Here's what you do about the Bush Tax cuts

[scheming daemons]

Nothing.

Let them expire.

Let January 1 come and the rates go up.


Then.... after the new congress is sworn in....


Calmly introduce a bill to restore the tax cuts for the first $250,000 that a family earns. Make it retroactive to January 1st, so that the sense of urgency is gone. Do this in the Senate, where the Dems will still hold a majority and control the legislative agenda.

Bring it up to a vote. Dare the Republicans to vote against it.

When they do.... bring it up for a vote again.

As the year gets later and later, the American people will start to get more and more impatient with the Republicans in the Senate for blocking tax cuts.

Finally, enough of them will cave, and it will pass the Senate.


Now the House will have to take up the bill. If the House is Democratic, not an issue. If it is Republican, then Speaker Boehner has a conundrum.

Does he stand in the way of tax cuts for 97% of the American public?

Will he be able to prevent enough Republicans from breaking off and joining with Democrats to support it? If he holds the GOP caucus together at this point, he loses with the American people. If he doesn't, then he loses power in the House because he can't control his own caucus. Either way, it is a win for us.



....and... if the Republicans manage to succeed in blocking the tax cuts for the whole year... two very positive things happen:

1. The public will blame the GOP when April 15, 2012 comes around (just in time for the election year) and their tax bill has gone up.

2. The deficit for Fiscal Year 2010 will decrease dramatically, since the greater tax receipts - coinciding with a growing economy - end up helping the federal balance sheets.




So... Dems in congress.... the solution for the next several months is something you've all become way too comfortable doing for the past couple years:


Do. Nothing.


You're good at that.


This time, it is just what the doctor ordered.

[Duer 157099]

1. Kick and a big fucking REC!

:thumbsup:

[blondeatlast]

2. Doing nothing seems like a win-win for the country, even if the effects are a way off.

k/r

[Warpy]

3. I was relatively low income when those cuts came in

and I have to say I didn't notice them at all. Likely it would be the same couple of dollars a week if they went back up and I were at that income.

Hiking them back up would "hurt" a little more now, of course, but not as much as seeing government programs starved to fatten billionaires.

I won't weep if they all end, but I do know some of the child credits and tuition credits are necessary for parents. Those need to be revisited and passed in the next Congress, at the very least.

What we are most likely to see is all the cuts expiring at once, the GOP refusing to budge on those plutocrat cuts, holding the sensible ones hostage to them, and the Democrats refusing to join them in sufficient numbers to bankrupt the country.

I'm quite ready for that. I'm quite ready to pay another couple of thousand a year if it means keeping the government more solvent. I'm especially ready if it reinstitutes the inheritance tax. The last thing this country needs is a moneyed aristocracy. My ancestors fled Europe to escape just that.

[MannyGoldstein]

4. K&R - And hopefully Obama would hammer the Rethugs on this1

at every turn.

[tavalon]

5. Yep, do nothing

They're damn good at doing that and this is a case where it makes sense.

[glinda]

6. K & R n/t

[Marr]

7. Yes, that is the common sense solution-- if you actually want to end the cuts for the wealthy.

That is not, however, the path they seem to be taking. Personally, I think the Democratic leadership, Obama included, is trying to maneuver itself into a 'compromising position', from which they can claim they had to keep the tax cuts for the wealthy in order to maintain the comparatively paltry middle class tax cuts.

[unblock]

8. except that the congressional mix changes january 3

if we only have 52 seats, we might have trouble getting even a simple majority among democrats for just about anything, knowing the way blue dogs are....

[BzaDem]

9. The problem is that a majority of the Senate will want to extend all the tax cuts.

You'll have a larger Republican minority, plus Lieberman, Nelson, etc.