Merry Christmas! Congress finally decided to give you a Christmas present.. Actually, it was nothing at all, because you already had it. Thats the funniest part (or is it saddest) of all of this. DC just went to war, and the end result to you will be nothing at all. Your payroll tax just went from 4.2% to...... 4.2%. For all of two months. Then it all starts over again.
For all the perceived winners and losers in the Payroll Tax deal, the real truth is there are no winners... There might be a few losers though. Republicans don't look too good right now, for all the wrong reasons. They honestly had the higher groun on this one by wanting to go a full year on this. The House Democrats' plan was the same according to Nancy Pelosi. But the Senate is where all good legislation goes to die, or get watered down by compromise. Compromise is often a good thing, but when the starting point is th right thing, then compromise ruins it...
Honestly, we'll never understand what made the Senate decide to only push a tax extension only two months. The arguments were all sound: businesses need a clearly defined plan to be able to forecast hiring, and two months is no where near that. Six times longer is a big difference. January is when companies make their decisions for the year, now that has been pushed back at least another til March.... 2012 may be down the economic drain.
The bad guys suddenly became John Boehner and the Tea Party Republicans. Though the TP's may be more to blame, Boehner is the one who may pay more than anyone. Fox had a TP congressman from Louisiana on today, and they grilled him pretty hard on the topic. The best question was 'if this was such a roadblock, and you're against a 2 month extension, why are you not here?' he basically said they left it up to Boehner to express their views. Essentially, he passed the buck and said 'It's not my job'. Nice...
In short, Boehner got screwed by both the Senate and the House Republicans. The poor bastard was trying to cut some type of deal, and if it weren't for Pelosi coming up with the unanimous consent solution, we may very well be coming up with the extra 2% each week.. It was all politics. Even President Obama got in on it, asking Americans to tell him what $40/week means to them. A bit of an overestimate, becuase $40/week only applies to the top earning rate of $100k plus. People at that level blow $40/week on coffee and cigarettes..
Nope, Americans should feel like they just got something extra in their Christmas stocking, because nothing new was there. This was not a tax cut, it was an extension. A more correct feeling is to feel like you just got mugged, and the mugger was about to shoot you, when his pistol got jammed. Luckily, the gun was just aimed at your wallet... We guess the bets way to look at it is that for once, DC didn't eff up your life..... but God knows they tried! Can't lose 'em all now....
.
No comments:
Post a Comment