Senator Bernie Sanders, filibustered the Senate for 8.5 hours on the tax bill. Thank God for Bernie Sanders. He's trying to stop yet another giveaway to the powerful, this time as tax cuts for the rich. People across the land cheered for Filibernie, Sanders is also updating events on his twitter account. Below is a floor speech Sanders gave a week ago, making it clear, we have class warfare going on in this country and the middle class is losing, badly.
President Obama literally put former President Bill Clinton on a White House official podium, to endorse his deal. I kid you not. We all know Bill could sell us a fly shit farm and we'd think we had struck gold long afterward. So, are you buyin' this one?
Remember, Clinton brought us the China trade agreement, deregulation of the financial industry and NAFTA. Often touted as the great economic presidency, the reality is many of the seeds of destruction were sewn during the Clinton Presidency. Dean Baker wonders why the headline of Bill Clinton wasn't President Obama Gets Leading Proponent of Social Security Privatization and Bubble Economy to Tout Budget Deal.
President Clinton had been considering a variety of options for partially privatizing Social Security in the beginning of 1998 when the Lewinsky scandal exploded.
Meanwhile the unsqueaky wheel gets no noise and that of course is the CBO who scored the Senate tax cut bill. Guess what, it will cost us -$756.41 billion in lost revenues for 5 years. In the first 5 years, S.A. 4753, or the Senate tax bill, will add $892.85 billion to the budget deficit. Most of this, at least $500 billion, is directly lost revenues in tax cuts for the rich. The CBO figures are attached, so you can look for yourself on how giving tax cuts to the rich blasts out the deficit.
More amusing, the unemployment extension is just $44.66 billion for 5 years in lost revenues, while the estate tax is $67.5 billion. See that? Something that is known to be stimulative as well as the right thing to do, help people who cannot get a job, is cheaper that letting the super rich pass their ill gotten gains to their heirs. All of this additional debt for 1.26% of Americans wage earners, or roughly 1.9 million. If one goes up to $250,000 dollars, the number of people affected is 1.2 million. For more details on the statistics, read Tax Cut Do Not Generate Jobs.
Even worse, the CBO warned on waiting to deal with the deficit. But most interesting, they are focused on social security instead of the real causes, which are two wars, high medical costs and the lack of revenues because people don't have jobs.
- Higher debt would reduce the amount of saving devoted to productive capital and thus would result in lower incomes than would otherwise occur.
- Higher debt would lead to higher interest payments, meaning that larger tax increases or cuts to spending programs would be needed to make fiscal policy sustainable.
- Higher debt would make it harder for policymakers to respond to unexpected problems, such as financial crises, recessions, and wars.
- Higher debt would increase the likelihood of a fiscal crisis.
In the true spirit of our corrupt Congress, it appears corporate lobbyists wish lists are being filled by our Congress additionally....in, you guessed it, the tax cut bill.
Merry Christmas Match Girl.
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Comments
Thanks for the end times review
I have never seen a sadder collection of (s)elected leaders in my life. They are clueless. Balance the budget but turn off a trillion in revenue. Claim tax cuts are to stimulate the economy but do nothing about job creation. It goes on and on.
Here's a simplified version of our troubles. After ten years of gluttony for the upper tier, there are no net new jobs. So much for tax cuts but this president is like the last in philosophy and patronage. If lowering taxes created job, there wouldn't be enough workers to fill them.
Obama and Clinton should have been saying, "it's da plane!"
Michael Collins
Senator Sanders an American Hero.
I watched Bernie Sanders and then, amazingly enough, Senator Landrieu for two hours yesterday. Senator Sanders is a now an American Hero in my eyes.
Bernie Sanders has always been a hero
I think the biggest reason I like him so much is he pays attention to economics, so you don't just get some sort of partisan rancor, he's a party of 1, a Democratic socialist, and he has worked with conservatives on issues such as trade. He's also defending U.S. tech workers on the H-1B Visa. So, he pays attention to the policy, statistics instead of getting this plate of rotten agenda mixed in with something you want, which is both parties.
We need an independent in the White House I think, but these two corrupt parties have the entire electoral college, the entire voting system so locked up, I don't see how anything could happen beyond a Ross Perot or Teddy Roosevelt.
I see now why Ralph Nader was such an ass about it, people just don't have a choice the way the entire system is set up in the U.S., so these corporations and special interests own and run the country through these two corrupt parties.
There is a major point going on here which is why did Democrats wait until the last minute, they could have passed this all a year ago.
Bernie's Rant post updated extensively, error correction
This post was written last night, late, while under the effects of Benadryl, and I mis-read the CBO scoring. Post corrected. Additionally more references to the agenda to destroy & privatize social security are mentioned.
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which is why we try like hell to obtain objective information, esp. on numbers...so come on readers, help out, if you see an error say something.
Senate voted for cloture
They are out there peddling this tax bill like no tomorrow. It's going to pass of course. One must wonder if Democrats planned this all along, waiting until the last minute to even deal with the Bush tax cuts.
Anyone else feeling no represented?
Moody's threatening U.S. sovereign credit downgrade
Actually this isn't a threat, probably more a general reality, but Moody's is saying the U.S. risks a credit downgrade if the tax bill, which has a cost of almost $900 billion, becomes law.
Where is everyone? People sick of commenting how we're getting screwed yet nothing different happens?
The 13 Corporate Oligarchs Who Make Economic Policy
Bernie's fillibuster had reference to a study James Kwak
called "13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown.” Kwak lays out how the same 13 top corporate chieftains sit on the Fed and made the decisions on bailouts and commercial paper lending. We learned from recent Fed disclosure that $9 Trillion was lent out in in commercial paper in 2008-2009.
I for one cannot oppose creation of a substitute for a banking system which freezes and makes no credit. At the same time, there is the question of control. What about the rest of us who need credit in small business struggling to survive? 5 million small businesses failed (deaths net of births) in 2008. Not one of the 13 Oligarchs came from a small business background.
The words deomcracy and oligarchy are opposites. Either you accept the rule of the few or you at least desire the rule of the many - the 'DEMOS' or the 'OLIGOS'.
No one who reads these pages will be surprised how the next disaster has its seeds in the current crisis. The news James Kwak has for us is that we can name names and we know who the conspirators are. No more nursery rhymes about Mr. Market, please.
Burton Leed