Our First Priority Is Upper-Class Tax Cuts. Our Second Priority Is That There Is No Other Priority.
I think Chait gets the lay of the land right here. What matters to congressional Republicans is low taxes for the wealthy, period. They’ll take cuts to spending for the poor, and they’ll accept cuts to middle class programs if they can blame Democrats for them, but given the choice they would much rather have upper-class tax cuts than cuts to Social Security and Medicare. And Republicans have a “plan” to reduce tax loopholes in the same sense that the Heritage Foundation had a “health care reform” plan.
joe from Lowell:
February 26th, 2013 at 4:25 pm
I’ve already seen people complain that White House proposals to actually close tax loopholes on the wealthy amounts to “adopting Mitt Romney’s plan.”
It’s as if the entire argument about Mitt Romney’s low effective tax rate, the discussion about Warren Buffet paying a lower tax rate than his secretary, and the proposals to get rid of tax breaks for oil companies and off-shoring jobs never existed. Nope, closing tax loopholes that benefit the rich and ultra-rich is now a Republican idea, and those Democrats who propose to do so are sellouts.
Data Tutashkhia:
February 26th, 2013 at 4:25 pm
Nah, discipling the lower orders by cutting their safety net is also a priority. Luckily, they are two complimenting priorities.
JKTHs:
February 26th, 2013 at 4:35 pm
You’re seeing this from the left?
Joshua:
February 26th, 2013 at 4:39 pm
The fact that the GOP doesn’t have a plan is patently obvious, from Boehner’s “Plan B” all the way back to the plan he hashed out with Obama on the golf course.
The GOP’s stance from day one is to reject whatever Obama offers, and then whine about how Obama isn’t working with them or giving them a good plan.
The thing is – look at the Fournier piece we mocked yesterday. It works! The pundit class thinks/propagandizes that Obama isn’t cutting the bullshit enough. The end result – Republicans don’t need to take any hits from trying to sell their shitty, massively unpopular ideas.
NonyNony:
February 26th, 2013 at 4:39 pm
Not a priority. A nice thing if you can get it, but not a priority.
Let’s put it this way – if the Republicans were given these choices:
A) A modest increase in the income tax rate on the wealthy and massive slashing of social security and medicare
OR
B) A tax cut for the wealthiest 1% and a mild increase in spending on social security and medicare
They would pick B every time. It’s a no-brainer for them, while a group that had a priority on cutting the safety net to the bone would take A with the assumption that in post-Reagan America tax increases are easy to roll back while new spending is hard to allocate. So live with A for a year and then start agitating for more tax cuts.
JKTHs:
February 26th, 2013 at 4:43 pm
This absolutely. A lot easier to give shit away and disguise it as helping the middle class than hurt the poors.
howard:
February 26th, 2013 at 4:56 pm
you know, 32 years ago, there was actually a semblance of an argument that marginal tax rates were too high and that cutting them would be beneficial to the economy overall.
i’m not saying it was a great argument, but at least there was something to it.
but now there is no argument at all beyond not hurting the feelings of job creators who might sulk if their taxes go up a little and stop creating jobs.
of all the signs of epistemic closure in the gop, i would say “low taxes for the high income” is the brightest: they no longer even feel like they have to mount a cogent argument.
Warren Terra:
February 26th, 2013 at 4:57 pm
Oh, there are other priorities:
(via)
howard:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:00 pm
pioneering new ideas in voter outreach!
olexicon:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:04 pm
Building that bridge to the 17th Century
Loud Liberal:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:05 pm
No! There was no such economically competent argument.
No! There was no economic justification for it.
Malaclypse:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:14 pm
you know,
3249 years ago, there was actually a semblance of an argument that marginal tax rates were too high and that cutting them would be beneficial to the economy overall.Fixed.
Data Tutashkhia:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:24 pm
Social security and medicare are old-age programs; cutting them will do little to discipline the lower orders.
The only reason to cut social security is to produce again a FICA tax surplus, that is then used to cut taxes on the job-creators.
If I were them, I’d go after the things like minimum wage, medicaid, unemployment insurance. More H1B visas. Stuff like that.
howard:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:27 pm
32 years ago, we didn’t have the work of picketty and saez to suggest that even at 70% it’s hard to find a disincentive effect, so yes, there was an adequate argument economically.
howard:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Mal, i think you mean 51, and yes, the argument was better then.
Shakezula:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:35 pm
[Checks dictionary]
I don’t see any definition of redeem that means “make into bigger dickheads,” so No.
Shakezula:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:42 pm
Both middle fingers extended instead of just one?
I wonder if this came from a number of Examiner (local free neocon rag) articles that went on and on and on about how much D.C. public transit employees make on overtime.
I can see why this might trouble a staunch Republican, as 99.9% of our transit workers are – ahem – obvious Obama supporters.
cpinva:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:46 pm
perhaps there was, for the 30 minutes before reagan then spent us into deficits, with his 600 ship navy, etc.
32 years ago, we didn’t have the work of picketty and saez to suggest that even at 70% it’s hard to find a disincentive effect, so yes, there was an adequate argument economically.
of course, it still boiled down to the obscenely rich getting the bulk of the tax savings, taking them out of circulation in the economy. add to that the slashing of rates on long-term capital gains (for which there was zero economic justification), and it was simply a tax smorgasbord for the wealthy.
joe from Lowell:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:50 pm
Certain quadrants of the left. Not the whole left.
cpinva:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:51 pm
this, on the other hand, he’s diligently working on.
“make into bigger dickheads,”
i must admit, rep. cantor intrigues me. he’s jewish, in an area not well known for being tolerant of non-fundie christians. i guess they figure they got themselves a “smart jew-boy” in congress, so they won’t burn a cross on his front lawn, just yet.
Malaclypse:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:54 pm
I was thinking of this.
Warren Terra:
February 26th, 2013 at 5:55 pm
1) There are apparently already federal laws that make it possible for states (possibly also municipalities) to deny overtime pay (by instead offering comp time)
2) This is of course being spun by the Right as a compassionate, family-friendly creation of flex-time – but money-stretched, status-poor hourly workers typically don’t want flex time, they want money (and many want the stability of a predictable work schedule); and in any case, flex time under such circumstances doesn’t mean freedom to work when you want, it means compulsion to work whatever shifts the boss pleases. And Cantor’s law apparently gives the boss a year or so to come up with the comp time, to boot …
howard:
February 26th, 2013 at 6:39 pm
As a last comment before my plane closes the doors; by and large, high income people get that way from capital gains, not straight income, which is why treating capital gains as ordinary income without special tax treatment should get much more attention than it does on the left.
howard:
February 26th, 2013 at 6:44 pm
You’re right; i was remembering that jfk proposed it in ’62 but forgot it didn’t pass until ’64.
DrDick:
February 26th, 2013 at 7:05 pm
The poor rely on those programs to a much greater extent than others.
djillionsmix:
February 26th, 2013 at 7:37 pm
not enough words in phrase are in quotes
VCarlson:
February 26th, 2013 at 8:41 pm
Way back, in the dim and distant past (early 80s), I was a TX State employee. That was their practice, at least for those of us on salary. Also, the lege would give us new holidays rather than pay raises. So I couldn’t afford to do much, but I had a lot of free time to not do it in.
efgoldman:
February 26th, 2013 at 8:53 pm
Cantor also croaked a compromise that Obama and Orange Satan worked out in the original debt ceiling fight, says Mr. Benen:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/26/17105106-cantors-candid-confession?lite
melior:
February 26th, 2013 at 9:59 pm
Boner might be orange, but he’s a bit late to claim the mantle of Orange Satan.
Blue Meme:
February 26th, 2013 at 10:22 pm
I’m afraid I don’t agree. I think many of these guys are even more rigidly dogmatic about their aversion to the New Deal part of government than they are attached to their own immediate self interest in lower rates.
But it would be awfully easy to find out for sure: The Dems could propose a deal that included a 1% cap gains cut while preserving Social Security and Medicare benefits. If you are right, they would jump at it. It would increase the deficit (by their worldview), but if they don’t care about anything but taxes, so what?
Matt:
February 26th, 2013 at 10:32 pm
For a followup, I assume Cantor’s going to bring a Wal-Mart employee onto the floor of the house and shit on his face before lighting him on fire.
RhZ:
February 26th, 2013 at 11:06 pm
If I were you, I would go after some nice fluffy stacks of pancakes.
DocAmazing:
February 26th, 2013 at 11:17 pm
If that is the whole of the plan, with no actual increase in, say, capital gains taxes, then yes, I’d characterize it as at least less than promised and at least less than necessary.
Data Tutashkhia:
February 27th, 2013 at 2:52 am
Which ones? Anyhow, the purpose, obviously, is not to punish the poor, but to suppress the wages and reduce the bargaining power.
Data Tutashkhia:
February 27th, 2013 at 2:58 am
Thanks, but no thanks: too fattening. Find another companion, but if I were you, I’d pass too.
DrDick:
February 27th, 2013 at 9:52 am
The ones you specifically singled out: Social security and medicare.
DrDick:
February 27th, 2013 at 9:54 am
also, “suppressing wages and reducing bargaining power” is not separate from punishing the poor (and working classes, who ought to be poor in their eyes).
DrDick:
February 27th, 2013 at 9:55 am
The true champions of the common man!
The Road to Neo-Feudalism | camelotkidd:
March 1st, 2013 at 6:38 pm
[...] The Republicans would really like much deeper cuts to non-defense spending. But, truth be told, there is only one thing Republicans care about deeply. [...]