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The Spectacle Blog
There is growing conservative opposition to the tax cut deal, to the point that some are speculating the Tea Party will punish Republicans who vote yes. Of the Republican senators who voted against the deal, only George Voinovich has a history of voting against tax cuts. The rest were conservatives like Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint.
The trouble is the deficit spending that has been included to win Democratic votes: an unfunded unemployment extension, an ethanol boondoggle, and other government goodies. In return, President Obama and the ever-malleable former President Bill Clinton swallowed their bogus opposition to foregone revenues from the tax cuts. But here is the problem: if something isn’t done by the end of the year, tax rates will rise across the board. This will be difficult to fix retroactively and any solution after that will wreak havoc on withholding tables.
The Bush tax cuts were tarnished from the beginning because they were unaccompanied by spending restraint, cluttered with Keynesian rather than supply-side provisions, and a temporary rather than permanent. These problems largely remain. Congress is likely to extend the tax cuts for now. Will the new House majority try to fix these problems later?
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More Blog Posts by W. James Antle, III
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/12/14/conservatives-against-the-tax
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Al Adab| 12.14.10 @ 1:08PM
When one sees the number of line items (earmarks?) attached to this tax rate bill, one wonders what the Democrats think the voters are made of. Were we to eliminate non-germain riders and have a simple up or down vote on tax rates, we might just learn who stands where.
Curly Smith| 12.14.10 @ 1:31PM
Politics is said to be the art of the possible.
The Reagan tax cuts were "impossible". The George W. Bush tax cuts were "impossible". Decreasing the size and scope of government is "impossible".
The George H.W. Bush tax increases were "possible". The Clinton tax increases were "possible". The Obama tax increases are "possible". Increasing the size and scope of government is "possible".
That odd... everything that empowers the people is "impossible" while everything that empowers government is "possible". So if politics is the art of the possible, and "the possible" empowers government, then politics is really the art of empowering government.
Casey Abell| 12.14.10 @ 1:46PM
Yep, Repub senators are real likely to get "punished" by a tax deal that has about 3-to-1 support among GOP voters and among self-identified conservatives.
Wayne | 12.14.10 @ 2:32PM
Just wait till January. What's the rush?
John Valentinetti| 12.14.10 @ 4:38PM
Wasn't the Clinton tax increases retroactive? Just wait. And if the 10% withholding goes to 15% for a few weeks, it might just wake people up. (maybe they'll like them too!)
PattyMor| 12.14.10 @ 4:47PM
Look folks, Mitch McConnell folded quicker than a cheap date after a glass of wine. The election meant nothing to them, its business as usual. All the promises to be conservative was "just words".
He must have wanted this deal cut BEFORE the conservatives arrived. Plain and simple.
Clint| 12.14.10 @ 4:58PM
Why Jim DeMint opposes Obama’s Tax Deal.
"For starters, it includes approximately $200 billion in new deficit spending and stimulus gimmicks. That’s a lot of money that will have to be borrowed from China and repaid by our children and grandchildren. If we’re going to increase spending on new programs, we must reduce other spending to pay for it.
The bill also only extends rates for two years. We don’t have a temporary economy so we shouldn’t have temporary tax rates. Individuals and businesses make decisions looking at the long-term and we’re not going to create jobs without giving people certainty as to what their taxes will be in future.
The bill also fails to extend all of the tax rates. It actually increases the death tax from its current rate of zero percent all the way up to 35 percent. One economic study shows that this tax increase alone will kill over 800,000 jobs over the next ten years.
Finally, the bill now includes dozens of earmarks for special interests, including ethanol subsidies, tax breaks for film and television producers, give aways for Puerto Rican rum manufacturers, favors for auto racing track owners, and a hand out for businesses in American Samoa."
JASmius | 12.14.10 @ 6:04PM
The Tea Parties want a huge tax hike that will trigger another stock market crash and at least a double-dip recession? My, but they've "grown" in a very short period of time.
Maybe instead they should learn a few things:
1) How to prioritize - stopping this tax hike is the overriding priority *right now*; pork-busting can be attacked with gusto in the next Congress.
2) How to look beyond the end of their noses - sure, the porking-up stinks, but it's an unsavory means to a vitally necessary end. Are the TPers really going to go on a fratricidal rampage in '12 because Republicans did what had to be done to spare the country the 21st century Smoot-Hawley tariff?
3) Some desperately needed perspective - for all the ground the GOP regained in the midterms, they've only regained the House; the Dems still hold the Senate and the White House. That makes them very relevant, no matter how much we wish it were otherwise. Republicans cannot steamroll Obama just because of one successful election and truth, justice, and the American way being on their side. Look what happened to the last GOP House Speaker who forgot that little detail.
I, for one, do not like the direction the Tea Parties have taken since the Delaware debacle. They're getting almost as reflexively ideological as their left-wing counterparts, and that will become just as politically counterproductive if they don't learn to distinguish between principles and the tactics sometimes necessary to advance them.
Clint| 12.14.10 @ 9:21PM
"The deal" was forged in secret, without consultation with the scores of new representatives and senators who campaigned on a much different agenda much less with their supporters and contributors who worked for two years and gave vast sums of money so that a new start could be made, one built on transparency and principle.
"The deal" like Obamacare, isn't reduced to writing even now, when Senator Reid says a vote could be held on Saturday. Like Obamacare, we are being told we will have to pass the bill to find out what is in it.
"The deal" revives the death tax, an immoral "vampire tax" that sucks the blood from the dead, ruins family businesses and double taxes savings that were accumulated over a lifetime. It took ten years of gradual step downs to eliminate the tax, and now "the deal" revives it at 35% with a $5 million dollar exemption, a rate that looks and feels permanent and which will immediately impact tens of thousands of families in 2011 and when inflation works its way into the system, thousands more over time. The GOP has spent years making the case against the death tax on moral and economic grounds, and in the course of a weekend of secret meetings, it gave that issue away.
"The deal" spends billions and billions of dollars that the country does not have in order to prevent a tax hike that the country voted against. In essence the GOP bribed the president to follow the will of the people. There is at least $75 billion in new spending in the plan, agreed to by the GOP less than 5 weeks after the country fairly screamed "Stop Spending Our Children's Money!"
On September 23, all of the House GOP leadership agreed to the "Pledge to America ." A photo op was arranged at the Tart Lumber store in Sterling, Virginia, and the senior leaders of the would-be majority, with their shirt sleeves rolled up, took the pledge and asked America for the majority back. There are at least five provisions of the Pledge that are breached by "the deal." In September the House GOP promised to:
"Permanently Stop All Job-Killing Tax Hikes" (p. 16) "Act immediately to Reduce Spending" (p. 21) "Cut Government Spending to Pre-Stimulus, Pre-Bailout Levels" (p. 21) "Read the Bill" (p. 33) "Advance Legislative Issues One at a Time" (p. 33)
"The deal's" assault on "The Pledge" will make the latter a joke, and instantly impacts the credibility of all future efforts to propose agendas to the electorate.
The idea that this massive tax and spend bill has not yet even been written but may be voted on by the Senate this weekend is appalling, and has rightfully drawn the anger of the TeaPartyPatriots.org and other Tea Party activists, an anger that will not diminish. "
Bobby Fontaine | 12.17.10 @ 2:41PM
Ethanol: First Big Challenge for the Tea Party
http://www.americanchronicle.c.....iew/204172