Fiscal Cliff Just Another Govt. Fiasco
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Gary [email protected]
First of all, they didn’t avoid the fiscal cliff at all. They just postponed it. The bill passed by the House and Senate and signed into law by President Obama was a big, fat joke.
The idea was that they were supposed to come up with a blend of revenue increases and spending cuts to reign in the federal deficit.
Bwahahaha! (That’s me laughing cynically out loud.)
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the deal struck after months – no years – of painstaking, thoughtful, introspective negotiations, the last-minute deal provides a 41-to-1 ratio of tax increases to spending cuts.
That’s right. You heard right. Our intrepid leaders cut only $15 billion in spending while raising taxes by $620 billion – over 10 years.
Remember all that tought talk about deficits? Well, the CBO estimated Tuesday that the fiscal cliff deal will add $4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade.
So, basically, the whole thing was just a big sham.
Remember the concept of reforming the tax code? Loopholes and exemptions going away? Yeah, well, there was none of that.
But the Social Security payroll tax is going up, so people in the bottom four quintiles of taxpayers – that’s 80 percent of earners, people who make an average of $85K or less – will take home between 1.1 and 1.7 percent less income.
If you’re one of the “rich” people, in the top 20 percent, you will lose between 3.1 and 8.4 percent of your income. But that’s OK. You can afford it. You’re rich!
Nice.
So what, pray tell, might you be getting in return from your government following this overt confiscation of your wealth?
Well, according to people at the Washington Post who have actually read the bill – unlike the vast majority of people in Congress – there is all manner of wanton fiscal nonsense.
Section 317 of the 154-page bill includes an extension for “special expensing rules for certain film and television productions.”
So let’s be clear.
A guy who makes an average of $20K a year has to pony up a couple hundred bucks, but Hollywood movie and TV producers – fresh off a pretty robust year at the box office – get tax breaks.
It only gets worse.
According to WaPo, the bill contains:
A $9 billion per-year sop for Wall Street banks and major multinationals, a rum tax for Puerto Rico, cheaper office space for Goldman Sachs, help for NASCAR to build racetracks, tax breaks for people who buy Segways and a host of other nonsense.
The total price tag over the next couple of years for the bill is $77 billion, according to WaPo.
So how did all that stuff get in there? Didn’t I hear President Obama say over and over this fiscal cliff stuff was about tackling our mounting budget problems via a “blend of tax increases and budget cuts”?
Well, according to Senior Political Columnist Timothy P. Carney of the Washington Examiner, “... these subsidies weren't the fruit of eleventh-hour lobbying conducted on the cliff's edge – they were crafted back in August in a Senate committee, and they sat dormant until the White House reportedly insisted on them this week.
“The Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty Act of 2012, which passed through the Senate Finance Committee in August, was copied and pasted into the fiscal cliff legislation, yielding a victory for biotech companies, wind-turbine-makers, biodiesel producers, film studios – and their lobbyists.”
In a lengthy column published Wednesday online, Carney explains how former Senators turned high-powered lobbyists John Breaux, D-La., and Trent Lott, R-Miss., represented the likes of GE and Citigroup.
GE and Citigroup wanted to extend a tax provision that allows multinational corporations to defer U.S. taxes by moving profits into offshore financial subsidiaries.
That’s how GE avoids paying virtually any U.S. income taxes.
Nice, eh?
Another group of lobbyists, the K Street firm called Capital Tax Partners, is led by a bunch of Treasury Department types from the Clinton administration.
They represented clients like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, the American Wind Energy Association and the Motion Picture Association of American.
All those folks sought tax credits, too.[[In-content Ad]]Carney:
“After packing 50 tax credit extensions into the bill, the committee voted 19 to 5 to pass it. But then it stalled. The Senate left for the conventions and the fall campaign. ... The bill sat ignored until last week, when the White House sat down with Senate Republicans to craft a deal averting the fiscal cliff.
“A Republican Senate aide familiar with the cliff negotiations tells me the White House wanted permanent extensions of a whole slew of corporate tax credits. When Senate Republicans said no, ‘the White House insisted that the exact language’ of the (August) bill be included in the fiscal cliff deal. ‘They were absolutely insistent,’ another aide tells me. (The White House did not return requests for comment.)
“Sure enough, Title II of the fiscal cliff legislation is nearly a word-for-word replication of the Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty Act of 2012.”
If you want to read Carney’s entire article, go here:
http://tinyurl.com/aqexdtn
So, this is the best these guys can do. In the shadow of an economic collapse, they demand more tax dollars from us so they can make sure GE, Hollywood types and Puerto Rican rum makers pay less.
Hey, President Obama. How does this policy fit into that matrix of “wealthy folks” who need to pay “a little bit more?” What happened to “fair share?”
It’s enough to make your blood boil.
Well at least when you look at your next paycheck and see that it’s a little – or a lot – smaller, you know it’s going for a good cause or two, right?
Oh, and by the way, we get to go through this ridiculous exercise again come February. That’s when – they say – all the meaningful budget cuts are going to happen.
Bull ... loney. There is no doubt in my mind that President Obama’s profligate spending spree will continue unabated.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Our system of government has become functionally and systemically broken. Waste, fraud, abuse and stupidity are endemic.
I hold little hope for it.
And we all suffer for it.
First of all, they didn’t avoid the fiscal cliff at all. They just postponed it. The bill passed by the House and Senate and signed into law by President Obama was a big, fat joke.
The idea was that they were supposed to come up with a blend of revenue increases and spending cuts to reign in the federal deficit.
Bwahahaha! (That’s me laughing cynically out loud.)
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the deal struck after months – no years – of painstaking, thoughtful, introspective negotiations, the last-minute deal provides a 41-to-1 ratio of tax increases to spending cuts.
That’s right. You heard right. Our intrepid leaders cut only $15 billion in spending while raising taxes by $620 billion – over 10 years.
Remember all that tought talk about deficits? Well, the CBO estimated Tuesday that the fiscal cliff deal will add $4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade.
So, basically, the whole thing was just a big sham.
Remember the concept of reforming the tax code? Loopholes and exemptions going away? Yeah, well, there was none of that.
But the Social Security payroll tax is going up, so people in the bottom four quintiles of taxpayers – that’s 80 percent of earners, people who make an average of $85K or less – will take home between 1.1 and 1.7 percent less income.
If you’re one of the “rich” people, in the top 20 percent, you will lose between 3.1 and 8.4 percent of your income. But that’s OK. You can afford it. You’re rich!
Nice.
So what, pray tell, might you be getting in return from your government following this overt confiscation of your wealth?
Well, according to people at the Washington Post who have actually read the bill – unlike the vast majority of people in Congress – there is all manner of wanton fiscal nonsense.
Section 317 of the 154-page bill includes an extension for “special expensing rules for certain film and television productions.”
So let’s be clear.
A guy who makes an average of $20K a year has to pony up a couple hundred bucks, but Hollywood movie and TV producers – fresh off a pretty robust year at the box office – get tax breaks.
It only gets worse.
According to WaPo, the bill contains:
A $9 billion per-year sop for Wall Street banks and major multinationals, a rum tax for Puerto Rico, cheaper office space for Goldman Sachs, help for NASCAR to build racetracks, tax breaks for people who buy Segways and a host of other nonsense.
The total price tag over the next couple of years for the bill is $77 billion, according to WaPo.
So how did all that stuff get in there? Didn’t I hear President Obama say over and over this fiscal cliff stuff was about tackling our mounting budget problems via a “blend of tax increases and budget cuts”?
Well, according to Senior Political Columnist Timothy P. Carney of the Washington Examiner, “... these subsidies weren't the fruit of eleventh-hour lobbying conducted on the cliff's edge – they were crafted back in August in a Senate committee, and they sat dormant until the White House reportedly insisted on them this week.
“The Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty Act of 2012, which passed through the Senate Finance Committee in August, was copied and pasted into the fiscal cliff legislation, yielding a victory for biotech companies, wind-turbine-makers, biodiesel producers, film studios – and their lobbyists.”
In a lengthy column published Wednesday online, Carney explains how former Senators turned high-powered lobbyists John Breaux, D-La., and Trent Lott, R-Miss., represented the likes of GE and Citigroup.
GE and Citigroup wanted to extend a tax provision that allows multinational corporations to defer U.S. taxes by moving profits into offshore financial subsidiaries.
That’s how GE avoids paying virtually any U.S. income taxes.
Nice, eh?
Another group of lobbyists, the K Street firm called Capital Tax Partners, is led by a bunch of Treasury Department types from the Clinton administration.
They represented clients like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, the American Wind Energy Association and the Motion Picture Association of American.
All those folks sought tax credits, too.[[In-content Ad]]Carney:
“After packing 50 tax credit extensions into the bill, the committee voted 19 to 5 to pass it. But then it stalled. The Senate left for the conventions and the fall campaign. ... The bill sat ignored until last week, when the White House sat down with Senate Republicans to craft a deal averting the fiscal cliff.
“A Republican Senate aide familiar with the cliff negotiations tells me the White House wanted permanent extensions of a whole slew of corporate tax credits. When Senate Republicans said no, ‘the White House insisted that the exact language’ of the (August) bill be included in the fiscal cliff deal. ‘They were absolutely insistent,’ another aide tells me. (The White House did not return requests for comment.)
“Sure enough, Title II of the fiscal cliff legislation is nearly a word-for-word replication of the Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty Act of 2012.”
If you want to read Carney’s entire article, go here:
http://tinyurl.com/aqexdtn
So, this is the best these guys can do. In the shadow of an economic collapse, they demand more tax dollars from us so they can make sure GE, Hollywood types and Puerto Rican rum makers pay less.
Hey, President Obama. How does this policy fit into that matrix of “wealthy folks” who need to pay “a little bit more?” What happened to “fair share?”
It’s enough to make your blood boil.
Well at least when you look at your next paycheck and see that it’s a little – or a lot – smaller, you know it’s going for a good cause or two, right?
Oh, and by the way, we get to go through this ridiculous exercise again come February. That’s when – they say – all the meaningful budget cuts are going to happen.
Bull ... loney. There is no doubt in my mind that President Obama’s profligate spending spree will continue unabated.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Our system of government has become functionally and systemically broken. Waste, fraud, abuse and stupidity are endemic.
I hold little hope for it.
And we all suffer for it.
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