I agree that social issues should be left "to the states or to the people" per the Tenth Amendment!
If we could somehow see a 'New Reform Party' that takes all the social issues out of its platform, so as to unite the people around necessary reforms -- that would be awesome!
Anon has posted that "there are a huge number of Republicans, and even quite a few who identify with the Tea Party who really liked the idea of more revenues coming in, perhaps 800b to even 1T by lowering rates and closing loopholes. A lot of Republicans are warm to that idea."
So they have their lower rates now that the 'budget deal' has passed, what about closing loopholes? I am proposing a test for Anon's premise, rather than letting it pass as though untestable.
I am stating fact along with incontrovertible conclusion stated in numerical terms, and finally, proposing a test -- with a result based on observable reality -- of Anon's premise quoted above.
The record shows 95 Democrats in the House (half of all Democrats) voted against the White House, that is, against the recent 'budget deal'. Having shown their willingness to support fiscal sanity, with or without the White House, it's reasonable to project that all of those 95 would support legislation to close loopholes in the IRC, especially since Obama himself was on record in favor or those reforms as recently as May 2009.
Specifically, I am talking about Limited Partnership, Foreign Tax Credit and Carry Trade provisions of the IRC. Many loopholes have been studied and presented by David Cay Johnston, and they are well known to members of Congress.
Assuming that all 56 or 66 Tea Party Republicans in the House also support closing loopholes, what is needed to enact IRC reform in this (112th) Congress?
Based on the recent vote on the 'budget deal', the math shows that what's needed is from 60 to 66 votes from the Tea Party's Republican bedfellows. Indeed, since many of the 95 Democrats supported the 'budget deal' only out of some perverse loyalty to Obama, (especially members of the CBC), the number of Democrats who would support IRC reform is probably well over 100. That means that if just one out of three, or one out of four, or one out of five non-Tea-Party Republican members of the House support reform of existing IRC loopholes favoring international investors over U.S. producers, reform will happen this year or next.
It's like this: there are no bad questions, only bad answers.
Make whatever rhetoric you want out of it, I am stating facts, making rational conclusions, asking answerable questions! If you don't like it, write your congress crittur.
I appreciate Robert Oak's comment about false choices. However, Anonymous Drive-by presumably responds to my comment, so I want to try to respond with fact and reason to what amounts to a rant.
The problem with Anonymous Drive-by is that I have no way of knowing if this is the same Anon as before. It started with this:
"Anon advances the premise that "Quite a few" TPers and "a lot of Republicans" want to increase revenues by closing egregious loopholes in the Internal Revenue Code." -- 2OLD4OKEYDOKE
I have been trying to evaluate Anon's premise rationally. And here is what I get:
"You know, voting blocks, like the Congressional Black Caucus. You want to talk about intractable, does it get more intractable than that block? Almost all of the CBC voted against welfare reform, yet we got it. The CBC is probably the most solid intractable voting block in modern times and yet the Right does not call them terrorists and crazies." -- Anonymous Drive-by
Where do I begin?
FACT: Almost half of the Black Caucus voted against the 'budget deal' -- including Chair of the Black Caucus, Emanuel Cleaver. (Cleaver conducted a campaign against the deal, widely followed on Twitter, although little noted in mainstream corporate media.)
REASON: It's one thing for a 'Tea Party' Republican from a majority White district in the South to vote against a deal with the seal of Obama, but another thing entirely for a Democrat from a Black district to risk the ire of the Obama machine and consequences to constituents of a government shutdown (or risking a shutdown).
FACT: Although Robert Oak may have called some of the Republican leadership, including the Tea Party, 'crazies', no one at EP has ever called them terrorists. It is true that I have suggested that the Tea Party appears to be just the same old internationalist -- therefore, anti-American -- RNC Republicans that we have known for a long time now, but I have not called them terrorists!
REASON: I am willing to give the Tea Party and the GOP one last chance -- that's what my post is all about (my post to which Anonymous has responded).
FACT: Democrats overall voted exactly 95 AYE, 95 NAY, with 3 NV, although anything but an AYE vote meant opposing the Obama machine.
REASON: If the Black Caucus is terrible since maybe a little more than half of them voted for the deal, what about the Republican Caucus (yes, that's what it's called) ... what about them? They voted 174 AYE and 66 NAY. That makes their vote 72.5% AYE. Now if the Black Caucus should be called "intractable," what can we say about the Republican Party overall?
FACT: What I have done in my analysis is to ask about where we are going from here. Having already asked "What did happen to IRC reform in 2009?' (and in 2010), I am now asking what is happening with IRC reform in 2011 and 2012? -- now that we have had our great "change" in November 2010.
REASON: I am not asking where we are going with Obama, but where is the country and the Congress going with or without Obama and with or without the Tea Party.
FACT: Although we could consider the 66 Republicans who voted NAY on the 'budget deal' to be the effective Tea Party faction in Congress, I have used, in my analysis, the minimal number of 56 who are officially in the Tea Party Caucus.
REASON: From roll calls on the recent 'budget deal' and other legislative history, we can make rational estimates of possible support in Congress for IRC reform, specifically regarding Limited Partnership, Foreign Tax Credit and Carry Trade provisions of the IRC. On this basis, we can count about a dozen or so Democrats in the Senate, including Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, and about 100 Democrats in the House. Outside the Democrats, we can estimate maybe 66 or so Republicans in the Senate who are willing to take a populist stand, plus a precious few Republicans in the Senate, notably including Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
CONCLUSION: I am taking Anon seriously and suggesting that we look to see if it is true that that "Quite a few" TPers and "a lot of Republicans" want to increase revenues by closing egregious loopholes in the Internal Revenue Code.
Now you know why I have not been that slammin' on the Fed. I know everything thinks QE2 is bad news and I see their points, but at least Bernanke and others from the Fed are pointing to jobs being a crisis as well as income inequality, many points we made here...
Good for Bernanke. He knows enough about S&P to realize their deficiencies.
To me, the most important issue is the impact on the rates that the federal and state governments pay to borrow. It looks like Bernanke is fighting this fight. He was also out front on the jobs issue in relation to the efforts of deficit hawks.
Everyone knows for profit medicine is breaking the bank. There is no room for corporate profit and dividends for share holders in the middle of death and disease. This is something government could do better.
I'm sorry but that was just yet another worn out rhetoric with the agenda to destroy social security.
Anything to attack social security and health care for the aged.
It's also fiction. If you want to wipe out the deficit, frankly you can do it in 5 minutes.
I did it by repealing the Bush tax cuts, enacting a VAT and putting a transaction tax on wall street automated flash trades.
Bam, entire thing wiped out.
We haven't even gotten to sane legislation. For example, we have a good 30 industrialized nations from which to model a health care system from. From the universal single payer system of the U.K. all the way to the private insurance but use of nation to negotiate system of Switzerland, one that one would think would appeal to conservatives...
pick a system, all of them are charges 66% less in costs per person, with better results, better longevity, than the United States.
That....is where the huge savings needs to come from and instead you can this same ole worn out agenda that doesn't add up by the numbers...
it's always the same, screw the U.S. middle class, the aged and the poor, give to the rich and not a practical common sense line of policy can be found.
I'm sorry but the "Tea party" is going from worse to worser. They are the moral majority wrapped up in a new bow, talk absolute nonsense and seem to not passed 4th grade math, never mind passed an undergraduate economics course.
It's completely possible to balance the budget, turn this economy around, grow the U.S. manufacturing sector, the U.S. middle class and save money at the same time.
Just like your comment, it's a false choice. The real answers are left off the multi-answer tab.
It's not "Tea party vs. Obama" the answers are what is not talked about, or only talked about by a few, a huge majority of economists and other people promptly ignored, I guess because they know what they are talking about.
But with Obama so many are content lowering the bar to floor. Time and again it's up to Congress to send him bills "that he wouldn't dare veto."
How about remembering that Simpson-Bowles IS HIS COMMISSION!
He ignored HIS OWN commission!
Did he propose Simpson-Bowles tax reform at the State of the Union? No.
Did he propose it in his February budget? No.
When he shredded the Ryan plan? No.
The Tea Party is at very best a voting block. You know, voting blocks, like the Congressional Black Caucus. You want to talk about intractable, does it get more intractable than that block? Almost all of the CBC voted against welfare reform, yet we got it. The CBC is probably the most solid intractable voting block in modern times and yet the Right does not call them terrorists and crazies.
But this bitter hatred is all deflection. Deflection away from the fact that it is Obama that is not leading. IT IS OBAMA THAT DID NOT GET BEHIND **HIS OWN** COMMISSION.
If he did get behind it, made the case to the American people, he could get that through. Demonizing a voting block with a particular point of view makes as much sense as pinning everything that does not happen on the Congressional Black Caucus. They have been the tightest knit most intractable voting block in all of Congress for decades now.
It is the president that puts together the coalitions to get things passed. Not "proclaim support" back in May 2009, but to stand behind his own commission and make the case. Not do nothing and leave us to hope Congress shoves it down his throat.
But this bar has been lowered completely to the floor. Because Obama represents the culmination of the hopes and dreams for so many they're getting shrill and desperate to demonize whatever they can to cover for him. And that's what the demonizing of just another ho hum voting block, the Tea Party is - it's one gigantic exercise in trying to cover Obama's bottom.
Granted, here on EP he is regularly taken to task as the corporatist, Banker and Chief that he is, and most of the regular posters do a great job mapping that out.
But the Tea Party does seem to be tweaking a few people the wrong way here, and what I'm saying is that the Tea Party is now just another voting block, a pimple on a flea compared to the president, if we had a president.
I stopped reading this comment after that first sentence. That's the kind of election fodder that disgusts me re: both parties. Let's stick to economics, please, and leave morality to the states.
"There are a huge number of Republicans, and even quite a few who identify with the Tea Party who really liked the idea of more revenues coming in, perhaps 800b to even 1T by lowering rates and closing loopholes. A lot of Republicans are warm to that idea." -- Anon. Drive-by
Let's clarify a little: that "lowering rates" equates to "more revenues coming in" is exactly the kind of economic fiction that has no place here at EP (in my opinion). That fantasy is exactly what George H. W. Bush referred to as 'voodoo economics'. Yes, you might manage economic growth with tax cuts (although that's doubtful in a WTO world where your government is feckless at administering mercantilist trade policies, and capital investment on income from within to outside the U.S. is rewarded by the IRC), but you won't manage a balanced budget that way. Anyway, the phrase "lowering rates" refers to retaining rather than retiring tax cuts that were supposed to be temporary and were necessary because the economy needed a boost in the George W. Bush years -- okay, that spectacularly failed. End of story.
Now we are between a rock and a hardplace, so how about we think about a stand-alone measure to close loopholes? In May, 2009, Obama proclaimed support for such measures. and there's no way he would dare to veto such stand-alone legislation either in 2011 or in 2012.
Get it? We think about closing loopholes, not because it gains political advantage for this party or the other -- not at the price of this, that or the other legislation that otherwise wouldn't stand a chance -- but just because closing loopholes is a very good idea. If you can't follow me here, I suggest you read (as of yesterday) David Cay Johnston's book, Perfectly Legal.
Anon advances the premise that "Quite a few" TPers and "a lot of Republicans" want to increase revenues by closing egregious loopholes in the Internal Revenue Code. If you want to know which loopholes, get a copy of the book Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston, okay? But let's say that we are going specifcally after loopholes that favor income earned in the USA being invested oversears because of IRC preferences that make such investments more profitable than investments in the USA.
Let's test that assumption that loopholes weren't closed despite support for closing them by TPers in Congress.
The record shows 95 Democrats in the House (half of all Democrats) voted against the White House -- against the budget "deal" -- and all of them would certainly support legislation to close loopholes in the IRC. Assuming that all 56 Tea Party Republican representatives also support closing loopholes, what is needed to enact IRC reform in this (112th) Congress? The math shows that what's needed is just 66 votes from the Tea Party's Republican bedfellows. Indeed, since some of the 95 Democrats supported the ''deal" only out of some perverse loyalty to Obama, the number of Democrats who would support IRC reform is probably well over 100. That means that if just one out of three, or one out of four, or one out of five non-Tea-Party Republican members of the House would vote for reform of IRC loopholes, reform will happen this year or next. (There are currently 433 members of the House -- 180 Democrats, 56 TP Republicans, and, 197 non-TP Republicans.)
Get it? 56 TPers (members of TP Caucus) + 95 progressive Dems + just 66 other Republicans or Dems (not even one out of four!) = REFORM OF EGREGIOUS INTERNAL REVENUE CODE LOOPHOLES IN THIS 112TH CONGRESS!
If that majority is there, then this will happen. Otherwise, why are any members of the TP remaining in the GOP? Why do pro-IRC reform Democrats remain in the Democratic Party? Well, at leas they can say that half of all the Democrats stood togeher with the necessary intestinal fortitude to stand up against their own president when the chips were down, defying their own leadership. All it would take would be a strong statement from the TPers in favor of closing IRC loopholes, and reform will happen.
Unfortunately, it appears that closing IRC loopholes isn't what TPers or other Republicans want. They like foreign interests. They support foreign interests over domestic producers. That's why the fury, and you ain't seen nothin' yet!
So why are TPers even in the Republican Party? What happened to the promise of a third party alternative? What's the point? Could it be the big RNC and related (secretly sourced) money? And if so, why don't they quit squawking about their principles? --because they wouldn't know a principle if it bit them on their petunias! Of course, I hope I will be proven wrong, and then I will register Republican.
Back when the 'Tea Party' was a populist grass-roots phenomenon, it was written up in the 'National Review' as dangerous and something to be watched carefully because it was expressing protectionist sentiment of working-class Americans. From the first, the Tea Party was watched carefully by big RNC money who decided the last thing they wanted was another Reform Party such as was brought to us by Ross Perot in the 1990s (when, by the way, the budget was balanced thanks to the continuing activism of Mr. Perot working quietly -- as an ordinary citizen and not as a paid lobbyist -- on both sides of the aisle in Congress).
After the entrance of paid professional organizers on the Tea Party scene, the name 'Ross Perot' went down the Orwellian Memory Hole for fear that the Tea Party might actually lead to the resurrection of a viable third party alternative. Nothing was said of the George W. Bush administration's trashing of the Social Security lock-box or of the budgetary farce of putting wars "off-budget" while preventing any investigation of war profiteering fraud, or, of the profoundly inane policy of announcing a buying spree in 2001 as the appropriate way to approach a war ... paid professional organizers made certain those topics were never discussed. More importantly, paid professional organizers of the so-called 'Tea Party' made certain that protectionism was never discussed, at least not in a positive light.
Meanwhile, the corporate media played up the new 'Tea Party' -- sanitized of all protectionist tendencies -- while what was left of a true independent Tea Party was starved to death for the sake of a FAUX Tea Party that was never and would never be anything but a tool and a branch of the Republican Party. More specifically, the 'Tea Party' leadership has been seen to be a group of Republican internationalist anti-American paid professional liars, including not only those in Congress but also those working at the 'think tanks' and for corporate media. They are all paid professional politicians, whether they ever stand for an election or not.
These paid professional 'leaders' of the 'Tea Party' define the issues for the meetings and for whatever activism they can hustle up. Under that paid professional leadership, the issues quickly became defined as (1) a Republican victory in 2010 and in 2012, (2) Obama and supporting opposition to Obama in Congress, EXCEPT (3) support for Obama's 'free' trade agreements and every 'free' trade agreement on the books.
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It's the same ole insanity, they want to control a woman's body, put here as a second class citizen, cut all social safety nets and have corporations able to run more amok.
There is nothing new here, it's the same old agenda that has been chipping away at the U.S.A. since the 1980's.
On this site, at least, pretty much anything that doesn't add up by the economic numbers and is detrimental economically to the national interest, a heavy focus on regular people, working people, U.S. middle class, citizens of the nation....
we do indeed, in with all of the blogger speak fire we can muster, blast it all to hell.
But we don't pick and choose agendas and are assuredly equal opportunity political slammers.
The fact these idiots want to destroy SS will be one of the biggest economic disasters in the history of the U.S.A.
Everyone hates "Obamacare" but the reasons are very different. This site hates it because it refused to take on the private health care industry and the for profit system which is ripping America off three times more than any other industrialized nation.
The reason Medicare is going to break the bank like all health care is the U.S. is getting ripped off.
Tea party people want to make the situation worse, not better. Screaming absurdities like "that's socialist" and "that's communist", are not only insane, they are dead ass wrong.
Obama isn't a "socialist", he's a bought and paid for corporatist, just like 98% of Congress, including the Tea party.
These people just rant empty rhetoric and behind that rhetoric is the same old agenda which will destroy the U.S.A. and is most assuredly not in the national interest.
I mean come on, I think recently I've posted a good 5 posts blasting Obama on G.E., trade deals analyzed to lose jobs and even economists who "cheer" outsourcing are finally starting to look at the statistics and saying "oopsy", this is imploding the U.S. middle class.
Duh. Anyone with basic calculus should see that was going to happen.
So, bottom line, we are non-partisan on the site. Speak economic fiction, regardless of who you are and you will be called out if we find it and crank the numbers to show it's B.S.
But if this is the fury that is being unleashed on 40 or so House of Representative members, then 1,000 times the fury should be released on Barack Obama, and I just don't see it.
In fact what I do see so much of here is suggestion after suggestion that he is the only adult in the room.
Yet there are a huge number of Republicans, and even quite a few who identify with the Tea Party who really liked the idea of more revenues coming in, perhaps 800b to even 1T by lowering rates and closing loopholes. A lot of Republicans are warm to that idea.
So Simpson-Bowles does their work, and comes up with revenue producing tax simplification that has broad bipartisan support. I ask all the intellectually honest here to really think about whether this would be achievable under Clinton-Gingrich.
But it doesn't seem to be achievable now. And why not?
Obama got up there and gave a State of the Union, did you hear him advocate Simpson-Bowles? I didn't.
Obama put out a budget in February, did it contain any major planks of Simpson-Bowles? No, it did not.
Obama bashed Ryan all to hell in April, but did he use that occasion to embrace any planks of Simpson-Bowles? No, he did not.
The block we have here is the Junior Senator from Illinois, a man with 2 undistinguished years in the Senate before he started running for President. A man with the slenderest of qualifications to have that job, who in 2 1/2 years has purposely brought his nation to the doorstep of insolvency.
We have 1T on the tables just in doing basic tax reform that could pass on bipartisan basis. That is our problem, not 40 members of the House.
And all I was saying is that the bitterness and hatred and venom spewed at the Tea Party is toxic and unhelpful. When the real problem is up there giving a campaign speech disguised as a presser.
That is the guy who can't add. If he could, he would add up the young men losing their lives so he can maintain his smartassness in pursuing "the right war" just so he can hold his nose high over Bush, yet we know he's going to pull them out in July 2012 just so he doesn't have to campaign with the troops in. Can he add up the young men dying for his politics?
That is the guy who can't add, and he's killing us. Citizens getting involved because they see their government pursuing nation-ending policies is a good thing, not a national debacle. Barack Obama is the national debacle.
We're all dead. I feel like we're at the end of empire and nobody cares. I haven't had paying work in over four years and, if things don't change soon, I'll be living in a cardboard box.
I want to make one thing perfectly clear: it's NOT the politicians' fault. It's OUR fault. WE voted these people in and they instituted the policies that WE wanted them to insititute. Never mistake where the blame goes. Nobody took political power in this country by accident or by coup. We're getting EXCATLY what WE voted for.
Corporations fight this tooth and nail. They literally have software algorithms on how to profit from moving capital, funds and jobs around the globe.
But pretty much any common sense policy having to do with labor and economics goes to committee to die. If it's managed to be voted out of committee, they will kill it with amendments.
If it actually passes, they will appoint 6 corrupt as hell conferees and rewrite a bill to nothing after it has passed both houses.
All very disgusting and why the entire globe is now in an uproar. While everyone is blasting S&P at the moment, who can argue with their assessment our government is so insane and corrupt, they are literally destroying the U.S.A.
I agree that social issues should be left "to the states or to the people" per the Tenth Amendment!
If we could somehow see a 'New Reform Party' that takes all the social issues out of its platform, so as to unite the people around necessary reforms -- that would be awesome!
Anon has posted that "there are a huge number of Republicans, and even quite a few who identify with the Tea Party who really liked the idea of more revenues coming in, perhaps 800b to even 1T by lowering rates and closing loopholes. A lot of Republicans are warm to that idea."
So they have their lower rates now that the 'budget deal' has passed, what about closing loopholes? I am proposing a test for Anon's premise, rather than letting it pass as though untestable.
I am stating fact along with incontrovertible conclusion stated in numerical terms, and finally, proposing a test -- with a result based on observable reality -- of Anon's premise quoted above.
The record shows 95 Democrats in the House (half of all Democrats) voted against the White House, that is, against the recent 'budget deal'. Having shown their willingness to support fiscal sanity, with or without the White House, it's reasonable to project that all of those 95 would support legislation to close loopholes in the IRC, especially since Obama himself was on record in favor or those reforms as recently as May 2009.
Specifically, I am talking about Limited Partnership, Foreign Tax Credit and Carry Trade provisions of the IRC. Many loopholes have been studied and presented by David Cay Johnston, and they are well known to members of Congress.
Assuming that all 56 or 66 Tea Party Republicans in the House also support closing loopholes, what is needed to enact IRC reform in this (112th) Congress?
Based on the recent vote on the 'budget deal', the math shows that what's needed is from 60 to 66 votes from the Tea Party's Republican bedfellows. Indeed, since many of the 95 Democrats supported the 'budget deal' only out of some perverse loyalty to Obama, (especially members of the CBC), the number of Democrats who would support IRC reform is probably well over 100. That means that if just one out of three, or one out of four, or one out of five non-Tea-Party Republican members of the House support reform of existing IRC loopholes favoring international investors over U.S. producers, reform will happen this year or next.
It's like this: there are no bad questions, only bad answers.
Make whatever rhetoric you want out of it, I am stating facts, making rational conclusions, asking answerable questions! If you don't like it, write your congress crittur.
I appreciate Robert Oak's comment about false choices. However, Anonymous Drive-by presumably responds to my comment, so I want to try to respond with fact and reason to what amounts to a rant.
The problem with Anonymous Drive-by is that I have no way of knowing if this is the same Anon as before. It started with this:
"Anon advances the premise that "Quite a few" TPers and "a lot of Republicans" want to increase revenues by closing egregious loopholes in the Internal Revenue Code." -- 2OLD4OKEYDOKE
I have been trying to evaluate Anon's premise rationally. And here is what I get:
"You know, voting blocks, like the Congressional Black Caucus. You want to talk about intractable, does it get more intractable than that block? Almost all of the CBC voted against welfare reform, yet we got it. The CBC is probably the most solid intractable voting block in modern times and yet the Right does not call them terrorists and crazies." -- Anonymous Drive-by
Where do I begin?
FACT: Almost half of the Black Caucus voted against the 'budget deal' -- including Chair of the Black Caucus, Emanuel Cleaver. (Cleaver conducted a campaign against the deal, widely followed on Twitter, although little noted in mainstream corporate media.)
Roll call reference: thatsmycongress.com
REASON: It's one thing for a 'Tea Party' Republican from a majority White district in the South to vote against a deal with the seal of Obama, but another thing entirely for a Democrat from a Black district to risk the ire of the Obama machine and consequences to constituents of a government shutdown (or risking a shutdown).
FACT: Although Robert Oak may have called some of the Republican leadership, including the Tea Party, 'crazies', no one at EP has ever called them terrorists. It is true that I have suggested that the Tea Party appears to be just the same old internationalist -- therefore, anti-American -- RNC Republicans that we have known for a long time now, but I have not called them terrorists!
REASON: I am willing to give the Tea Party and the GOP one last chance -- that's what my post is all about (my post to which Anonymous has responded).
FACT: Democrats overall voted exactly 95 AYE, 95 NAY, with 3 NV, although anything but an AYE vote meant opposing the Obama machine.
REASON: If the Black Caucus is terrible since maybe a little more than half of them voted for the deal, what about the Republican Caucus (yes, that's what it's called) ... what about them? They voted 174 AYE and 66 NAY. That makes their vote 72.5% AYE. Now if the Black Caucus should be called "intractable," what can we say about the Republican Party overall?
FACT: What I have done in my analysis is to ask about where we are going from here. Having already asked "What did happen to IRC reform in 2009?' (and in 2010), I am now asking what is happening with IRC reform in 2011 and 2012? -- now that we have had our great "change" in November 2010.
REASON: I am not asking where we are going with Obama, but where is the country and the Congress going with or without Obama and with or without the Tea Party.
FACT: Although we could consider the 66 Republicans who voted NAY on the 'budget deal' to be the effective Tea Party faction in Congress, I have used, in my analysis, the minimal number of 56 who are officially in the Tea Party Caucus.
REASON: From roll calls on the recent 'budget deal' and other legislative history, we can make rational estimates of possible support in Congress for IRC reform, specifically regarding Limited Partnership, Foreign Tax Credit and Carry Trade provisions of the IRC. On this basis, we can count about a dozen or so Democrats in the Senate, including Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, and about 100 Democrats in the House. Outside the Democrats, we can estimate maybe 66 or so Republicans in the Senate who are willing to take a populist stand, plus a precious few Republicans in the Senate, notably including Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
CONCLUSION: I am taking Anon seriously and suggesting that we look to see if it is true that that "Quite a few" TPers and "a lot of Republicans" want to increase revenues by closing egregious loopholes in the Internal Revenue Code.
Now you know why I have not been that slammin' on the Fed. I know everything thinks QE2 is bad news and I see their points, but at least Bernanke and others from the Fed are pointing to jobs being a crisis as well as income inequality, many points we made here...
so no comparison to our Government, Congress.
Good for Bernanke. He knows enough about S&P to realize their deficiencies.
To me, the most important issue is the impact on the rates that the federal and state governments pay to borrow. It looks like Bernanke is fighting this fight. He was also out front on the jobs issue in relation to the efforts of deficit hawks.
Everyone knows for profit medicine is breaking the bank. There is no room for corporate profit and dividends for share holders in the middle of death and disease. This is something government could do better.
I'm sorry but that was just yet another worn out rhetoric with the agenda to destroy social security.
Anything to attack social security and health care for the aged.
It's also fiction. If you want to wipe out the deficit, frankly you can do it in 5 minutes.
I did it by repealing the Bush tax cuts, enacting a VAT and putting a transaction tax on wall street automated flash trades.
Bam, entire thing wiped out.
We haven't even gotten to sane legislation. For example, we have a good 30 industrialized nations from which to model a health care system from. From the universal single payer system of the U.K. all the way to the private insurance but use of nation to negotiate system of Switzerland, one that one would think would appeal to conservatives...
pick a system, all of them are charges 66% less in costs per person, with better results, better longevity, than the United States.
That....is where the huge savings needs to come from and instead you can this same ole worn out agenda that doesn't add up by the numbers...
it's always the same, screw the U.S. middle class, the aged and the poor, give to the rich and not a practical common sense line of policy can be found.
I'm sorry but the "Tea party" is going from worse to worser. They are the moral majority wrapped up in a new bow, talk absolute nonsense and seem to not passed 4th grade math, never mind passed an undergraduate economics course.
It's completely possible to balance the budget, turn this economy around, grow the U.S. manufacturing sector, the U.S. middle class and save money at the same time.
Just like your comment, it's a false choice. The real answers are left off the multi-answer tab.
It's not "Tea party vs. Obama" the answers are what is not talked about, or only talked about by a few, a huge majority of economists and other people promptly ignored, I guess because they know what they are talking about.
Just saying it's the moral majority wrapped up in a new bow. They clearly are economically clueless wonders from the rhetoric to the proposals.
Ryan plan will decimate all older people plus give private health care sector even more carte blanche to make profits off disease and suffering.
But with Obama so many are content lowering the bar to floor. Time and again it's up to Congress to send him bills "that he wouldn't dare veto."
How about remembering that Simpson-Bowles IS HIS COMMISSION!
He ignored HIS OWN commission!
Did he propose Simpson-Bowles tax reform at the State of the Union? No.
Did he propose it in his February budget? No.
When he shredded the Ryan plan? No.
The Tea Party is at very best a voting block. You know, voting blocks, like the Congressional Black Caucus. You want to talk about intractable, does it get more intractable than that block? Almost all of the CBC voted against welfare reform, yet we got it. The CBC is probably the most solid intractable voting block in modern times and yet the Right does not call them terrorists and crazies.
But this bitter hatred is all deflection. Deflection away from the fact that it is Obama that is not leading. IT IS OBAMA THAT DID NOT GET BEHIND **HIS OWN** COMMISSION.
If he did get behind it, made the case to the American people, he could get that through. Demonizing a voting block with a particular point of view makes as much sense as pinning everything that does not happen on the Congressional Black Caucus. They have been the tightest knit most intractable voting block in all of Congress for decades now.
It is the president that puts together the coalitions to get things passed. Not "proclaim support" back in May 2009, but to stand behind his own commission and make the case. Not do nothing and leave us to hope Congress shoves it down his throat.
But this bar has been lowered completely to the floor. Because Obama represents the culmination of the hopes and dreams for so many they're getting shrill and desperate to demonize whatever they can to cover for him. And that's what the demonizing of just another ho hum voting block, the Tea Party is - it's one gigantic exercise in trying to cover Obama's bottom.
Granted, here on EP he is regularly taken to task as the corporatist, Banker and Chief that he is, and most of the regular posters do a great job mapping that out.
But the Tea Party does seem to be tweaking a few people the wrong way here, and what I'm saying is that the Tea Party is now just another voting block, a pimple on a flea compared to the president, if we had a president.
I stopped reading this comment after that first sentence. That's the kind of election fodder that disgusts me re: both parties. Let's stick to economics, please, and leave morality to the states.
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"There are a huge number of Republicans, and even quite a few who identify with the Tea Party who really liked the idea of more revenues coming in, perhaps 800b to even 1T by lowering rates and closing loopholes. A lot of Republicans are warm to that idea." -- Anon. Drive-by
Let's clarify a little: that "lowering rates" equates to "more revenues coming in" is exactly the kind of economic fiction that has no place here at EP (in my opinion). That fantasy is exactly what George H. W. Bush referred to as 'voodoo economics'. Yes, you might manage economic growth with tax cuts (although that's doubtful in a WTO world where your government is feckless at administering mercantilist trade policies, and capital investment on income from within to outside the U.S. is rewarded by the IRC), but you won't manage a balanced budget that way. Anyway, the phrase "lowering rates" refers to retaining rather than retiring tax cuts that were supposed to be temporary and were necessary because the economy needed a boost in the George W. Bush years -- okay, that spectacularly failed. End of story.
Now we are between a rock and a hardplace, so how about we think about a stand-alone measure to close loopholes? In May, 2009, Obama proclaimed support for such measures. and there's no way he would dare to veto such stand-alone legislation either in 2011 or in 2012.
Get it? We think about closing loopholes, not because it gains political advantage for this party or the other -- not at the price of this, that or the other legislation that otherwise wouldn't stand a chance -- but just because closing loopholes is a very good idea. If you can't follow me here, I suggest you read (as of yesterday) David Cay Johnston's book, Perfectly Legal.
Anon advances the premise that "Quite a few" TPers and "a lot of Republicans" want to increase revenues by closing egregious loopholes in the Internal Revenue Code. If you want to know which loopholes, get a copy of the book Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston, okay? But let's say that we are going specifcally after loopholes that favor income earned in the USA being invested oversears because of IRC preferences that make such investments more profitable than investments in the USA.
Let's test that assumption that loopholes weren't closed despite support for closing them by TPers in Congress.
The record shows 95 Democrats in the House (half of all Democrats) voted against the White House -- against the budget "deal" -- and all of them would certainly support legislation to close loopholes in the IRC. Assuming that all 56 Tea Party Republican representatives also support closing loopholes, what is needed to enact IRC reform in this (112th) Congress? The math shows that what's needed is just 66 votes from the Tea Party's Republican bedfellows. Indeed, since some of the 95 Democrats supported the ''deal" only out of some perverse loyalty to Obama, the number of Democrats who would support IRC reform is probably well over 100. That means that if just one out of three, or one out of four, or one out of five non-Tea-Party Republican members of the House would vote for reform of IRC loopholes, reform will happen this year or next. (There are currently 433 members of the House -- 180 Democrats, 56 TP Republicans, and, 197 non-TP Republicans.)
Get it? 56 TPers (members of TP Caucus) + 95 progressive Dems + just 66 other Republicans or Dems (not even one out of four!) = REFORM OF EGREGIOUS INTERNAL REVENUE CODE LOOPHOLES IN THIS 112TH CONGRESS!
If that majority is there, then this will happen. Otherwise, why are any members of the TP remaining in the GOP? Why do pro-IRC reform Democrats remain in the Democratic Party? Well, at leas they can say that half of all the Democrats stood togeher with the necessary intestinal fortitude to stand up against their own president when the chips were down, defying their own leadership. All it would take would be a strong statement from the TPers in favor of closing IRC loopholes, and reform will happen.
Unfortunately, it appears that closing IRC loopholes isn't what TPers or other Republicans want. They like foreign interests. They support foreign interests over domestic producers. That's why the fury, and you ain't seen nothin' yet!
So why are TPers even in the Republican Party? What happened to the promise of a third party alternative? What's the point? Could it be the big RNC and related (secretly sourced) money? And if so, why don't they quit squawking about their principles? --because they wouldn't know a principle if it bit them on their petunias! Of course, I hope I will be proven wrong, and then I will register Republican.
Kudos to CNN for getting this on so fast. S&P seems to be making one very expensive statement on the United States political system.
What you mean 'WE", Johnny?
Back when the 'Tea Party' was a populist grass-roots phenomenon, it was written up in the 'National Review' as dangerous and something to be watched carefully because it was expressing protectionist sentiment of working-class Americans. From the first, the Tea Party was watched carefully by big RNC money who decided the last thing they wanted was another Reform Party such as was brought to us by Ross Perot in the 1990s (when, by the way, the budget was balanced thanks to the continuing activism of Mr. Perot working quietly -- as an ordinary citizen and not as a paid lobbyist -- on both sides of the aisle in Congress).
After the entrance of paid professional organizers on the Tea Party scene, the name 'Ross Perot' went down the Orwellian Memory Hole for fear that the Tea Party might actually lead to the resurrection of a viable third party alternative. Nothing was said of the George W. Bush administration's trashing of the Social Security lock-box or of the budgetary farce of putting wars "off-budget" while preventing any investigation of war profiteering fraud, or, of the profoundly inane policy of announcing a buying spree in 2001 as the appropriate way to approach a war ... paid professional organizers made certain those topics were never discussed. More importantly, paid professional organizers of the so-called 'Tea Party' made certain that protectionism was never discussed, at least not in a positive light.
Meanwhile, the corporate media played up the new 'Tea Party' -- sanitized of all protectionist tendencies -- while what was left of a true independent Tea Party was starved to death for the sake of a FAUX Tea Party that was never and would never be anything but a tool and a branch of the Republican Party. More specifically, the 'Tea Party' leadership has been seen to be a group of Republican internationalist anti-American paid professional liars, including not only those in Congress but also those working at the 'think tanks' and for corporate media. They are all paid professional politicians, whether they ever stand for an election or not.
These paid professional 'leaders' of the 'Tea Party' define the issues for the meetings and for whatever activism they can hustle up. Under that paid professional leadership, the issues quickly became defined as (1) a Republican victory in 2010 and in 2012, (2) Obama and supporting opposition to Obama in Congress, EXCEPT (3) support for Obama's 'free' trade agreements and every 'free' trade agreement on the books.
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It's the same ole insanity, they want to control a woman's body, put here as a second class citizen, cut all social safety nets and have corporations able to run more amok.
There is nothing new here, it's the same old agenda that has been chipping away at the U.S.A. since the 1980's.
On this site, at least, pretty much anything that doesn't add up by the economic numbers and is detrimental economically to the national interest, a heavy focus on regular people, working people, U.S. middle class, citizens of the nation....
we do indeed, in with all of the blogger speak fire we can muster, blast it all to hell.
But we don't pick and choose agendas and are assuredly equal opportunity political slammers.
The fact these idiots want to destroy SS will be one of the biggest economic disasters in the history of the U.S.A.
Everyone hates "Obamacare" but the reasons are very different. This site hates it because it refused to take on the private health care industry and the for profit system which is ripping America off three times more than any other industrialized nation.
The reason Medicare is going to break the bank like all health care is the U.S. is getting ripped off.
Tea party people want to make the situation worse, not better. Screaming absurdities like "that's socialist" and "that's communist", are not only insane, they are dead ass wrong.
Obama isn't a "socialist", he's a bought and paid for corporatist, just like 98% of Congress, including the Tea party.
These people just rant empty rhetoric and behind that rhetoric is the same old agenda which will destroy the U.S.A. and is most assuredly not in the national interest.
I mean come on, I think recently I've posted a good 5 posts blasting Obama on G.E., trade deals analyzed to lose jobs and even economists who "cheer" outsourcing are finally starting to look at the statistics and saying "oopsy", this is imploding the U.S. middle class.
Duh. Anyone with basic calculus should see that was going to happen.
So, bottom line, we are non-partisan on the site. Speak economic fiction, regardless of who you are and you will be called out if we find it and crank the numbers to show it's B.S.
But if this is the fury that is being unleashed on 40 or so House of Representative members, then 1,000 times the fury should be released on Barack Obama, and I just don't see it.
In fact what I do see so much of here is suggestion after suggestion that he is the only adult in the room.
Yet there are a huge number of Republicans, and even quite a few who identify with the Tea Party who really liked the idea of more revenues coming in, perhaps 800b to even 1T by lowering rates and closing loopholes. A lot of Republicans are warm to that idea.
So Simpson-Bowles does their work, and comes up with revenue producing tax simplification that has broad bipartisan support. I ask all the intellectually honest here to really think about whether this would be achievable under Clinton-Gingrich.
But it doesn't seem to be achievable now. And why not?
Obama got up there and gave a State of the Union, did you hear him advocate Simpson-Bowles? I didn't.
Obama put out a budget in February, did it contain any major planks of Simpson-Bowles? No, it did not.
Obama bashed Ryan all to hell in April, but did he use that occasion to embrace any planks of Simpson-Bowles? No, he did not.
The block we have here is the Junior Senator from Illinois, a man with 2 undistinguished years in the Senate before he started running for President. A man with the slenderest of qualifications to have that job, who in 2 1/2 years has purposely brought his nation to the doorstep of insolvency.
We have 1T on the tables just in doing basic tax reform that could pass on bipartisan basis. That is our problem, not 40 members of the House.
And all I was saying is that the bitterness and hatred and venom spewed at the Tea Party is toxic and unhelpful. When the real problem is up there giving a campaign speech disguised as a presser.
That is the guy who can't add. If he could, he would add up the young men losing their lives so he can maintain his smartassness in pursuing "the right war" just so he can hold his nose high over Bush, yet we know he's going to pull them out in July 2012 just so he doesn't have to campaign with the troops in. Can he add up the young men dying for his politics?
That is the guy who can't add, and he's killing us. Citizens getting involved because they see their government pursuing nation-ending policies is a good thing, not a national debacle. Barack Obama is the national debacle.
We're all dead. I feel like we're at the end of empire and nobody cares. I haven't had paying work in over four years and, if things don't change soon, I'll be living in a cardboard box.
I want to make one thing perfectly clear: it's NOT the politicians' fault. It's OUR fault. WE voted these people in and they instituted the policies that WE wanted them to insititute. Never mistake where the blame goes. Nobody took political power in this country by accident or by coup. We're getting EXCATLY what WE voted for.
Enjoy your success.
Corporations fight this tooth and nail. They literally have software algorithms on how to profit from moving capital, funds and jobs around the globe.
But pretty much any common sense policy having to do with labor and economics goes to committee to die. If it's managed to be voted out of committee, they will kill it with amendments.
If it actually passes, they will appoint 6 corrupt as hell conferees and rewrite a bill to nothing after it has passed both houses.
All very disgusting and why the entire globe is now in an uproar. While everyone is blasting S&P at the moment, who can argue with their assessment our government is so insane and corrupt, they are literally destroying the U.S.A.
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