The New Republic

I feel sure the Republican leadership is just casting around for the next issue to hold America hostage on, to DEMAND further concessions to their Voodoo-Economics. This is a pattern we've seen before. Republicans make verbal proposals to compromise, make verbal claims toward economic recovery, enhanced productivity, a more balanced budget, willingness to agree. Then they pull the rug out when they claim they can't agree, by "recovery" they mean more tax-cuts, by "balanced" they mean entitlement cuts, by "compromise" they mean "our way or the highway". And it's all the Democrat's fault for draconian requirements, like any tax increase. We're just seeing the first steps right now.

- AllanL5

November 30, 2011 at 2:28pm

Consistency is apparently something Republicans only demand of Democrats, and then only when they're using it to bash them for inconsistency.

- AllanL5

November 30, 2011 at 3:04pm

Payroll tax cut vs. income tax cut should have been the debate coducted last year. That debate cannot occur this year because the income tax cut (i.e., the Bush tax cut extension) is already in place, so repeal of it (partial or total) would be a tax increase not a tax cut. Indeed, I don't believe the debate can be framed in such a way that could be politically helpful to Democrats; last year, absolutely it could have been so framed, but not this year. Senator Casey's payroll tax cut proposal includes a requirement that an amount equal to the payroll tax cut be transferred from the general fund to the social security trust fund, but he doesn't specify the offsetting spending reduction from, or revenue increase to, the general fund. The general fund already owes the trust fund over $2.6 trillion. Of course, what this highlights is that the distinction between income taxes and payroll taxes is a fiction, the former being the tax imposed mostly on upper income folks and the latter being the tax imposed mostly on lower to middle income folks, with tax receipts shifted around only as a bookkeeping entry. Unfortunately for lower to middle income folks, it's only the payroll tax that has seen sharp increases over the past 30 years, with cuts occurring only in the income tax. Last year provided a perfect opportunity to educate the public about the fiction. An opportunity missed.

- rayward

November 30, 2011 at 3:13pm

To broaden it beyond the take of the ideologues, people demand consistency of other people more often than they do of themselves.

- liberalref

November 30, 2011 at 4:06pm

AllanL5 "Consistency is apparently something Republicans only demand of Democrats" Don't you know, when Senator Kyl said: "we didn't need a payroll tax cut," he did "not intend it as a factual statement." It is hard to be inconsistent if what you announce to the world is "not intended to be a factual statement." Try it at home. See how that works?

- Nusholtz

November 30, 2011 at 5:44pm