Well, the GOP is certainly on a roll. Yesterday they would not even allow a proposal that would insure that multi-millionaires are taxed at least at the same levels as their secretaries and us worker bees be discussed in the Senate, much less come to a vote. The vote on whether to even discuss the so-called “Buffett Rule” was filibustered along almost total party lines, with only one defecting Democrat. Of course the Buffett rule should be called the Buffett / Reagan rule, since Reagan proposed and advocated the same fairness in taxation of the super rich. I guess today that would make him a Commie Socialist Hitler Wannabe Usurper, like that Black guy in the White House.
This is what galls me the most, and I send a fax to Congress critters every month or two reminding them.
Senate Republicans on Monday blocked a move to open debate on the so-called Buffett Rule, ensuring that a measure pressed for months by President Obama and Senate Democrats to ensure that the superrich pay a tax rate of at least 30 percent will not come to a decisive vote.
But the fierce debate preceding the 51-45 vote — the Democrats were nine votes short of the 60 they needed — set off a week of political wrangling over taxes that both parties insist they are already winning.
Senate Democrats intend to return repeatedly to the legislation, named after the billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who has complained that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary. On Thursday, House Republicans will counter with a proposed tax cut for businesses that they say would spur job creation but would cost the Treasury almost exactly what the Democrats’ tax increase would raise.
Republicans say they like that contrast, and their language ahead of the vote on a motion just to take up the Buffett Rule was harsh and aimed squarely at Mr. Obama, who first proposed a 30-percent tax rate floor for anyone earning at least $1 million a year last September. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, went to the Senate floor and all but called Mr. Obama a liar.
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…CNN poll was released putting support at 72 percent, including 53 percent of Republicans
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I am 66 years old. I have paid into Social Security since I started work at age 14 while still in high school. (Uncle Scrooge may have his number one dime; I still have the winter coat I bought myself with my first paycheck, tucked away in a chest of family treasures.) I have paid into Medicare since it started. My wife and my own vested payments and interest in those programs can be estimated to be worth at least a half million dollars or more total lifetime investment. Of my money. In two insurance programs.
These are not welfare programs. They are not unfunded entitlement programs. The only entitlement is this. I paid for this insurance. And the government owes me this money which I (and my wife) paid into our whole d*mned adult lives.
And in case you have not yet made the transition to Medicare and Social Security, you might be interested in the fact that the two of us pay Medicare premiums, supplemental medical insurance, and prescription coverage premiums every month that amount to $7,225.00 annually. It is not exactly a free welfare program, folks.
This is outright theft and hypocrisy of the first degree. The GOP will blow three trillion dollars on unfunded wars kept off the budget to pretend they don’t cost anything. Yet they are willing gladly to repudiate the government’s responsibility for $2.5 trillion dollars owed to the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds. The GOP is willing to simply default on the part of the national debt they owe senior citizens and retiring baby boomers. They raided the bank, blew the money, and now it is the citizens of American who are being told by Congress and the GOP that we can just kiss our pension money that we paid into those funds our entire lives goodbye.
But this is nothing new. The GOP opposed these “socialist” programs from the get-go. Under the leadership of their spiritual mentor, Grover Norquist, it is their avowed goal to strangle government in the bathtub, and destroy Social Security and Medicare.
In fact, this has been the GOP’s plan all along. Just default on the debt that’s payable to the Social Security trust fund, then turn around and lie through their teeth, as usual, to the American people, and claim that the trust fund is insolvent because we didn’t repay the debt. The corollary of course being that retirees who have counted on their savings in this trust fund their entire lives are basically just SOL.
That goal of the GOP, and sadly, some Democratic austerity and deficit hawks. Nothing more. Nothing less. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool. Anyone who believes there is actually a budget hidden in Rep. Ryan’s proposals is an idiot.
I find it very interesting that the Catholic Bishops, who were the Republicans good buddies a couple weeks ago when they decided banning contraception coverage for women was a winning strategy, have now denounced the Ryan budget proposal as an immoral attack on the poor and helpless of the nation. Suddenly House Speaker John Boehner has a sad, and thinks the Bishops need to just STFU. I expect Boehner to start crying over how mean this was of the Bishops any moment on national television. And Rep. Paul Ryan, front man for this GOP budget, has tried the tack of claiming, well, These are not all the Catholic bishops, and we respectfully disagree. Which seems to be a trend in his thinking. Je recently basically called the generals who put the current Pentagon budget proposal together a bunch of liars (quoted at the previous link):
“We don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice,” he said. “We don’t think the generals believe that their budget is really the right budget.”
Because when science, or the generals, or the Catholic bishops disagree with the manufactured and made-up reality of the GOP, it makes Baby Jesus cry, I guess. Or at least House Speaker Boehner and Baby Face Ryan.
How can anyone contemplate voting for these monsters anymore? They have destroyed the economy; plunged us into two endless wars; bankrupted the treasury; helped their corporate buddies and banksters and hedge fund managers and war profiteers raid the American peoples tax payers pockets to cover up their own failed business actions and illegal activities. And they are doing their best to destroy the middle class, and let the three trillion dollars worth of rotting American infrastructure just collapse into rust, broken asphalt and concrete, and rubble. All just to regain total power and defeat Obama at any cost, just as was their plan from the beginning of his administration.
And they think I will ever vote for them again? Ever?
House Republican leaders began the year with an embarrassing defeat over extending the 2012 payroll tax holiday. Democrats held their ground and insisted that the payroll tax cut either be paid for with a mix of spending cuts and higher taxes on the wealthy, or not at all — no more of the GOP’s cuts-only approach. The GOP blinked and agreed to add more than $100 billion to the debt, rather than accept even a penny in higher taxes on the wealthy, or face the blame for allowing the payroll tax cut to lapse.
Weeks later, Republicans unveiled their new budget, written by Rep. Paul Ryan, which includes steep tax cuts and military-spending increases — both of which run counter to the deficit-cutting ethos to which the GOP laid claim. Some of their own conservative members have grumbled that the plan does not adequately deal with the deficit.
“We took a pledge, and we said we would cut more than is being cut,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said after the budget was unveiled.
The contrast is particularly stark this week: Senate Republicans blocked the Buffett Rule, dismissing its capacity to raise $47 billion over 10 years, while House Republicans are pushing a broad business tax cut that would add $46 billion to the deficit in just one year. On top of that, House committees are now looking for ways to override automatic cuts to defense spending they agreed to last August as a means of enforcing the controversial debt-limit deal.
Of course, the best thing Congress could do is just quit passing any laws for now in regard to deficit reduction. And combine this with just letting the Bush tax cuts expire, since they were a key element and represent nearly a third of the accumulated deficit since they went into effect.
From the Congressional Budget Office:
Deficit in 2012: The federal budget is projected to show a deficit of nearly $1.2 trillion in 2012. Relative to the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), that shortfall will equal 7.6 percent—about 1 percentage point less than the deficit recorded last year but still higher than any deficit between 1946 and 2008.
Deficits over the 2013-2022 period: Under current law, deficits are projected to drop markedly in the next few years and to average 1.4 percent of GDP over the 2013–2022 period. Much of that projected decline occurs because, under current law, revenues will rise considerably as a share of GDP—from 15.8 percent in 2012 to 19.8 percent in 2014 and 21.2 percent in 2022.
Federal Debt: With deficits small relative to the size of the economy, the amount of federal debt held by the public would drop from nearly 76 percent of GDP in 2013 to 61 percent in 2022—still higher than in any year between 1953 and 2009.
CBO Releases Updated Budget Projections for Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022
Of course the GOP does not care about the facts or reality. They manufacturer their own reality. And when the facts do not suit their fevered fantasies, they just lie through their teeth and make stuff up.
