Republicans push payroll tax hike, Obama tries to block it

[Juche]

Source: Associated Press

http://news.yahoo.com/gop-may-ok-tax-increase-obama-hopes-block-124016578.html

As part of a bipartisan spending deal last December, Congress approved Obama's request to reduce the workers' share to 4.2 percent for one year; employers' rate did not change. Obama wants Congress to extend the reduction for an additional year. If not, the rate will return to 6.2 percent on Jan. 1.

"It's always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn," says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, "but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again." The Texas lawmaker is on the House GOP leadership team.

That worries Rep. David Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, and a member of the House-Senate supercommittee tasked with finding new deficit cuts. Tax reductions, "no matter how well-intended," will push the deficit higher, making the panel's task that much harder, Camp's office said.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., "has never believed that this type of temporary tax relief is the best way to grow the economy," said spokesman Brad Dayspring.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/gop-may-ok-tax-increase-obama-hopes-block-124016578.html

---

If anyone has made it this far in life and not realized the GOP supports regressive economics and plutocracy, then this won't change their minds. But to those of us who understand what the GOP really stand for, it is pretty blatant and may sway some independents. They fought tooth and nail to keep tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations, now want to raise payroll taxes.

FWIW, I'm not opposed to tax hikes since we have to keep our system solvent. But all the pain and suffering under the GOP always falls to those making under 200k a year.

[judgegblue]

1. Lift the cap, lower the rate for everyone

[BeyondGeography]

2. Finally, the Republicans come through for Obama

Can't touch the top rate, but they are more than happy to take $1,000 per year back from the average family.

Yes, yes, quite.

[Big Blue Marble]

3. This is playing with semantics.for sure.

It was to only be a one year reduction to stimulate the economy. Now to let it return
to normal and fully fund Social Security as it was intended, to return the rates to the level
they have been for nearly 30 years is a tax increase?

Now funding SS becomes a bargaining chip to be bounced back and forth between
the parties. This is something that should have never been put in play.

Now the Republicans will want to cut the employers contribution as well
and neither will ever be fully restored. And Social Security will be deeply
underfunded and in further jeopardy just when many will need it even more.

[Johnny Noshoes]

12. Let the "tax holiday" expire.

The few lousy bucks - and it is a very small amount - I get in every paycheck is NOT worth screwing up Social Security.

[Igel]

13. The FICA tax reduction didn't cut into SS revenues.

They were made up by monies from the general fund.

[Big Blue Marble]

15. And that is the trap,

because the general fund is "repaying" with borrowed dollars. Now the SS fund
becomes more insolvent and ripe for destruction. These funds do need to be
kept separate in order to protect our Social Security Program.

This was a lousy and dangerous idea from the start and one that will accelerate
the risks to Social Security. I prepare payroll bi-weekly and know that for most
employees, the amounts they are saving is a pittance in comparison to the potential
losses to their future retirement security.

Ironically, the lower your income the less you benefit from the current reduction, really
only pennies per day, and the more you will need to depend on that future retirement income
that may not be there thanks to this ridiculous and shameful attack on this program.

[FreeBillClinton]

19. I agree. It seems like a double edged sword.

[kelly1mm]

23. Right - which shoots to shit the argument we had that SS has nothing to do with the debt.

Now it does. Thanks a lot!

[JDPriestly]

26. That makes Social Security and unearned benefit.

I strongly, strongly, strongly oppose this. Obama is arguing that Social Security be funded like a welfare program rather than an insurance program in the future.

That is a horrible idea.

This is the beginning of denying Social Security to people who paid for it but are not utterly destitute. Sorry, Obama is not a Democrat on this stance. What an awful idea.

Suggests to me that Obama does not understand what Social Security is about.

[Yupster]

32. Which just makes it ever so obvious that

the social security trust fund is nothing but a term.

The money is general funding just like any other government money.

[MH1]

18. it is consistent with republican semantics

if a 'temporary tax cut' that they like is allowed to expire, they call it a tax increase.

for consistency, if letting the Bush tax cuts expire was a tax increase, letting Obama's payroll tax cut expire is also a tax increase.

I say let them both expire. but semantics is important to the way we talk about the issues with people who don't pay as much attention to the details as they should.

[earthside]

4. It was a bad idea from the beginning.

Ah ... the payroll tax funds Social Security.

This was a bad idea when Pres. Obama proposed and it is still a bad idea.

I'm not taking up for Repuglicans, but how do you support Social Security, argue that it is like an 'insurance' program and then not fund it adequately from its beneficiaries?

This is the kind of tinkering policy that is not helping Pres. Obama -- we need to raise the taxes on the wealthy, period ... the end ... fight for that even if you lose, Pres. Obama.

[abelenkpe]

5. Tax hikes OK on the working class say republicans?

Typical.

[Igel]

14. Is it a tax hike?

A simple tax increase?

A reverting to the normal tax rate?

When we talk about the *-Obama tax reduction expiring, many of us are at pains to say it's not a tax increase, and are pissed at calling it a tax "hike." It's just the expiration of a reduction, sort of a negative decrease, that's all. It's not like taxes would raise, they'd just fail to stay decreased.

Whatever it is, it's the same with the FICA tax reduction expiry.

Many would disagree.

I tend to think whoever tries to play such piddling, transparent word games is either assuming I'm too stupid to spot the hypocrisy for the purposes of manipulation or too stupid to realize that they're insisting to call two token of the same thing by different names and deny that they are, indeed, the same thing.

[sofa king]

6. Sweeeet.

You see how this President does? The jackboots say they want to lower taxes--but not for the poor, oh, no!

So the President snookered them into a one-year reduction, and now it's the Republicans whose warped ideology forces them to raise taxes for a huge percentage of voters, just before an election.

[dorksied]

7. Tax the rich? hell no you damn socialists! Tax the POOR! Hell yeah! ...a message needs to be sent...

I wonder what the TEA party thinks about this now?

It's prolly being spun on Fox to make them believe its for the best.

Republicans need a clear message sent to them in 2012 that their attempts at tyranny will no longer be tolerated.

[placton]

8. obama wrong again

he wants to screw SS, and now it will APPEAR that the GOP doesnt wanna

[earthside]

9. The Social Security payroll deduction ...

... is like paying a premium.

I don't consider it 'tax'.

Lower my income tax, get me some more college grants for my son ... but don't be messing with Social Security -- Obama or Repuglicans.

[Juche]

10. I like the FICA taxes too

I'm glad Clinton lifted the cap in 93 and that the SS rates were adjusted in the 80s to keep it solvent. But my point with this was that it really makes the GOP transparent. They want to cut spending and increase taxes on people earning less than 200k a year. This is a very transparent part of that. If you have a family making 60k a year they will have an extra $1200 a year in FICA taxes when the cut expires.

Lift the cap and lower the rate across the board to keep SS solvent. But for all those tea partiers marching and demanding tax cuts for the rich and higher taxes on themselves (even if they don't know that is what they are marching for. Useful idiots and all) I have one thing to say. Suckers.

[judgegblue]

11. Shoudn't all beneficiaries pay a premium?

If the payroll tax is like an insurance premium, why are those who don't pay entitled to benefits?

[Zenlitened]

30. Re: "why are those who don't pay entitled to benefits?" They are NOT entitled to benifts.

If you don't pay into Social Security, you cannot collect retirement benefits.

As many who "cleverly" worked their whole careers "off the books" find out... too late.

How do you qualify for retirement benefits?

When you work and pay Social Security taxes, you earn “credits” toward Social Security benefits.

The number of credits you need to get retirement benefits depends on when you were born. If you were born in 1929 or later, you need 40 credits (10 years of work).

If you stop working before you have enough credits to qualify for benefits, the credits will remain on your Social Security record. If you return to work later on, you can add more credits so that you qualify. No retirement benefits can be paid until you have the required number of credits.

Link:
http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10035.html#retirement

[24601]

31. You don't become entitled to SS benefits by inhaling & exhaling

on a regular basis. Your OASDI eligibility is established by qualifying SS "contributions" over a sufficient number of payroll quarters. The more you pay in, the higher your eventual benefits.

[TatonkaJames]

16. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction ?

QUOTE:
That worries Rep. David Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, and a member of the House-Senate supercommittee tasked with finding new deficit cuts. Tax reductions, "no matter how well-intended," will push the deficit higher, making the panel's task that much harder, Camp's office said.
EBD QUOTE;

If "Tax reductions" will push the deficit higher, wouldn't logic dictate that raising them would lower the deficit ? As long as they figure a way to impose tax increases on everyone except the wealthiest who can afford it, then politicians will raise taxes. I'm so tired of the idiocy of the US government, we need to banish them all, except for Bernie Sanders.

[MilesColtrane]

17. Politically shrewd.

Make the "anti-tax" Republicans defend their desire to raise taxes on the middle class.

This might open the eyes of some as to what kind lying douchenozzles inhabit the GOP.

[blkmusclmachine]

29. But will Faux Nooz report it?

n/t

[AlbertCat]

20. "It's always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn,"

Uh.... prove it.

Statistics and empirical evidence, please.

[DetlefK]

21. "Tax reductions, "no matter how well-intended," will push the deficit higher"

Tax cuts for the rich pay for themselves.
Tax cuts for the workers increase the deficit.

[Fearless]

22. Compromise... raise it only on the wealthy.

[Bluesbreaker]

24. It's not a payroll tax hike!!!

The payroll tax funds Social Security! This is just another move to undermine Social Security by the president. Obama couldn't get cutting social security into his debt-ceiling deal. But he did manage to defund it through the cut to the payroll tax. Now, any effort to restore funding to Social Security will be labeled a tax hike, instead of what it really is--restoring funding to SS.

[JDPriestly]

25. This specific payroll tax supports Social Security.

These cuts should not be continued.

We are being told that it will be necessary to cut benefits to Social Security and Medicare recipients in the future.

If that is true, we should not reduce the funding going into the Social Security Trust Fund.

Sorry. I strongly disagree with Obama on this. Why is he talking about changing the formula for figuring future Social Security COLAs if he thinks we should cut the taxes that will fund those COLAs?

I would like to hear Obama's explanation: Are Social Security and Medicare going broke as he has claimed? Then why cut the taxes that support them?

If they aren't going broke, then why cut the benefits?

[NobodyInParticular]

28. Necessity to cut Soc. Sec.? The roots of the cutting effort are elsewhere:

If you haven't done so already, look at the Obama-Pete Peterson connection. Pete Peterson and other Wall Street whisperers have access to Obama's ear directly or indirectly. These folks have a dream: bring down social security by de-funding it, then pointing to what a failure it has been, privatize it! Once that is accomplished, the program can be "rescued" by staffing it with CEOs and other obscenely compensated executives, and the money we have all paid into it will go into the pockets of guess-you-know-who.

Geithner appointed by Pete Peterson
http://peureport.blogspot.com/2009/05/geithner-appointed-by-pete-peterson.html

"It's hard for me to imagine a better team than this one," said Pete Peterson, co-founder of the Blackstone Group, who chaired the search committee that chose Geithner for the New York Fed. Peterson, a veteran of the Nixon administration, said Geithner, 47, "has everything that anyone could ask for" in a Treasury chief.

Of Summers, 53, he said, "If there's a more brilliant economist in the United States, I wouldn't know who that is."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2008-11-24-obama-economic-team_N.htm

When Obama’s new Deficit Commission gets going, it has plans for "partnering“--in the words of executive director Bruce Reed--with outside groups. Among them will be the foundation run by Wall Street billionaire Peter G. Peterson, who on today is upstaging the president with his own fiscal summit in Washington. Obama insists he is keeping an open mind about how to deal with the deficit and national debt--but he’s already stacked his own commission with people who lean heavily toward one particular solution: cutting entitlements for the old, the sick, the disabled, and the poor. And if that wasn't enough, he now looks to be working hand-in-glove with a wealthy private organization whose central purpose is to cut Social Security and Medicare. Talk about foregone conclusions.

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/04/pete-petersons-anti-entitlement-juggernaut-gets-fueled-obama

[JDPriestly]

34. Thanks. Bookmarking.

[TexasTowelie]

27. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said,

“I’m for the biggest deal possible, too, but we’re not going to raise taxes in the middle of a recession,” about a month ago.

Was there an economic recovery within the last month so that the Republicans changed their position? Help me--I am so confused!



It looks like the House and Senate Rethugs need to coordinate their talking points.

[DU GrovelBot]

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