TIMOTHY NOAH DECEMBER 2, 2011
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I'm trying hard not to blame myself. How many Republicans even read the New Republic? But after I wrote that
a.) the GOP payroll-tax cut was something Democrats can and should work with;
and
b.) that same GOP payroll-tax cut made mincemeat of Republicans' own arguments about taxing "job creators"
the Republicans ended up voting against their own counterproposal on the Senate floor. By this I don't mean that an insufficient number of Republicans supported the GOP plan to put it over the top. (That would have been impossible, since no Democrats voted for it.) I mean that an outright majority of Republicans voted against their own plan. Twenty Republicans voted for the plan; 26 voted against, with Sen. John McCain (R., AZ) not voting.
But wait, as the kids say: It gets weird! One of the GOP nays was the second-highest-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, Minority Whip John Kyl, R.-AZ, who I guess is unwilling to back away from his impolitic comment five days ago on Fox News Sunday that "the payroll tax holiday has not stimulated job creation" because only tax cuts for wealthy job creators can achieve that. Which I guess displays a certain kind of stubborn integrity under the twin pressures of common sense and political expediency. Also voting against the GOP proposal were Republican conference chair Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) and Republican policy committee chair John Thune (R., S.D.). Indeed, the only member of the Senate leadership whom Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R.-KY, could get to support the "GOP plan" was Republican conference vice-chair Sen. John Barrasso (R., WY). That's gotta hurt.
I might add that the "GOP plan" failed even after Grover Norquist, all-powerful president of Americans For Tax Reform, came out in favor of it. Though subsequently this high priest of the antitax cult, amid much burning of incense and scrutinizing of goat entrails, pronounced to a gathering of trembling GOP supplicants in the House that it is "inaccurate" to "say not continuing a temporary tax cut is an increase." Vote for the GOP proposal; don't vote for the GOP proposal. The shaman is seldom so inscrutable.
We pretty much knew in advance that both the Obama proposal (which extends and expands the existing payroll-tax cut and pays for it with a surtax on millionaires) and the GOP proposal (which merely extends the payroll tax cut and pays for it with, among other things, a surtax on millionaires disguised as a Medicare benefit cut) would fail on the Senate floor. And so they did. After that, I expected the two sides would have little difficulty arriving at a deal. The Democratic plan "failed" by winning a majority vote (we used to call that victory) that was nine votes shy of the 60 necessary to halt the Republicans' de rigeur filibuster. Every Senate Republican voted against the measure save Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. (Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin, W.-VA, and Jon Tester, D.-Mont., also voted against. So, bizarrely, did the independent socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats.) The Republican plan failed the old-fashioned way, 78-20, with the aforementioned McCain and also Sen. John Kerry (D.-MA) not voting.
At this moment the common wisdom appears to be that a deal on the payroll tax remains likely. But now the reason isn't that the two sides are reasonably close, as they seemed yesterday. It's because the Republicans have been made to look so unbelievably pathetic. The deal will be a different deal, very possibly one more favorable to the Democrats. Though the mildly favorable job figures released this morning (unemployment fell from 9 to 8.6 percent) may reduce ever so slightly the sense of urgency, I think the GOP will probably have to do something on payroll taxes (and, one hopes, jobless benefits too) to escape looking like they're incapable of cutting taxes except for the rich. In the meantime, pull up a chair and watch them suffer.
Update, 3 p.m.: I neglected to mention yet another member of the GOP Senate leadership who declined to support the "GOP bill": John Cornyn, R.-TX, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Cornyn is mentioned in an excellent Politico story about McConnell's humiliation by Scott Wong and Manu Raju.
16 comments
I got everything you said, Tim, except the prognosis ... why do you think that this means that any deal now would be more favorable to Democrats?
- NR409654
December 2, 2011 at 12:37pm
Yeah, I wasn't sure about that part of the analysis either.
- maxhencke
December 2, 2011 at 12:42pm
The Republican Party at "work" would be a comedy, it if weren't a tragedy for the nation.
- liberalref
December 2, 2011 at 12:55pm
I've been watching this, without being able to add anything. It seemed like a Trojan Horse, like a bait-and-switch scam, that the Republicans would offer then pull back at the last minute. Well, we got the pull-back part, anyway. And it's SO nice that Norquist said what he said. I suppose that won't apply to letting the Bush tax-cuts expire, I've already heard that described as "the largest tax increase in history", but maybe they'll lower the rhetoric on that now. No? Probably not. Now why Norquist even HAS this power over so many elected officials is still awfully suspect. Undemocratic, even. For that matter, it's even un-Republican.
- AllanL5
December 2, 2011 at 1:18pm
We can only hope that, when the time comes to deal with the Bush tax cuts, everyone remembers that Oracle of K Street has declared that the failure to continue a temporary tax cut does not constitute a tax increase. Or, did Norquist only mean that with regard to tax cuts that benefit working Americans?
- EDLWOLF@ALUMNI.BROWN.EDU
December 2, 2011 at 1:23pm
"It's because the Republicans have been made to look so unbelievably pathetic." I thought that ship sailed awhile back...
- jpell64
December 2, 2011 at 1:24pm
TN is far closer to the politics than I, so I will accept his assessment (that the defeat by the Republicans of their own alternative could mean a better deal for Democrats). My view is that Republicans fear that once we start down the road of payroll tax cuts it won't leave any room for income tax cuts (or extensions), and it will finally occur to the public that the only difference between the payroll tax and the income tax is who pays it, lower to middle income folks paying the former and upper income folks paying the latter. Once that very well kept secret is out, income tax cuts will become toxic. Say what you will about Republicans, but they weren't born yesterday.
- rayward
December 2, 2011 at 1:46pm
I just wanted to add, we probably shouldn't be surprised at this. Since the 2010 Republicans have come in, their leadership has made proposals for compromises (when they could be bothered to actually come to some agreement instead of just rejecting everything) which they've then used their rank-and-file to defeat. They've blamed the Tea-Party for this apparent "lack of power", but I think it just makes a convenient fig-leaf for Boehner and McConnell to be as obstructionist as they want to be, because "our caucus just won't go for it". This latest vote may just be the opening salvo in yet another propaganda battle that the Dems "want too much".
- AllanL5
December 2, 2011 at 1:51pm
But, A., their caucus is obstructionist. You are somewhat vague, so I am not totally sure what you mean, but you seem to be implying that Boner is a bitter-ender non-cooperator. That belies the facts. When Boner was open to cutting a deal with Barack Obama early this year, he got kicked around in his own party and he subsequently pulled back.
- liberalref
December 2, 2011 at 2:00pm
Haven't you guys gotten the Heritage memo? The payroll "tax" is not a tax, it's a contribution toward your future Social Security payments. A tax is only something you pay where you get nothing back from the government for it! Ergo, a payroll "tax" holiday is not a tax holiday but merely a respite in the government's mandated contribution of workers having to fund their own retirement, so ending the holiday and resuming the reguarly scheduled contributions is not a tax increase at all! Whereas, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on schedule at the end of 2012 would be a tax increase, because those are income taxes, which are the only real taxes out there (along with capital gains and estate, er, death taxes).
- wildboy
December 2, 2011 at 2:01pm
And the ruse worked until greed got the best of them. Greed, like a bursting bubble, is the corrective. Of course, I am referring to the roughly $2.7 trillion "borrowed" from payroll tax receipts to pay general operating expenses or, more to the point, to offset the income tax cuts for the wealthy. Yep, greed got the best of them. McConnell even says that, if it were up to him, the amounts "borrowed" would not be repaid with income tax receipts. It's amazing, committing a fraud on working Americans and then sticking their face in it because you are so confident that working Americans are too dumb to catch on to the ruse. Yes, it was McConnell who voted in favor of the Republican alternative because he continues to believe that working Americans are stupid. His Republican colleagues in the Senate must disagree. I suppose it's to their credit.
- rayward
December 2, 2011 at 2:24pm
The Republican plan is to stall and hope that the big automatic tax hike we have at the end of next year will be a Republican selling point for the presidency and, so far, I haven't seen anything from the Democrats that would make the general public accept such a tax hike and they haven't closed the deal on a hike on incomes over $250,000.00 or incomes over $1 million either. Maybe repeated unusccessful tax votes will make the public numb to the issue.
- Nusholtz
December 2, 2011 at 2:47pm
Is there any way, any way at all, Republicans can actually, just once, be forced to do a real, live filibuster on a bill? I just want to see the crap fly once in my lifetime (and I'm not that old)...
- cspencef
December 2, 2011 at 5:42pm
glad to see that Bernie Sanders can see a bad idea for everyone. maybe he read the Bloomberg News report on how the Fed loaned money at zero percent to the big banks that used that to boost bonuses and profitably and never passed on the lower interest rates to consumers, which would have been a far smarter way to stimulate the economy. Put FICA back in the lockbox solely dedicated to sustaining SocSec and what remains of Medicare. You really think this is worth the effort just so Obama can have his fantasy Truman campaign? He should have just stayed in Bali...
- K2K
December 3, 2011 at 3:39am
"But, A., their caucus is obstructionist. You are somewhat vague, so I am not totally sure what you mean, but you seem to be implying that Boner is a bitter-ender non-cooperator." Libref, I used to think like you did, that Boehner generally is not as bitter a partisan as the rest of the House Republicans. However, I am now wondering if this is not all part of an overall PR plan. Boehner shows an inclination to compromise, his caucus bites back, and he regretfully backs off his previous position. Generally gives the impression that the Republicans want to compromise, but Democratic positions are so unacceptable that the Republicans cannot agree. I don't know how else to explain the fact that he continues to remain the Speaker. As many times as he's gone back and gotten "rebuffed" by his own caucus, you'd think they'd have thrown him out on his ear by now for being so out of step with his caucus.
- NR409654
December 3, 2011 at 12:33pm
wildboy, I missed the Heritage memo (I assume you're kidding), and I'm glad I did. Taxes get us nothing in return from the government? There wouldn't be anybody to put out the memo, if it weren't for the government. The taxes the Heritage people pay are helping to keep predators from eating them alive and spitting out their bones. The fatal flaw in the economics of Rightists is that, like Ayn Rand, they don't take human nature into account. Their grand theories are at work in a vacuum. That's why Hoover let the banks crash after Black Friday. He thought a self-adjusting Market would override everything else and everyone would end up on the Good Ship Lollipop (not that that song was around then). But human panic and fear took over and stomped on the beneficent Invisible Hand, and presto! The Great Depression. Some Republicans talk like they're against extending the payroll "tax" holiday, but they secretly want the Social Security Trust Fund to go belly-up. That payroll "retirement fund contribution" holiday is one truly stupid idea of Obama's. He'll never get enough tax increases, even from Democrats, to make up for the hole he's putting in the Fund. All of us come up with a ridiculous idea on occasion. For a while this season I thought the Detroit Lions were going to make the playoffs. But, stupid me, I still say GO HAWAII BLUE!
- magboy47.
December 3, 2011 at 2:02pm