I was away for a couple of weeks and missed the fiscal cliff drama. According to the media and all my liberal friends, Obama routed the republicans and basically turned them into his bitches. I see. I must have misunderstood soemthing. Someone show ne where I went wrong. The democrats have bellyached about the Bush tax cuts for a decade. They caused all our deficits, were unfair, were paid for by screwing the middle class, yadda yadda yadda. So after all this posturing from obama, we get an agreement to make the vast bulk of them permanent. Yeah, couples making $450,000 will see an increase back to the Clinton levels. The only other group getting an increase will be those who pay FICA, as those rates return to their pre-crisis levels. That change only affects those who weren't already maxing outtheir FICA withholding, ie middle and lower incomes. I would guess the over $450k crowd are largely urban professionals, ie Obama voters. The FICA increase probably hit both sides more or less equally. More republicans work and pay FICA but the ones who were actually hit by the increase may be more democrats. To put a cherry on top, republicans now have drawn a line in the sand that taxes are now off the table in any future budget discussions. This extricates them from a sticky political corner they had foolishly painted themselves into, courtesy of Romney and Ryan. Romney's tax reform plan was to slash popular deductions in exchange for rate reductions. obviously, his numbers were bogus and the democrats were never going to agree to rate cuts anyway, but the prospect of losing popular deductions was very real. Now it is off the table. So if this was a big win foir Obama, I can barely wait to see what a defeat looks like.
According to our official P&R troll AK47, "Obama is fucking the republicans". And all this time I thought Obama was fucking the entire country. But I digress, I don't see how anyone "won" the fiscal cliff. Let alone Obamahope.
The last word is that the House won't approve a debt increase until the Senate passes a budget with some spending cuts before the legal deadline on April 15th. (That avoids the dance with the Devil in the White House over spending cuts. Harry Reid can have that dance.) Since it has been 4 years since Harry Reid and company have passed a budget (in violation of federal law), they may not know how to make one. Of course, Obama is required by law to present a budget to Congress for amendment and passage but he has been late (in violation of federal law) with his proposed budgets the last 4 years. And, he says this year he will be late again. I guess he has no respect for U.S. law even though he is the chief protector of the law and swore on a Bible to uphold the Constitution and U.S. laws.
A budget? Now all of a sudden we need a budget? I won't be surprised if we never see a federal budget again. Obama's "legacy" if you will.
Yeah, then the clouds move in, the ceiling comes down and you fly into the side of a mountain. Just like we are about to do.
I wonder why the majority of republicans in The House voted against the fiscal cliff deal if they were getting the better of it
A win is if something gets done with an obstructionist Repubican party. Bad tax policy to raise taxes just for the rich. They should raise taxes on the middle and lower middle classes (Bums are getting a free ride), scrap the farm bill, cut food stamps in half, make welfare an emergency measure only and not a way of life, cut the defense budget by 50%, bring back the BEOG, repeal the dangerous substances act, eliminate the DEA, repeal the asset forfeiture act, quintuple funding for the NEA, repeal the prescription drug care act BUsh passed, repeal the idiotic No Child Left Behind act, and pass a new stimulus bill. And lower the corporate tax rate and devise a sensible tax structure that encourages the corporations to repatriate the foreign holdings and stop using foreign entities as tax loopholes. And raise the estate tax deduction to 100 million. After 16 (maybe 24) years of divisive figures in the White House let's hope we can get a moderate effective manager in the Oval Office who can realize my policy prescriptions.