It’s time 41 Senators tell Kent Conrad, “We don’t have the votes.”

This is one case in which inaction is progressive.

“People in the upper tax brackets have a huge impact, a disproportionate impact on consumer spending,”

I don’t think that is factually true. The rich are more into using Wall street and the commodities market to breed money.

Silly BT. What’s gonna happen to the yacht industry if we don’t keep taxes low for the wealthy?

Think, man, think!

Once more the Democrats prostrate themselves before the altar of Mammon.

Really.

I mean, if rich people buy more Learjets, that creates jobs!

Don’t forget the yachts. Lotsa jobs there…

And McMansions! What a boon to the construction industry!

And don’t give me that old saying, “I never got a job from a poor person”.

That’s just badgering.

Of course, wealthy Americans will take more vacations which means lots of new jobs: for hotel maids! Just make sure to check their papers first.

Only spending on poor people impacts the deficit. Food stamps = wildly increases the deficit. Tax Cuts for the wealthy = deficit neutral.

Boy! will I enjoy watching these stupid pricks going down in flames in the midterms.

Umm, outside of the followers of the Holy Mother Church of Voodoo Economics, giving the wealthy a break on their already low taxes helps no one but the already wealthy. It’s the other 90 or 99% of us that need the break, senators, an observation many of us will make in the voting booth in November.

I know you people hate to see the rich get any breaks but they are the ones paying for your unemployment benefits and your food stamps. A little respect (and a few breaks) would be nice.

I’d enjoy it more if I thought there was something better waiting in the wings. Alas, it seems to be stupid pricks all the way down.

Bullshit.

If tax cuts for the wealthy are suppposed to create jobs, why the hell after all these tax cuts aren’t we ass deep in jobs?

What a complete line of bullshit. Konrad needs to join Nelson, Lincoln, Bayh, and the rest of the bluedog dipshits and join the republican party. They’re sure as hell not doing us any good.

You don’t get out much, do ya homeboy?

Why do the rich need “breaks”?

If he only had a heart (and a brain, and some courage)…

Hey, it’s hard work swimming in the ol’ money bin.

“He’s rich! Do you understand? He thinks he can get away with anything.”

Won’t someone think of the millionaires…

Horrors! If he had all three, he might actually use the heart and brain and courage and become a librul of all things

But nearly all the conservadems like baubles!! Or is that bauble-heads? I don’t remember which.

OT, but gawd awful pic of Conrad, eh? His nose looks like it’s made of sponge. Oh that’s not off-topic – it’s a sweet bauble of a nose job.

“My reaction would be don’t cut spending, don’t raise taxes and that would mean on anyone,” Sen. Kent Conrad

Amazing how Conrad changes his tune when it comes time to protect tax cuts for the wealthy.

Gee, I seem to remember Kent just a couple of months ago….

A spending plan drafted by the Senate Budget Committee chairman would reduce deficits by slashing spending on programs unrelated to national security, including provisions that protect middle-class families from the bite of the alternative minimum tax. While Obama would freeze non-defense spending for three years, Conrad would cut deeper, trimming an additional $9.5 billion from those programs in 2011 — about half of it from Obama’s signature Pell Grant expansion. Conrad called his blueprint tough but “realistic . . . given the state of our finances.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/20/AR2010042005156.html

The slavishness of the Democrats to the wealthy isn’t funny any more. It’s revolting.

There are plenty of places to spend our money than from N Dakota businesses….Remember the Public Option?….Conrad.

Not sure where that quote is from, but it reminds me of something from the Great Gatsby. Scott could have been talking about the Oligarchy that runs this country….

I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . . .

So the plan is to push the backlash out to 2012? Smooth move…

Excess social security taxes created a surplus paid for their tax breaks. Maybe YOU should show a little respect, [edited by mod].

Looks like that Squidward guy on the Spongebob show.

Shouldn’t those with most of the money pay most of the taxes?

Funny! He does, doesn’t he?!

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”

I got this in alan grayson email today.

The ’90s economy really sucked.

You know what really sucked about the 90′s economy? The way it seemed to have settled so many questions. Obviously, most of supply-side was bullshit. Higher taxes on the rich worked. Simmering engagement in Iraq notwithstanding, peace was better for business than war. A rising tide only lifts all boats if all boats are given equal access to it, as opposed to allowing one group to dam the harbor and then control the water supply. And now? It’s the same old bullshit, all over again, just as if we hadn’t been given a 7-year demonstration…this may be the clearest evidence of all that a large proportion of our leaders are empirically disconnected from reality.

People throw around phrases like “tax breaks” or “pay [their] fair share” as though there is some thought behind them.

We have a progressive Federal income tax structure. _IF_ those earning higher incomes actually _PAID_ their assigned income tax, they would be paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes than people earning less than they do. This is the case whether we talk about Tax Year 2002 or Tax Year 2003. Since we are talking about INCOME and not WEALTH taxation, those who are earning more are dedicating a larger portion of their year to supporting the Federal Government than those who earn less.

If tax “breaks” offend you, focus on getting rid of tax loopholes that allow the rich to avoid supporting society. If “fairness” is your bag (which no one other than the flat-taxers seems to have a working legislative definition) you may want to worry more about deficit spending as it disproportionately hurts the middle class. When you focus on Income Tax, you will hurt some people you’d probably prefer to support.

Yep, that’s a great one, too. I just rewatched Chinatown over the weekend. Jake Jack has so many great lines in that film.

The Chinese,Japanese and our Social Security
payments are helping to pay that.The rich are
buying things like Trigger (Roy’s stuffed horse),
the soccer predicting octopus etc. Like others are
saying-what about the deficit?

Ah, my user name. Should have caught the Chinatown reference. I dumb.

There are even some parts in The Two Jakes (Chinatown sequel) that are worthwhile, though it isn’t a very good movie. I’m fond of Madeleine Stowe’s “You’re going to make me do it,aren’t you?” scene for obvious reasons.

These “blue dogs” are so silly…now just you wait, the Republicans will next announce that because the blue dogs voted to extend the tax cuts that they want to raise the deficit! It would serve them right too!

“People in the upper tax brackets have a huge impact, a disproportionate impact on consumer spending,” he said.

Utterly false. Compare an individual making $1M a year with 20 families making $50K per year. In aggregate, those twenty families spend most (if not all) of their income on consumer goods. The wealthy individual on average saves more, and does not spend anywhere close to 100% of his income on consumer goods. We could go further with a little concept called the “velocity of money” where its it can be argued that the money spent by those $50K per year families gets re-spent rather quickly (rent, food, repairs, etc). Even if Mr. Moneybags spends all $1M on diamonds, vacation homes, luxury cars, etc, those types of purchases don’t recycle through the US economy as quickly. BTW, this isn’t a liberal point of view, I learned this from Friedman-inspired, conservative professors at U of Chicago.

OTOH, this is a common lie/excuse among the wealthy, and seemingly immune to logic. For example, in the book “Road from Ruin” the argument is made that limiting Wall Street excesses would depress wealthy traders from buying diamond jewelry, which would mean pay cuts for poor diamond wokrers in Africa. (Hah! take that bleeding heart liberals)

Sounds like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Going from the current tax rates to the 2000 levels:

The couple earning $200,000 will pay $10,805 more in taxes.
The couple earning $100,000 will pay $4,937 more in taxes.
The couple earning $75,000 will pay $4,887 more in taxes.
The couple earning $55,000 will pay $2,287 more in taxes.
The couple earning $35,000 will pay $2,165 more in taxes.

Pay up.

Aren’t the Bush Tax Cuts like 3%? Going from 35% to 38% or something like that? Every politician and apologist for these people acts like we’re going to go from 35% to 50% or something. It’s 3%.

The wealthiest people in human history who aren’t suffering in this economy don’t even want to pony up an extra 3%? Good thing we haven’t had WWII, where they might have had to pony up 10-15%. They would probably have moved to the Cayman Islands.

And they call themselves Real Americans.

No problem. I haven’t even earned 35K this year, thanks to Wall Street.

Sucks to have your pay cut by 2/3rds due to the antics of the clueless.

Since they control 80% of the wealth do they pay 80% of the unemployment and food stamps. would you rather people starve to death rather that the rich hoard so much?

Blue Texan,

It’s long past time we stop being charitable to these people calling them Conservadems or some other such nonsense. A “conservative” Democrat is nothing more than a rightwing republican. They need to be recognized as such………..

“People in the upper tax brackets have a huge impact, a disproportionate impact on consumer spending,” he said.

I’ll go along with this.
Causing the worst resection in 80 years did have huge impact on consumer spending.

Conrad is a sack of pig shit. Let him walk across the aisle and take a seat with his Goper pals already. I’m sick of watching Obama kiss this re***ds ass. Enough already, this swine is the true face of the Dimwit party these days. That’s why I no longer am a member of it.

[Edited by Moderator. We're not Rahm and try to avoid the "R" word]

It’s amazing, isn’t it, that they can keep trotting out this very old, very false canard year upon year upon year… and conservatives and too liberals keep lapping it up as if it was truth handed down from Mt. Sinai.

Do. not. get. it.

The uberwealthy in this nation run this place like the giant casino that it’s become and the peons across all politcal lines bend over to take it where the sun don’t shine.

Anyone who believes that tax cuts for the supremely wealthy will “create jobs” has a rock for a brain. I’m not even going to dignify that any further. Stupid!!

If you’re less than $35,000, then just expext to pay 15% in stead of 10%.

That’s the difference.

It would be in the interest in Conservative..all Democrats to poll the Democratic voters…you know the base…before they keep shooting off there respective mouths about the deficit, taxes on peoples whose income is 250k and up, unemployment, jobs… The REAL problem for elected Democrat office holders is not the GOP…its not even center and right independent voters….nope, its Democrats and Democrat leaning independents. You did not listen on the public option, you bent over and took it up the ass on financial reform, you have yet to pass a jobs bill, you continue to let the right scare the bejesus out of you making you wholly ineffective legislators…and your base(we fools who elected you) is pissed off and fed up. Ya know why HCR is polling negative..well the usual GOP crowd is down on the idea…but its the Democrats and independents polled that are tipping the scale negative because you are a bunch of pantie waist who cannot seem to get that your base..you know DEMOCRATS want single payer..so delude yourselves and what will in the end defeat you in November will not be the bloody silly ignorant right wing fanatics in the Tea Party…Faux News..no it will be us…DEMOCRATS.

Troll infected. Starving works well for both colds and fever.

The only way to make the game fair – pay about the same as a percentage of disposable “after tax after housing after food after clothing” income – is for the rich to pay a massive amount more – begining at a small amount more over 100000 and a large amount more over 1000000 of income.

Indeed the idea that “loopholes” are the problem is only true to the extent corporations can hide earnings – as in IRS Code 482 weak enforcement and courts that pretend form of “company” and form of inter-company transfer is more important than the fact of the transfer – and to the extent we stop valuing inherited wealth earnings – investment earnings – over workers wages – by taxing one at a smaller rate than the other.

Someone above in this thread did the con-job of posting the fake “your taxes will rise at 35000 of income” chart – where the chart is not for w2 income – it pretends after deduction and personal exemption income is the same as your annual income – it isn’t and the 35000 equates to more like a 50000 job. Plus the actual tax calculation shown is bogus for all of us. I think I can come close if I max out the marriage penalty and assume a lot of IRA deductions for our 2 person family making 50,000 each – but then I can’t find many folks really tossing a lot into their IRA these days and I certainly can not get to the numbers shown with two folks making 17500 each.

I know you people hate to see the rich get any breaks but they are the ones paying for your unemployment benefits and your food stamps.

When the worlds second richest person in his own words pays less taxes than his secretary we have a serious problem. I thank him for his honesty on this subject. I do not know how you make that baseless argument. It is the shrinking middle class which is paying for those benefits.

My concern is with everybody in American having a job, contributing to the society in a meaningful way while taking care of their family.
For jobs to materialize we have three problems.
1. Extremely Regressive taxes,
2. Unjustified war in Iraq draining money and costing invaluable lives.
3. For imports generated by captive work force in totalitarian countries we have open door policy whereas our exports get totally hammered by protectionist measures, currency manipulation & blatant patent violations.

When we had progressive taxes till end of 1960s our country was whole lot better. Our citizens were more idealistic dreaming of making world better and society as a whole was more caring. To get a feel just sample a movie of that era and compare it with current version. One will see the difference. With progressive taxes hard working employers and employees still get to make more money than others and be rich but there will be sufficient demand in market due to everybody having money to spare to spend.

We have had both approaches of progressive taxes till end of 1960s and ever increasing regressive taxes during last 4 decades with a small blip during President Clinton presidency. We all know which approach created more jobs and better society.

History has proven resoundingly progressive taxes as the way to go if we want to create more jobs and make a better society.