THAT’S what I’m talking about!
January 1, 2013 in 2013 Issues, Decency, Inspiration, National Issues By: Dave Emerson
(1/1/2013, Los Alamitos, by Dave Emerson) Happy New World!
Turns out, our Mayan friends were right!
The world really has changed over the past few weeks!
First, Troy Edgar’s iron hand was overturned while he was still Mayor, as our new Council voted to reconsider City Staff raises he had rammed through in the dying minutes of his “Old Majority’s” control of our City.
Then our new City Council elected a Mayor and Vice Mayor unanimously. Did I mention that Mayor is Warren Kusumoto? And Troy Edgar voted for him!
Wow!
Changes in the DC:
Over the weekend that ability of elected opponents to work together spread all the way across the continent to our nation’s capital as Republican Senate Minority Leader invited Democrat V.P. Joe Biden to be his “dance partner” to steer our highly divided, highly partisan federal government away from the dreaded “Fiscal Cliff.”
The cliffhanging dance continued in the wee hours of the New Year as our bipartisan couple actually danced over the cliff for a moment before pulling themselves and our nation back to a semblance of non-partisan sanity which the Senate approved early this morning in a stunning 89-8 bipartisan landslide that should make it pretty hard for the House not to go along!
It wasn’t pretty, it ain’t perfect, and there’s lots of work to be done, but Biden & McConnell showed the nation that partisans could indeed find ways to dance together for the common good.
How did they do it?
The old fashioned way.
They compromised. Cut deals. Made trade offs.
They started with what everyone agreed on: Don’t let taxes go up on the middle class.
Then they figured out what was most important to each side and started making trade-offs.
On the issues that remained, they split the difference wherever they could.
Then, as the clock ticked down, they gave themselves two months to resolve the big issue they didn’t have time to deal with, the automatic budget cuts that were to kick in at midnight. But they also agreed on a way to pay for the money lost by delaying the cuts.
The more I look at the bill itself, the more amazed I am at all McConnell and Biden were able to work through.
What’s in the Senate bill?
Something for everybody to love, and to hate. On the surface, it looks to me like Republicans gained more than Democrats, but in the end we all won.
A win-win compromise. In the DC. Unbelievable.
Best of all, important income and estate tax issues that have created massive uncertainty for over a decade were finally resolved permanently, assuming the House approves & the President signs the bill:
- The ten-year Bush era tax cuts that expired at midnight were extended permanently for all but the top 1%, households with over $450,000 annual income.
- Estate taxes were raised from 35% to 40%, but the first $5 million of an estate isn’t subject to the tax, if I’m reading the reports correctly. That should let married couples shelter $10,000,000 using an A-B trust.
- The alternative minimum tax was finally indexed to inflation so Congress no longer has to wrangle each year with how much it must be raised to avoid hitting middle class taxpayers.
- Federal Tax rates on investment income for high income households goes up from the current, all-time low of 15% to 20%.
Not bad for two days of work over a Holiday weekend!
A New Years’ Day miracle?
Thank you, Joe Biden & Mitch McConnell for showing the nation that it is still possible for partisans to work together for the common good!
Work together for the common good!
I hope and pray that simple lesson filters down to every citizen and elected official from Washington to Sacramento and Los Alamitos, and spreads around the world to Damascus, Cairo, Kabul, Moscow and Jerusalem.
Then 2013 really could be a Happy New Year for our troubled city, nation, and world.
God bless you, Mitch McConnell!
God bless you, Joe Biden!
God bless us, every one!
Happy New Year!
First off, just because the Senate passed a deal doesn’t make the deal don (any more than when the Old Majority passed their deal on the contract). The GOP led House now can kill the deal, or they can make a bunch of amendments that the Dems will never agree to and toss it back to the Senate that will refuse the deal.
In other words, the ONLY thing that actually happened last night was that the Senate threw the whole mess to the GOP House in a deal that makes Speaker Boehner’s Plan B (which was killed by the teabaggers in the House) look like it was a great deal. Oh, that and ALL of the Bush Tax Cuts expired at midnight.
What to expect going forward?
Now that the cuts have expired, and if Speaker Boehner can’t get the GOP in the House to agree to the deal, expect the Senate to just offer a tax cut package for $250K and below. No negotiations. Just accept the deal or don’t.
And I suspect that the deal in the City is NOT going to include a 9% pay raise, but will be one of “accept the deal or don’t” as well.
Pensions for public employees were part of the deal that said “you will work for less than you would get in the Private Sector, but we will make up for it by paying for your retirement later.” In today’s market where a City Manager makes over $150,000 there is no reason that anyone can claim that they are being underpaid. The deal is simple. You are now being well overpaid for the job, your retirement is YOUR problem, not the taxpayers.
Now, either accept the deal, or don’t. You are NOT irreplaceable in today’s marketplace.
JM:
So far things may be tracking as you predicted. Eric Cantor, the House Republican’s # 2 on their leadership team, has come out against the Senate bill, saying more cuts are needed.
All this reminds me of many a real estate deal. It’s one reason I almost always insist that when I’m showing buyers, ALL decision makers, including hubby, Mom, Dad, Uncle Fred, Dad’s barber & any other family real estate expert be in the car and actually see what the inventory is if they want any input when it’s time to write up the offer.
POTUS apparently briefly tried that approach after cutting short his multi-million dollar Hawaiian winter vacation, his contribution to budget cuts and shared sacrifice. Somebody should tell him about Camp David.
Anyway, Mr. “Lead from behind” never spent enough time with all the players together, but left it to the Senate leaders to try to work it out, but fortunately Veep Biden jumped in.
Yes, the more partisan House, where everybody runs for office every other year & most of the Districts are Gerrymandered, will be more of a problem than the Senate. But if Boehner lets everyone vote, I still think it will probably pass.
Another Golden Opportunity may again pass us by, while the Campaigner in Chief leads campaign events without getting involved in the dirty work. Yet.
Time will tell.
“To be continued. . . .”
Excluding the excruciating partisan (anti-POTUS) language of your response…
1) Congress made this mess
2) Congress can’t clean the mess up
3) If the POTUS took the initiative and sent over a budget that re-instituted the 1958 tax code (adjusting all financial numbers for inflation) it would never pass Congress [despite the fact that it's the best solution to our current fiscal issues]
4) Congress creates the budget, the President can only sign it or veto it. If he vetos it Congress can override that veto. In other words, all the President can do is “suggest” a budget, it’s Congress that owns the purse strings.
Last thing to look at… as you point out…
In Congress 53,952,240 votes were cast for Democratic candidates, while Republican candidates received 53,402,643. In other words, if the votes were apportioned equally rather than in gerrymandered districts then the House would be (D) also (although barely). The (D) candidates all ran on a somewhat common platform of:
1) Increased taxes
2) No changes to social security and medicare
3) Investment in infrastructure
The GOP ran on:
1) More tax cuts
2) Cuts in social security and medicare
3) More defense spending
Since in every way there were more (D) votes in the Senate, House and Executive than there were (R) votes, that sort of says that there is a mandate for doing the first three rather than the second set (if Bush could claim a mandate, as he did, after losing the popular [and when all votes were counted, the electoral] vote to Gore I would say that the shoe is definitely on the other foot now.)
So, let
s let the commie-pinko-lefty Dems have a chance to have the Kenyan-Muslim-Socialist-Commie-Marxist do what they all ran on and see how it works out.
The deal is done, but what an interesting set of fireworks!
First you have to understand that there are three leadership positions in the House for the GOP. They are the Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy. The vote went down and they voted FOR the Senate bill in an up-or-down vote. No amendments allowed.
Now what makes this interesting is that Speaker Boehner voted “Yes”, but Majority Leader Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy both voted “No”. While their no votes were basically ineffective, what this is leading to is a push to get the Speaker out and to put in very right leaning Cantor, or even possibly Paul Ryan as Speaker. This would mean even greater levels of gridlock in the House as Canter and Ryan are both members of the “starve the government so it shrinks to a size so small you can drown it in a bathtub” school of government (ie: The government is bad and should be eliminated).
This does not fare well for the next fiscal cliff going forward, the cleanup that they delayed, or the debt ceiling vote (to understand that vote, it’s a vote to raise the debt ceiling for spending Congress already voted for and spent. Why have a separate vote to do that after they already voted to spend the money and spent it? You have me there.).
So, the next step is for the GOP in the House to attempt to “save Social Security” by killing it slowly (it’s solid for the next 20 years just as it is, and if they were to just raise the cap based on re-applying the Greenspan formula that Reagan used it would be good for the next 60).
Putting on my “so you want to play this?” hat I would hope that the Democrats would come forward with the following as the starting point for negotiations.
1) Lower the retirement for Social Security age to 55 and remove the cap.
2) Lower Medicare eligibility to 55 @ 50% discount off cost and increasing the discount by 10% a year for the next 5 years
3) Open Medicare up for purchase by any American at cost.
4) Return the inheritance tax to the 1965 rates with the first $5MM exempt ($10MM for couples)
5) Double the amount that can be put in an IRA or other deferred account
6) Allow the first $100K of capital gains to be treated as income and taxed as income, but the balance to be taxed at the 1964 tax rates.
7) Allow interest paid on from Credit Card Debt to be deductible up to $15,000
8) Allow all college tuition and books to be deductible at 100%
9) Allow all interest on college loans to be deductible
10) Allow for anyone to have up to $100,000 in federal college loans forgiven if they serve two years in either the US Armed Forces or Americorps.
11) Allow the re-importation for all prescriptions
12) Allow Medicare to negotiate pharmaceuticals
13) Close all foreign military bases where the host country refuses to pick up 100% of the operational costs of the base
14) Eliminate all financial aide to all foreign countries in any form but as exchange credits for purchase of American made products.