BREAKING: Federal judge in Virginia rules unconstitutional key provision of Obama health care reform bill…but refuses to freeze it or invalidate it. Go figure.
Ring, Christmas bells, merrily ring…tell all the world the tax deal is king…”
Oh, the weather outside is frightful but the tax talk is so delightful. But since we’ve no place to go, let the snow job go on in the Congress…” Or something like that.
It’s a good tax deal, says the White House and the Congressional Republicans and most Congressional Democrats – except, of course, those looking out for the working people of ‘Murka.
Take Sen. Bernie Sanders, for example. Bless his heart, he stood for 8.5 hours on the Senate floor Friday afternoon and into the evening filibustering the tax deal. It was a real filibuster, too, not those fake or threatened filibusters the Senate Republicans have used so effectively to frightening their Democratic colleagues.
Sanders actually took the floor of the Senate and kept talking for over eight hours, without stopping except to catch his breath, never relinquishing the floor.
But the tax deal will be adopted anyway.
President Clinton says the deal is as good as we’re gonna get in this era of Republican insistence on tax breaks for the millionaires and billionaires.
The New York Times this morning points out a “hefty chunk” of the deal, which will add nearly $900 billion to the deficit, is really good for the middle class – what’s left of it – and will benefit, too, the lower class – which is the rest of us outside the top 2 percent of the wealthiest.
The good ol’ New York Times, the Gray Lady; remember when it thought going to war in Iraq was such a great idea?
Anyway, the NYTimes piece points out the annual adjustment to the alternative minimum tax will increase in 2011 insulating couples making as much as $74,450, up from the current limit of $72,450. This will cost $137 billion.
Actual wage earners, if any remain, will also see a reduction in the Social Security tax. A one-year payroll tax cut for incomes up to $106,800 will go from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. Couples earning that much will see as much as $4,272 extra in 2011. That tax break will cost $112 billion.
Extension of the jobless benefits will cost $57 billion.
The deal also includes a temporary repeal of the limit on itemized deductions and an absolute repeal of the scheduled phase out of personal exemptions: another $21 billion to the deficit.
Just makes me want to cry…like John Boehner.
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