Why won't the House at least take care of part of the "Fiscal Cliff" and give all us under 250k earners a break???

The legislation is already written and ready to be voted on.


This is bullshit.

12/13/2012 8:31:21 AM

Because politicians the last 15 years have figured out that acting like a spoiled brat that throws a hissy fit if they don't get everything they want is what can get them re-elected because with millions of dollars they can spin the hissy fit into "standing up to [insert political "enemy"]"

And I will note that wrote that in a party nuetral complaint/observation.

12/13/2012 8:51:52 AM

This Congress can't get shit done.

12/13/2012 9:18:15 AM

There is that, but lease realize that you literally cannot balance the budget ir solve all of our fiscal woes by simply taxing the rich. Even if you made the top rate 100% you'd still only fund expenses for an extra 11 days or so.

Ultimately we have a spending crisis, not a revenue crisis but the situation will only be exacerbated by extending every tax cut.

Personally, I have no issue with the fiscal cliff. Our politicians created this mess, we elected them, this is what we get. Undoubtedly there will be a lot of short term damage, but something drastic needs to happen. We cannot continue to just kick the can down the road.

12/13/2012 9:20:19 AM

Quote :

"There is that, but lease realize that you literally cannot balance the budget ir solve all of our fiscal woes by simply taxing the rich."

true but making $250k/household is not rich. it's barely upper middle class.

i think the republicans are basically like "well if i'm going down you're going down with me and fuck everybody else".

12/13/2012 9:28:44 AM

Quote :

"Ultimately we have a spending crisis, not a revenue crisis "

No, we have a deficit crisis. And that's not all, we also have a debt crisis. These are represent our financial account and its first derivative.

We also have an austerity crisis. Go ahead and "fix" the problem, and watch us plunge into a deep depression the likes of which we haven't seen in 70 years.

Calling it one thing or another ignores the nature of our problem as a Chinese finger trap. There is one, and only one, light at the end of the tunnel. That is the fact that we're no worse off than the other nations of the world. Europe is not only swimming in debt, but has the additional delight of regional imbalances, which the US doesn't have, unless you count our border problems with Mexico. China, although it looks like a nice fiscal situation, is so deep in fraud and toxic assets that it's worse than the Western world.

Our best hope is to be the last domino to fall, but even at that point I don't really know what hope there is. Our inequality is a debt problem, and our debt problem is a government problem at its root. Our federal government needs to stop subsidizing the rich before their heads get cut off.

12/13/2012 9:34:37 AM

Quote :

"There is that, but lease realize that you literally cannot balance the budget ir solve all of our fiscal woes by simply taxing the rich. Even if you made the top rate 100% you'd still only fund expenses for an extra 11 days or so."

Where did you get this statistic?

12/13/2012 9:49:26 AM

Quote :

"There is that, but lease realize that you literally cannot balance the budget ir solve all of our fiscal woes by simply taxing the rich. Even if you made the top rate 100% you'd still only fund expenses for an extra 11 days or so."

I'd have sympathy for this except for the fact that the people against the tax cut say, with a straight face, that we need to focus on getting rid of things like PBS...which consumes all of 16 hours of government expenses per year. It's very, very clear who the bigger idiots are in congress right now.

It's a fucking joke, and no, nobody serious thinks taxing the rich will balance the budget by itself.

[Edited on December 13, 2012 at 10:24 AM. Reason : .]

12/13/2012 10:24:02 AM

If you took the entire budget and paid off the debt, it still would take more than 10 years to eliminate assuming we didn't collapse.
If you treated like a household budget, it will take decades.

We have both a spending problem AND a revenue problem.

[Edited on December 13, 2012 at 10:26 AM. Reason : ]

12/13/2012 10:24:40 AM

The Bush Tax Cuts were supposed to expire 2 years ago. I guess we'll have to "go off the cliff" and then pass new ones.

12/13/2012 10:45:50 AM

The best thing about the Fiscal cliff is that it puts Republican mendacity out in the open: They never gave a shit about actually reducing the deficit, they just say "deficit" instead of "spending" because it makes them sound more super-serious. Now we face a massive deficit reduction, and suddenly the GOP is telling us how terrible it would be.

[Edited on December 13, 2012 at 10:58 AM. Reason : .]

12/13/2012 10:57:40 AM

Hey remember when Mr. "Read my lips, no new taxes!" avoided their own fiscal cliff by compromising on their proposal by decreasing spending cuts and increasing tax increases? That was a long time ago, fuck Norquist.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/politics/debt-reckoning.html

12/13/2012 11:04:13 AM

Quote :

"If you took the entire budget and paid off the debt, it still would take more than 10 years to eliminate assuming we didn't collapse. If you treated like a household budget, it will take decades. "

In reality we will either never pay it off, or we'll default.

The problem is that our entire system of wealth ownership is based on the leverage of government, corporate, and individual debt. Our total Federal debt is about $14 Trillion, but our entire debt is over $50 Trillion, although we have to admit that some of the debt is harmless because the borrowers have assets in excess of their debt.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=TCMDO

We ostensibly don't want a bank collapse for the sake of GDP. It would result in a grinding halt to our economy, hurting the middle class (because wages couldn't be paid). That's petty in comparison to the other reason - wealth preservation. If you have a savings account in the bank, the account is partially a claim on the debt of our government.

Let's get straight to the issue - debt isn't held by the Chinese boogeyman, it's held by citizens. Our debt is held by our citizens, and the same applies for other nations. Look at what citizens hold what wealth, and you come to the simple conclusion that the vast majority of the funding of the great debt boom of the Western world of the last 3 decades was the growing wealth of the rich. Wealth inequality and debt and the same thing. If they were distributed close to uniformly, people would look at their assets, look at their debt, and ask "why the fuck and I paying myself interest?" On the marcro-economic scale, interest on debt of the scale we see today only makes sense as a transfer from a definable group of people to another definable group of people. It comes down to "all" of us borrowing from the rich of us.

12/13/2012 11:09:43 AM

The answer is leverage. Stonewalling is the GOPs congressional strategy.

The fiscal cliff is the product of a rare bipartisan agreement from last year. IMO It was pretty shortsighted for the GOP to let those tax hikes be included in the trigger since their main strategy of stonewalling increases the chance of no deal being made. Although they did get SS and medicare concessions from the DEMs included in that trigger as well.

Overall I think the fiscal cliff is a fair trade for both sides and good for the American people as well as being far superior to any deal that will be made at the last minute, although I am fully expecting a last minute deal that is heavily watered down on both sides. I hope I'm wrong.

12/13/2012 1:38:09 PM

They are in a terrible position to leverage, because if they don't accept the tax increases on the wealthy, the tax still increases on the wealthy and everyone else. Also, 65% of Americans believe the election was a mandate for Republicans to accept Obamas plan, so politically going over the cliff would blow up in their face.

We've been in a similar situation under HW Bush and the GOP accepted lower spending cuts and increased tax increases as a compromise. That was before the tea party and the no tax increase pledge though, the GOP needs to kick out those people.

12/13/2012 5:12:12 PM

[Edited on December 13, 2012 at 5:58 PM. Reason : wrong thread]

12/13/2012 5:57:41 PM

We already have a pretty good Fiscal Cliff thread. We don't need a 2nd one, let alone a fairly dumb 2nd one.

12/13/2012 6:43:57 PM