More on the Budget Deal
Jeff Goldstein wants to know:
What about principles? What about doing what you were elected by your constituency — including those who make over $450K — elected you to do as their representative? Instead, it became a numbers game: who can we sacrifice to appear “reasonable” by the Marxist rules set by the New Left and the media. A losing battle, as I’ve long pointed out — and one that has become something of a point of stasis and surreal refrain. Which is precisely why many of us simply can’t believe any longer that the GOP is acting either in good faith or in our interests as its base.
The truth is, the media is always going to have the power to paint the GOP as the villain, precisely because we don’t do anything at all to neutralize that power. And yet, that’s beside the point in this instance: as I noted in an earlier post, the GOP is still to be blamed for bringing us so near the phony “fiscal cliff” — only now, a guy taking a tax-payer funded 20 day Hawaiian vacation gets credit for “tax cuts for the middle class” that were actually tax rate decreases pushed by Republicans and voted against by Reid, and Schumer, and Biden back when they were first enacted.
As I wrote yesterday, Obama got exactly what he needed: GOP fingerprints on a deal that won’t lead to a recovery. Blaming Bush was getting stale, but now he has Boehner to blame.
Then again, so do we.
blame boehner if you wish, i blame obama and the dweebs who elected him twice.
And I think that by now I am ready to blame the inherently limited lifetime of a successful democracy. Seriously. Have you considered the possibility that we have lost irretrievably under the rule of “one man, one vote”? It does not take that steep a distribution curve to make a move towards socialism an objective short-term win for a nominal majority. And the percentage of people thinking long term has always been, and will always be, negligible.
The really bad part is that there’s literally nowhere to run… hiding one’s head in the sand is starting to look like a constructive option.
Meh. Kind of hard to waste any energy getting upset over this. GOP did play a bad hand poorly, but there were no good options. I’d rather have gone over the cliff and let everyone’s tax rates go up, the better to point out the Obama tax increases, but this deal isn’t going to be a drag on the economy. That distinction will still be held by the byzantine regulations & taxes & fees imposed by Obamacare.
OK, tell me why I’m wrong, but I think this was not too bad as far as media strategy goes.
So Obama got his tax hikes and no spending cuts, almost exactly the way he wants them. We’re still going to get a recession this year, and you’d think even a trained monkey could manage to lay the blame at his feet. Now, I don’t know if the Republican party has the media savvy of a trained monkey, but this agreement doesn’t seem too bad as grist for the mill.
Unfortunately, the Repubs have been a disappointment on spending for the past 10+ years, and there was never anything to be done in terms of this deal that was going make up for that. However, given the reality of a split caucus, a democrat-controlled Senate that has been more than willing to renege on their basic budget responsibilities and indulge their inner child, and a President who couldn’t care less about the general economic health of the country, it seems to me that Boehner and Co. did what they could with the pathetic situation they had.
My family and I are some of the lucky folks in the “no man’s land” of this new Soak The Rich scheme. My husband is a physician and I work in a white-collar financial services job – after many years of study (Med School, Residency, Fellowship for him, undergrad and MBA for me) and hard work/long hours (especially him), we both make very nice salaries – we have been blessed.
Individually we do not hit the definition of “rich” – we don’t make $400K income each – but together we make more than $450K. So apparently we are only part of the evil rich because we are married. Really? If we just lived together we’d be “middle class” but because we’re married we’re “rich”? I would imagine that there are some well-to-do gay couples that may be reconsidering their position on gay marriage after they talk to their accountant.
Two points here: First, I’m not that upset about our taxes going up (aside from the Obamacare abomination, and I am upset about a tax law that would encourage a divorce in order to make financial sense). What I am upset about is what the heck our hard-earned money will be spent on. More pork, bankrupt green energy companies, payoffs to unions, welfare instead of job creation.
Secondly, I understand that most people reading this will not be near the level where their Fed Income Taxes will increase (leaving the Payroll increase and Obamacare taxes aside). I’m not looking for sympathy – this is a little warning flag. They won’t stop with us – there is no way that the increased taxes that we will pay will be even a drop in the bucket. Heck, our taxes wouldn’t even pay for the President’s return flight to Hawaii. So everyone else that generates an income (rather than just taking the handout) will be in their sights. Slippery slope, folks – Obama campaigned on that $250K number and that certainly won’t be enough either.
Before the end of the year, we liquidated two stock and mutual fund accounts. We will be using some of that money to buy down our mortgage and refinance it, since the mortgage interest deduction will be cut for us. Even though the housing market is lousy, at least the money is somewhere where the government can’t get to it…at least not yet.
But give them time.
Kim – I completely agree with you about these guys not stopping at the $400/$450K level.
My wife and I combined don’t make anywhere near the current threshold, after almost 40 years in the work world (we both started working right out of high school and – in my case – only a few years of not working whenever I was able to afford to go to college). Between us we are very lucky to be making enough money to have raised two wonderful daughters who have their heads on straight, and we hope to be able to afford a decent retirement in the future; nothing fancy, just enough to pay the bills.
However, I know that in order to pay for everything our lovely political class has ordained over the years, they absolutely have to go after “the middle class;” i.e., the $40K to $100K sweet spot where the bulk of the “earned income” in this country resides. (And before anyone attacks – I said “earned income.”) I’m hoping we can both be out of the work force before that becomes reality. Even if Social Security is means tested at brutal levels, and ours gets cut back, we can probably get by with some part time work until we’re in our 70s and a bare bones life.
But our children? Unfortunately, I don’t see any way they can avoid the day of reckoning, either from massively higher taxes or from the boom being lowered by our creditors deciding the US is no longer a safe bet.