Tax Cuts Update: Despite Schumer's Threat, There's Little Appetite To Let Them Expire - HuffPo

[WillyT]

Tax Cuts Update: Despite Schumer's Threat, There's Little Appetite To Let Them Expire
Sam Stein - HuffingtonPost
First Posted: 12- 6-10 12:21 PM | Updated: 12- 6-10 12:21 PM

<snip>

WASHINGTON -- This past weekend, as the White House and congressional lawmakers negotiated away a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, dejected liberals were offered one last droplet of hope.

Amidst the talk of capitulation, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) suggested that rather than extend current rates for two years in exchange for other tax-cut goodies and unemployment insurance, the party might simply let all the tax cuts expire. After all, the president could come back next Congress and build his own package of middle-class tax cuts, branded under the Obama (not Bush) name.

"There are lots of people in our caucus who do have that appetite ," said the New York Democrat.

If that appetite needed further whetting, it came Monday morning in the form of an op-ed from The New York Times's Paul Krugman.

"Mr. Obama should draw a line in the sand, right here, right now," wrote Krugman, the earnest voice of the progressive masses. "If Republicans hold out, and taxes go up, he should tell the nation the truth, and denounce the blackmail attempt for what it is.

"Yes, letting taxes go up would be politically risky. But giving in would be risky, too -- especially for a president whom voters are starting to write off as a man too timid to take a stand."

Yet acts of political defiance -- despite Krugman's wishes or Schumer's provocations -- don't appear to be in the cards. On the Hill and in the White House, the notion that Democrats would let the Bush tax rates revert to previous levels is considered, to put it bluntly, a bluff. And not even all Democrats have been handed the right script.

<snip>

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/06/despite-schumers-threat-a_n_792544.html

:kick:

[RandomThoughts]

1. Real life is not going by the script.

However to try to get people to follow scripts, the multiple ways things can happen all look like they were part of a script.


Think of a road with 4 branches, at the start of the road is a sign that says you will see something, anything, a tree with a car in it.

Then you pick a branch, and there is a tree with a car in it!!!!!!!!!

You think it is fate.





You don't know that every road...

Had a tree with a car in it somewhere.

Fate is a delusion, you do not have to follow a script, and you don't. The reason some things want you to think you follow a script is so you say to yourself that anything you do is useless and you stop trying to do anything.

Following a script is despair based, knowing that you have free will and choice is truth and hope.



I am not where I should be, or in my place, but where ever I am, I will do the same type of things. In a persons life, a person can put a car in a tree no matter what path they choose.

[ProSense]

2. Yes, despite the posturing

there is a Senate, and they can't blame President Obama for their votes.

Do people really think that the votes on Saturday show that Democrats want the tax cuts to expire?

Schumer made his statement after a vote on his amendment, which increased the threshold to $1 million, failed.

[emulatorloo]

4. Where are the "teabaggers" on this? Are they pressuring Republicans to not at 700 Billion

dollars to the deficit? I thought they were all about "stop saddling our Children and Grand Children with dept"

[Joanne98]

3. Does the Senate bill have to go back to the House?

Maybe we can get Pelosi to block it.

[donco]

5. this gutless shit is

making me sick.