for hiring and expanding, and providing tax breaks for start-ups.
Tolerance: I would try and take on others (including the opponents) for gratuitous slams at gays, Hispanics, blacks, women, and Arab Americans. I would openly criticize an audience that boos a gay soldier fighting for his country, a candidate who talks about “Obama’s war on religion” while blasting gays in the military, and others who believe a state initiative on Shariah law is smart politics. Americans are moving fast towards tolerance and acceptance of those who are different from them—embrace it, don’t fan the flames of intolerance.
Role of Government: Republicans will, for the time being, blast government but they should say what they are for. How about acknowledging that the Securities and Exchange Commission should have had more teeth and been more vigilant in going after the Madoffs and Stanfords of the world? Now is not the time to let the financial system run amok; rather we should be tougher in protecting the “little guy”, the consumer, the investor, the depositor. Why not combine a concern for over-regulation of small businesses with a tighter grip on those who have abused the system?
Foreign Policy: This is one area where Republicans should zip it. If I were running I would give Obama his due on the war on terror, Iraq and Afghanistan, praise Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and pivot to domestic issues. Talk expanding trade, cutting good deals, competing with the Chinese and leave it at that—but don’t accuse Obama of being “weak.” Doesn’t work. Creating more jobs in the international economy is a much better message.
National Service: Sounds like a side issue, but I would call for all Americans to give back to their country. Everyone between 18-25 should serve in some capacity for two years, in the military, in the Peace Corps, Teach for America, in their local communities. The reward: help with their education, paying off student loans, assistance with grad school—a new GI Bill if you will—but ultimately, good deeds are their own reward. We would change the ethic in this country that you can have your cake and eat it too, that your government owes you, that there is no need to contribute your talents, hard work, resources, to others.
So, I guess if I turned into a Republican, I wouldn’t be very popular in the current crowd, would I? But my strong belief is that a Republican who adopted these five ideas might just stand a better chance of being elected next November. Yes, this is Christmas and a time of miracles but maybe, just maybe there are some Republicans out there who agree.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, December 16, 2011
Mitt Romney And Newt Gingrich Now Engaged In All-Out Class Warfare
The Occupy Wall Street protest may have petered out, but its antagonism against the nation’s wealthiest one percent lives on in the unlikeliest of places: a GOP primary race between two multi-millionaires. As Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich duke it out in the weeks leading up to the first primary contests, their attacks on each other are increasingly focused on one another’s vast wealth. It all started on Monday, after Romney called on Gingrich to return the money he’d earned from Freddie Mac, for his work as a, um, historian. Not because earning money is inherently bad, but because of where it came from — an organization that conservatives blame for the economic meltdown.
Gingrich responded by attacking Romney’s time at investment firm Bain Capital, while also mocking his tin-eared $10,000 bet during Saturday’s debate:
“If Gov. Romney would like to give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain that I would be glad to then listen to him,” Gingrich told reporters after a town hall, referring to the company Romney ran. “And I’ll bet you 10 dollars, not 10 thousand that he won’t take the offer.”
Gingrich’s condemnation of Romney’s private-sector experience didn’t sit well with a lot of conservative observers. On Fox News, Charles Krauthammer said it was a line you might expect to hear “from a socialist.” The National Review‘s Jonah Goldberg called it “petulant, leftwing, bunk.” Indeed, there’s nothing conservatives hate more than when liberals engage in so-called class warfare against the wealthy, something Obama is accused of on practically a daily basis. So Romney’s rejoinder today, provided to CBS News between trademark fits of fake laughter/panting sounds, probably won’t make the GOP establishment any happier:
“He’s a wealthy man, a very wealthy man. If you have a half a million dollar purchase from Tiffany’s, you’re not a middle class American.”
Isn’t there a drum circle somewhere you two could join?
By: Dan Amira, Daily Intel, December 14, 2011
Why GOP Voters Love Irresponsible Newt
Newt Gingrich has done it again. With his new tax plan he has raised the bar from irresponsibility to recklessness.
Every dollar estimate I’m about to share with you comes from the independent, non-partisan Tax Policy Center – a group whose estimates are used by almost everyone in Washington regardless of political persuasion.
First off, Newt’s plan increases the federal budget deficit by about $850 billion – in a single year!
To put this in perspective, most forecasts of the budget deficit cover ten years. The elusive goal of the White House and many on both sides of the aisle in Congress is to reduce that ten-year deficit by 3 to 4 trillion dollars.
Newt goes in the other direction, with gusto. Increasing the deficit by $850 billion in a single year is beyond the wildest imaginings of the least responsible budget mavens within a radius of three thousand miles from Washington.
Imagine what Standard & Poor’s or Moody’s or Fitch would do if it became law. We’d go directly from a triple-A credit rating to triple X – the veritable porn star of fiscal mayhem. Interest on our debt would become larger than most of the rest of the budget.
Most of this explosion of debt in Newt’s plan occurs because he slashes taxes. But not just anyone’s taxes. The lion’s share of Newt’s tax cuts benefit the very, very rich.
That’s because he lowers their marginal income tax rate to 15 percent – down from the current 35 percent, which was Bush’s temporary tax cut; down from 39 percent under Bill Clinton; down from at least 70 percent in the first three decades after World War II. Newt also gets rid of taxes on unearned income – the kind of income that the super-rich thrive on – capital gains, dividends and interest.
Under Newt’s plan, each of the roughly 130,000 taxpayers in the top .1 percent – the richest one-tenth of one percent – reaps an average tax cut of $1.9 million per year. Add what they’d otherwise have to pay if the Bush tax cut expired on schedule, and each of them saves $2.3 million a year.
To put it another way, under Newt’s plan, the total tax bill of the top one-tenth of one percent drops from around 38 percent of their income to around 10 percent.
What about low-income households? They get an average tax cut of $63 per year.
Oh, I almost forgot: Newt also slashes corporate taxes.
I’m not making this up.
This might be amusing if Newt were just being old Newt – if this were another infamous hot-air bubble emerging from an always provocative, sometimes clever, often bizarre mind.
But it’s the tax plan of the leading candidate for president of one of the two major political parties of the United States.
And it comes at a time when America’s super rich are raking in a larger portion of total income and wealth than at any time over the last 80 years, and when their marginal taxes are lower than they’ve been in three decades; a time when the nation’s long-term budget deficit is causing cuts in education and infrastructure which will impair our future and that of our children, and when safety nets and social services are being slashed.
Can Newt get away with this?
Probably — because his plan also comes at a time when Americans are so cynical about the major institutions of our society that someone who offers huge, outrageous plans holds a special fascination: The whole system is so awful, people tell themselves, why not just jettison everything and start from scratch? Let’s throw caution to the winds and do something really big – even if it’s colossally stupid.
This is why the more outrageous Newt can be, the better his polls. The more irresponsible his bomb-throwing, the more attractive he becomes to a sizable portion of Americans so fed up they feel like throwing bombs.
History is full of strong men with dangerous ideas who gain power when large masses of people are so desperate and disillusioned they’ll follow anyone who offers big, seemingly easy solutions.
At times like this a nation must depend on its wise elders – people who have gained a reputation for good judgment and integrity, and who are broadly respected by all sides regardless of political affiliation or ideology – to call out the demagogues, speak the truth, and restore common sense.
The great tragedy of America today is the paucity of such individuals when we need them the most.
By: Robert Reich, Published in Salon, December 14, 2011. (This originally appeared on Robert Reich’s blog, December 13, 2011)
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