Were you against the Bush taxcuts of 2001 and 2003?

[kentuck]

Why?

Were you supportive of the recent vote to make 99% of the Bush taxcuts permanent? Why?

Of course, times changes and we have to change with the times. In what ways do you think the Democratic Party has changed since 2001 and 2003?

Do you believe these changes are permanent and what does it foretell for the future of this country?

Or is this something you simply haven't thought about or care about?

[Buzz Clik]

1. 99%? Hyperbole much?

[kentuck]

4. Where is that hyperbole?

Is that not a fact??

[Buzz Clik]

5. No.

I'm done here. We dislike each other intensely, and this conversation has nowhere to go.

[kentuck]

11. correction:

I do not dislike you intensely. You speak for yourself.

[Buzz Clik]

12. Yes, I do.

I find you to be annoying as hell with almost nothing to offer to any conversation.

Considering the number of awful insults you've leveled at me, I find it impossible to believe that you are neutral. I do, however, find it completely possible that you would be dishonest simply to make a point.

[donco]

15. Then why

did you click onto this thread?

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. May I suggest the ignore feature?

[hfojvt]

37. actually it isn't

about 85% of the Bush tax cuts were made permanent at least according to CTJ's analysis.

That's a vast majority of them, and like the originals, the extension hugely favors the rich.

But it is not 99%.

But I don't know why BC couldn't have said that.

[think]

2. Cutting taxes while going to war was a recipe for disaster.

Until the budget is balanced I consider no tax cuts permanent and open to be changed. There may be no time line for the tax cuts passed but new tax rates can be enacted if congress is willing.

To be clear I am more in favor of having a balanced budget without raising taxes. But if it is necessary and the military and security spending is not abated then raise the taxes on those that benefit from our imperialistic military aspirations. CORPORATIONS and the wealthy elite.....

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. ^^^^___^^^^^ this

[DogPawsBiscuitsNGrav]

36. Beautifully said. Let those who benefit from the wars pay their fair share of the taxes. I have

No problem paying for roads, EMS, teachers, the sick or the elderly and so on because they benefit all of us. The police have become militarized and more a danger than a help, especially given they rarely get there till after the fact. Another words, I agree, but would also add for our safety we can afford a few cuts to the police dept also.I don't need or want heavily armed Humvee's or drones in my neighborhood.

[hfojvt]

38. How do you ever expect Congress to be willing?

We could not even get 60 votes for cloture to reduce the tax cuts for the rich from $1.2 trillion down to a "mere" $600 billion.

We could not get that last December except for the fact that the $1.2 trillion was going to happen unless Republicans gave ground.

Without that leverage where do you see 60 votes coming from in the Senate? And even with Obama's fairly substantial victory in the Presidency, we could not re-take the House. When are we gonna be able to re-take the House?

[think]

44. Congress may never be willing. But if they chose to they could.

That's all I meant by stating that. I do not foresee this happening with the current congress but one ever knows what the future holds.

One way or another the deficit will need to be dealt with.....

[RandiFan1290]

3. It shows me that corporate $ has pushed both parties further right

I once saw a speech by a member of the Heritage Foundation on CSPAN. The guy was going through a list of their accomplishments and giving most of the credit to Democrats. He said they just have to wait about 10 years and "dems" would help them get everything they wanted. By that time they are already working on moving the goal posts even further to the right.
And the beat goes on

[CrispyQ]

16. +1

In 2010 John Kerry said this about climate bill talks: “We believe we have compromised significantly, and we’re prepared to compromise further.” It's the democratic party platform.




I don't know how much longer I can continue to vote a straight democratic party ticket. The lesser of two evils thing isn't working out.

[Historic NY]

6. Yes, I said at the time the government was giving away the rainy day money...

I was pretty vocal about it at work. The general reply was what they were going to do with the 300 or 600 dollar checks. A few said I could give them mine. My final reply was those tax rebates and cuts are going to come back to haunt us in a very big way. Was I right?

[think]

8. Yes. You were correct. /nt

[Historic NY]

34. I believe the second one sealed our fate.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/bush-tax-cut-mythology/

[LonePirate]

7. Yes. We had a huge debt still to pay down when those cuts were enacted.

If we had no debt at the time, I might have been more supportive of the cuts.

[ThomThom]

18. yes me too

then they started two wars and didn't pay for them either and here we are with not enough money to build a death star

[JaneyVee]

9. Personally, I think it's a terrible economic move to defund our revenue sources when preparing to

spend trillions of dollars. Its like asking your boss for a salary pay cut just as you're about to purchase a home & raise a family.

[unblock]

10. i opposed the original cuts BECAUSE the benefit went disproportionately to the top

so making it permanent for except for the top part is much better in my book.


having said that, i'm a firm believer that tax (as well as spending) policy should adjust with economic times. the early shrub years seemed a great time to actually run a surplus and reduce our total debt, so any tax cut was unnecessary and stupid, but if we were to have a tax cut, it should at least be fair, and the shrub cuts weren't. in part because the rich got too much, in part because non-taxpayers were left out, in part because there were far better uses for the money.


today, the economy is more fragile, and some taxes were going (back) up anyway (payroll taxes & obamacare/medicare taxes for the rich) so making ALL the shrub cuts expire would have been too much for the economy to handle. given that, letting them finally expire for the rich only is pretty good.


as for the notion of "permanent", this is an odd artificial term for tax policy. tax policy has been written and rewritten scores of times since its inception and policy nothing was ever considered "permanent". we only talk about this concept now in contrast to the "temporary" shrub cuts because they had a sunset provision. but all tax policy only lasts until the next congress decides to mess around with it, and tax policy is something congress and presidents love to tax about and mess around with.

so this will change. nothing in tax policy is permanent.

[kentuck]

13. +1

Well said. Nothing is permanent except....

[hfojvt]

40. except they did not expire for the rich

the rich, the top 1% still get $600 billion in tax CUTS over ten years.

Not tax increases - tax CUTS.

It is being called a tax increase because their original $1.2 trillion tax cut was reduced to a "mere" $600 billion. http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022130101

[Sekhmets Daughter]

17. Yes, I was against those tax cuts....

because I knew, even back then, it was simply a way to further cripple the New Deal.

There is no Democratic Party any longer, there is simply a socially liberal branch of the Republican Party. I became a Democrat after Reagan's first term as it was quite apparent we were heading into unsustainable debt. I believed the Democratic Party was the fiscally responsible party, willing to pay for what it wanted. And then we elected Clinton, whose only positive legacy is Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg and Justice Stephen Breyer. Triangulation, NAFTA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley...disasters all.

It is impossible to fund, long term, the New Deal or Medicare and Medicaid with our current revenue stream. While we can realistically cut the DOD budget, we can't cut it by enough to continue long term funding for our social safety net agenda. I am always amused by Democrats who wonder how middle class Americans "can vote against their own interests" by voting for Republicans while never asking how they themselves can be so silly as to believe they can have their desires fulfilled by only increasing taxes on the rich. There is not enough money for investment in research, infrastructure updating and education. When Dems fail to recognize the reality of money, as individuals, and their politicians are so dishonest as to avoid running on increasing taxes in order to rebuild the nation and it's economy, it pretty much spells doom for those programs so loved by the people. We can't have our cake and eat it too.

We shall muddle along, very much in the manner of California, until services have been cut to the bone and people are finally willing to accept increased taxes. But in order for that to happen, people need to be making living wages.... You tell me, how likely is that?

[tjwash]

19. Of course I was. I knew Bush was installed by the corporate owned SC for 2 purposes.

The first was to whack income taxes down to the point that companies like GE, and EXXON not only pay no taxes, but get refunds on top of it.

The second was to invade Iraq, oust Hussein and install a puppet dictatorship to control the oil in the region. The conspiracy theorist in me really wants to think they were positioning themselves to use the permanent bases in Iraq as a staging point to invade Iran so they could get their grubby mitts on the 6.4 million barrels per day that Iran produces (they are the 3rd largest oil producer in the world), but fortunately, they could not buy the 2012 election like they were trying so hard to. That's the real reason KKKKarl Rove was freaking out so much on election night over Ohio.

[Bluenorthwest]

21. You mean the only two wartime tax cuts in history? Yeah, it did not take much wisdom to see

the folly in that concept.

[CJCRANE]

23. Middle class tax cuts increase demand.

Tax cuts for the rich do not.

[Arkansas Granny]

24. Yes, I was against them. I thought that depleting our surplus was a bad idea

, for starters. Then I wondered how it would work to cut income and increase spending by financing a war. That kind of logic doesn't work with my budget. It helped get GWB re-elected, so I guess he considered it a good bargain.

[LisaLynne]

25. All he cared about was getting re-elected, I think.

Or maybe it was some far-reaching plan by the GOP to get rid of the surplus so we would have this huge deficit that they could then use as leverage to cut social spending.

[Arkansas Granny]

27. GWB had to be re-elected so he could show Poppy

what a big man he was. He used everything he could think of, including lies, fear and greed.

[LisaLynne]

28. Yeah, that is true.

I think that was how they got him to run for Pres and it may well have been his only motivation.

[hfojvt]

42. it put more trillions into the hands of his base

the have mores

THAT was the whole poiint of being elected and re-elected to help the rich get richer.

Of course, Obama seems to mostly be doing the exact same thing.

Change we can believe in.

[dkf]

26. Against against against.

We could have extended it a short time more with a phase in, but this country needs all those funds or a whole lot of really drastic cuts.

I am realistic enough to know I need to pay more taxes and I support having a country that is economically strong, not deficit ridden.

[davekriss]

29. Absolutely against

They were a 10 year, 2 trillion dollar giveaway, over 60% going to the top 1%.

I understood then (and posted about it) that it was a reverse Robinhood gimmick, a transfer of wealth from the many to the few, a rapacious additional appropriation of the value we all create. I understood then that, as a result of these tax cuts the already powerful would seek to cut programs we all benefit from - primarily Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid - in order to preserve their new tax advantaged circumstances. And that is exactly what is happening.

No, I am not at all pleased that we've made "permanent" the Bush tax cuts for the 99%. Mostly I am unhappy that dividends and capital gains continue to get preferred treatment over earned income. The game is rigged, even if we did get a small concession on earned incomes over 400,000 - a whopping 4.6 point increase in the marginal tax rates. And I acknowledge that capital gains rise from 15% to 23.8% on high income earners. But it is not enough.

The problem is REVENUE, not spending. Tax revenue has fallen to 15.9% of GDP. It was around 20% in the healthy Clinton years.

[librabear]

31. I don't know that this is a fair comparison

The economy was booming in the clinton years. It's in a recession now. regardless of tax rates you would expect revenue to be down, because businesses aren't as profitable and stocks aren't earning as much money. I don't see a huge effect of the president or tax policies on this chart - I can see the recession of the 1980's, the boom of the 1990's, the recession in the early 2000's and maybe the tax cut, although then revenue went way back up without a change in tax policy.

[Chathamization]

30. Against them then and against them now.

Making them permanent now is going to cost ~$3.6 trillion. This is going to lead to cuts. In order to save someone making $50k a year $126 a month, we're going to be making people unemployed, or cutting Medicare, or services to the poor.

Keep in mind that even a fraction of the cost of these tax cuts would be enough to create a massive stimulus program that would repair our infrastructure and solve our unemployment program.

Terrible, just terrible.

[hughee99]

32. How many were in favor of them in 2010?

When they were called "tax relief that will protect the middle class, that will grow our economy, and will create jobs for the American people."

[Turbineguy]

33. I can't recall anything that Bush did

that I was in favor of. Except perhaps the "do-not-call" registry. Which also never seemed to work very well.

[Gothmog]

35. Yes

I thought that the 2003 cut on dividends was really stupid. The double taxation argument is really weak. Taxation of dividend is not really double taxation and caused the tax code to become more regressive.

It is always dumb to cut taxes during any war much less two wars. It is clear that these tax cuts were really dumb

[Zoeisright]

39. Of course.

Anyone with a brain and more than a rock for a heart was against them.

[struggle4progress]

41. Yes. Because. No. No, and dunno. Not applicable

[Maeve]

43. Yes--after working so hard for a surplus, it was being flushed away

And it was being given disproportionately to the well-off.

No tax cut is "permanent"--and I think the proportions are still off. The tax structure still needs overhauled, but I doubt this Congress can do it (opposite of 'progress', as the joke goes...)

Nothing is permanent, especially in politics. That said, I think the party spokes-critters may be finding their feet and backbones moreso than during the Bush years. But then, I'm an optimist.

[Egalitarian Thug]

45. Yes, because it was apparent then, as it is even more apparent now, that we had not addressed

the systemic failures built into this new plutonomy.

No, same reasons.

It has become the republican party. It stands for nothing anymore, it adheres to no principle beyond "whatever it take to win this election".

Permanent, as I believe you are using it, is a relative term. I think this is the way things will be for the foreseeable future, and our society will continue to bifurcate continuing the steady escalation of violence.

[Ken Burch]

46. Worthwhile questions...and you'll get tons of blowback.

[TheKentuckian]

47. No, always against. I do favor a permanent reduction for the bottom bracket

because those that are obligated to pay get hammered and have shit. I'd actually even further reduce it to as little as 5%. Those folks will be slaughtered when the tithes to insurance cartel kick in and are most likely to not have coverage at work and be obligated.

There may be some case for maybe keeping down the next bracket too with little loss in revenue but that really should be it and better they all go back up than really most of what they did, any thing over about 80k/150k mark is crazy and that is accounting for high cost areas rather heavily considering I make less than half that and think I should go back. I wouldn't love it, moneywise but it wouldn't be hellish or anything.