Fix Is In, Will Congress Throw Baby Over Cliff?
Senate made a last minute deal on taxes, rates go up on single over $400,000 and $450,000 for couples. This is contingent on the House of Reps going along and Boehner is not even able to control his party, who are the majority. There is a very good chance that the House will simply stick to their rich sponsors and refuse to pass the bill. But Biden as front man for the administration was all smiles and confidence after a meeting with liberal democrats to silence opposition. The AFL-CIO calls it a bad deal and claims it will lead to too many reductions in benefits for working people because it only raises an additional $600 billion. Senate vote 89-8 that is pretty overwhelming and puts the Republicans in the Senate on the side of the Tax bill. Agricultural subsidies are sustained. As reported to keep the price of milk down, right. The unemployment extension is there for another year, good for me, for a while, might even be able to get through college. As for the cuts, that is kicked down the road to March when the real battle comes.
The president seems to be thinking that with a mandate from the citizenry he will do like the French and put a little fig leaf of raising taxes on the rich while the real money comes out of cutting benefits for the rest of us. The theory seems to be that the rest of America will go along with austerity if they see the rich pay a token increase in taxes, 3%, nothing, peanuts. Watch what they try to do to us though between now and March, this will be where the real meat is cut to the bone.
The question is why do we stick with this antiquated economic system based on the profit motive? Certainly with each of these economic recessions, or watching the income discrepancies we know we can do better with a properly planned economy, not based on greed and inefficient standards that exclude the real costs to the world of carving out these profit centers. Sort of carving your leg off to keep the rest of you eating. Kind of primitive, but cannibalizing the planet is basically what we are doing to keep this system going. But I diverge from the point of the day, which is keeping the economy afloat.
Tags: Cliff, What Cliff?