Negotiate with terrorists, and they will come back again, asking for more.Henderson repeats the above at the end of the piece too. Just to make sure you get that.
Increasingly, this is what the debt ceiling debate looks like in Washington, as GOP radicals extract pound after pound of ideological flesh from President Barack Obama, only to insist that it’s just not enough.Great job on that new tone thing! Why doesn't Stephen let everyone know that when their credit card is maxed out, and their spouse wants more credit and they refuse that they are terrorists and want to detonate a bomb on the family finances. That makes just as much sense as what is written above.
They will have their way — absolutely, with no exceptions — or they will detonate a bomb in the middle of a barely recovering economy, sending shockwaves that could reverberate for decades. Literal violence, it isn’t. But the GOP is certainly indulging an astounding act of economic hostage-taking.
Fact is, there is already a compromise. Raising the debt ceiling in exchange for cuts IS THE COMPROMISE! After all, Obama will spend that increased credit immediately while we have to wait 10 years to see any cuts, and I'm in no way convinced those cuts are real.
Henderson's appeal is for more taxes on those evil rich people. Taxing the people that already pay the vast majority of the taxes anyway won't even put a dent in the deficit as the government is short by more than $100 billion... A MONTH! You can raise the rates on the richest 1% to 100%, steal all their wealth, and it still won't make a dent. That's how bad the problem is. So who's the ideologue here? The top 5% of taxpayers, by the way, pay more federal income taxes than the bottom 95%. Let that sink in for a moment. Meanwhile, the bottom 51% pay no federal income taxes at all and the bottom 40% get money back. So why should the top be punished even further? Curiously, the push for tax increases always comes like this from liberals:...he has retreated on tax reform to the point where he is simply asking for some of the wealthiest Americans to give up deductions and loopholes that even many in the GOP say make little sense.Um - Stephen: that's not asking. That's stealing (taxing for a legitimate function of government is fine, extracting money from people to pay for an illegitimate function of government such as cutting checks to other people is thievery). As in I will have more of your money or you will go to jail at the point of a gun!
And about those so-called tax cuts that Henderson claims are unsustainable:
...the deep tax cuts of the last decade are unsustainableAfter the decrease in marginal tax rates in 2001 and 2003, the deficit decreased in 2005. And then further decreased in 2006. And again in 2007, which was the year of the last GOP budget. So we had a decreasing deficit for several straight years, after the tax cuts and after the wars. In 2007, the federal budget was $2.7 trillion. In 2011 it is $3.8 trillion. The vast majority of the deficit is composed of new Democratic Party spending, not lower tax rates, and not the wars.
UPDATE: As if on cue, Paul Krugamn (via memorandum): The Cult That Is Destroying America
UPDATE #2: As if on cue: Pelosi: GOP Using The Budget Deficit to 'Destroy' and 'Undermine' Government
UPDATE #3: A good example of just how punitive the tax system is can be seen not only at the top tax brackets, but at the lowest ones. From Zero Hedge: In Entitlement America, The Head Of A Household Of Four Making Minimum Wage Has More Disposable Income Than A Family Making $60,000 A Year
