Tax Hike Coming!

[Howey]

No...not for the rich, they're protected. Republicans will soon be pushing for a tax hike for middle class Americans!

News flash: Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes. Impossible, right? GOP lawmakers are so virulently anti-tax, surely they will fight to prevent a payroll tax increase on virtually every wage-earner starting Jan. 1, right?

Apparently not.

Many of the same Republicans who fought hammer-and-tong to keep the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts from expiring on schedule are now saying a different "temporary" tax cut should end as planned. By their own definition, that amounts to a tax increase.

[ekg]

The tax break extension they oppose is sought by President Barack Obama.

well there's the problem right there isn't it?

[Howey]

well there's the problem right there isn't it?

I do believe we have a winnah!

Like everything else the Prez has grudgingly supported in order to do something this was originally a Republican idea, waaay back in 2009:

You may recall that a payroll tax break or "holiday" was a Republican proposal back in 2009. Conservatives liked the idea then in lieu of a tax credit. The Weekly Standard's Matt Continetti explained the reasoning:


The payroll tax hits 60 percent of Americans, including anybody who runs a business. Cutting it would be fast, easy, and effective. Where a tax credit is complicated and invites rent-seeking, a tax cut is transparent. Last December, AEI's John H. Makin calculated that if the payroll tax were suspended for 12 to 18 months, personal discretionary income would rise by 3.5 percent. Workers would have fatter paychecks to spend. The increase in consumption would spur demand. Meanwhile, since the payroll tax also hits employers, a reduction would lower the cost of hiring additional workers. Another way to go would be not to suspend the tax, but to reduce it--permanently.


Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Orin Hatch (R-Utah), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and others have proposed some form of tax payroll holiday or reduction. According to a GOP House leadership advisor, more than half the Republican House caucus has gone on record at some point supporting a reduction in, or suspension of, the payroll tax.

In 2009, the White House rebuffed the idea, preferring its grab bag of stimulus spending programs. But things change. Elections have consequences. And just as the president snared the Republicans' plan for a freeze on public employee salaries, the White House now counts the payroll tax cut among its "gets."

[Howey]

Expect this to become a HUGE Democratic talking point...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-will-raise-taxes--on-the-middle-class-and-working-poor/2011/08/23/gIQAEDJuZJ_story.html

America’s presumably anti-tax party wants to raise your taxes. Come January, the Republicans plan to raise the taxes of anyone who earns $50,000 a year by $1,000, and anyone who makes $100,000 by $2,000.

Their tax hike doesn’t apply to income from investments. It doesn’t apply to any wage income in excess of $106,800 a year. It’s the payroll tax that they want to raise — to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent of your paycheck, a level established for one year in December’s budget deal at Democrats’ insistence. Unlike the capital gains tax, or the low tax rates for the rich included in the Bush tax cuts, or the carried interest tax for hedge fund operators (which is just 15 percent), the payroll tax chiefly hits the middle class and the working poor.

And when taxes come chiefly from the middle class and the poor, all those anti-tax right-wingers have no problem raising them.

[ekg]

Expect this to become a HUGE Democratic talking point...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-will-raise-taxes--on-the-middle-class-and-working-poor/2011/08/23/gIQAEDJuZJ_story.html

funny how they fought so hard to extend the millionaire-tax cut but want the tax cut that affects the most 'working people' to to go away...

how many more things like that will it take for the 'common man' to realize that these people are not on their side? How much more will it take for the 'common man' to get that while 'one day' they may be Steve Jobs, in reality that just isn't in the cards for them so these policies actually hurt them right here, right now and for many years to come? This is the most exasperating of all things 'politics'.. this, watching people side with that which actually hurt them in the hopes that when it all comes down around them they'll be saved due to their party-loyalty or skin color or job position or whatever the reason it is they think it will only affect 'those' people..

[uselesslegs]

Well Kell, we've talked before and now it seems we've been proven out.  Hard core Republicans and Tea Partiers view their party dynamics a bit differently.  They approach their ideology, the same way they approach their belief in God, religiously.  So when you intertwine how you view religion, with how you view your politics/ideology...these particular types have a very difficult time (if not impossible) adjusting to shortcomings or policy that they should question. 

They can't do it, it's like breaking a covenant.  How can they dare to question something they have deep belief in?  Their reality, and how they "need" it to be, is "almost" inflexible (for many, it is) because they view everything in absolutes.  "We care about the working class and we need them to pay more in taxes, while we want the wealthiest to pay less in taxes", doesn't carry any conflict for them...they can dismiss it because they've accepted a reality that voids conflicts that questions their reality, their beliefs...and by reality I mean everything from stereotypes, rhetoric, talking points, to actual reality.

[Howey]

How can they dare to question something they have deep belief in?  Their reality, and how they "need" it to be, is "almost" inflexible (for many, it is) because they view everything in absolutes.

We've seen this philosophy from lilMike for years. One woman lies about being raped, hence all women lie about being raped. One person lies in order to get food stamps, hence all people on food stamps are liars.

The mentality of intransigence was established by and developed by the neocon mindset of Dubya and Cheney, then further intensified by the fundamentalist Christians who view their bible as the only bible. One muslim burns an American flag, hence all muslims are jihadists. One crazed evangelical burns down an abortion clinic, hence all terrorists are muslims.

Oh.

Wait.