This is not encouraging (via Huffpo):
Moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins broke party ranks Wednesday, supporting a tax hike on millionaires and billionaires in order to fund a tax break for working Americans. … Democrats have proposed cutting payroll taxes by 3.1 percent, which could put about $1,500 back in the pockets of the average household. Republicans are supportive of the tax cut, but adamantly oppose the Democratic plan to pay for it by levying a surtax on income above $1 million. …
“What I’ve been looking at is can you carve out those businesses from the surtax, and you can … There is already a body of well-developed law in the tax code having to do with active business participation versus passive business participation. I think that’s the answer to this dilemma. I do not want to impose additional taxes on the employers at a time when our economy is very fragile and we want to encourage them to hire. On the other hand, I do believe that multimillionaires and billionaires who are not running businesses could pay more of their income to help us deal with the deficit. … I believe some are intrigued by the idea. What we’ve been hearing over and over again is that the reason Republicans are opposed to the surtax is because of the concern of its impact on job creation. Well, if you carve out employers, you take away that argument.
1. I seriously doubt whether this surtax will raise as much as proponents expect given the ability of the wealthy to shelter income.
2. So not only are we going to have another year of a wrongheaded tax cut, but we are going to raise taxes to pay for it? Lose, lose.
3. Collins completely adopts the Democratic line that we need higher taxes on the rich to deal with the deficit. This is fundamentally wrong. What we need is a) less spending and b) more economic growth to generate higher tax revenue. That is why I like that other Republicans “are coalescing around a plan that would continue the current salary freeze for all federal workers and lawmakers to pay for an extension of the payroll tax cut.” Smart.
4. The Obamacrats are going to wage a “spread the wealth,” class-warfare campaign in 2012 the likes of which we have not seen in modern U.S. political history. Hopefully, the Collins Crumble is not a sign of things to come.
print this page
Look at whose caving. RINO’s all of them. I’d be surprised if they didn’t go along with their true brethren.
The GOP needs to hold firm on this, if Americans are willing to fall for the class warfare gambit and re-empower the Social Democrats then that’s on us.
Politics as usual. Yep, when it all comes crashing down they will hang the Republicans right next to the Democrats.
What the public clearly does not understand is that the world is leveraged on the order of $700T which is more that the wealth of the whole world. In the US, we are already past the point of being able to pay the interest on our debt and run the country. You can confiscate everyone wealth in the US, and we still will be broke! A trillion here or a trillion there is just a drop in the big bucket with the whole in the bottom. No matter, QE-x to infinity, the plan will fail and the economy will crash. All aboard the runaway train… and this will not end well.
Oh, but the Collins Crumble is a sign of things to come.
Raising taxes is much easier than being responsible, sane and courageous by cutting spending. We can all endlessly repeat the simple truth that spending is the problem. Cutting spending requires more fortitude than our elected leaders can possible muster.
Raising taxes will fail, but in Official Washington, failure is an option.