Tag: TMC Politics

21:28 EST: There will be 30 minutes of debate before the vote

22:41 EST: Vote on “Fiscal Cliff” bill starts now. 217 needed to pass.

23:02 EST: Bill passes 267- 167.

23:05 EST: Pres. Obama to address the nation from the East Room Briefing Room at 23:15 EST.

Up Date 20:04 EST The House Republican leadership has decided to put the Senate bill on the floor for an up or dowm vote later tonight.

Early this morning the Senate passed the “Fiscal Cliff Bill” by vote of 89 – 8. Voting in opposition for various reasons were Democratic Senators Tom Carper (D-DE), Tom Harkin (D-IA), and Michael Bennet (D-CO) along with Republican Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Richard Shelby (D-AL), Rand Paul (R-KY), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Marco Rubio (R-FL). At the Washington Post‘s Wonk Blog, Suzie Khimm gives us a cheat sheet for the deal which included a one year extension of the farm bill. However, no matter how you look at this bill that raises taxes on incomes over $450,000, taxes for the middle class will go up:

Taxes will rise on the middle class even if this deal passes, because it doesn’t include an extension of the payroll tax holiday. That means that the paychecks for more than 160 million Americans will be 2 percent smaller starting in January, as the payroll tax will jump from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent. And a huge number of those hit will be middle class or working poor (Two-thirds of those in the bottom 20 percent would be affected by a payroll tax hike.).

The reality is that the payroll tax holiday hurt contribution to Social Security and was a back door to tying it to the debt/deficit argument. What would have been better for the lowest 20% of tax payers was the Earned Income Tax Credit that the payroll tax cut had replaced two years ago.

All of this may now be moot. As of the afternoon, the Republican feral children led by Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) are against the bill and want to amend it.

Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the influential House majority leader, emerged from a two-hour meeting with GOP colleagues and said he opposes the Senate bill, which would let income taxes rise sharply on the rich. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said Cantor “forcefully” expressed his concerns during the closed -door session, during which other GOP members expressed grave doubts about the agreement.

Cantor’s opposition likely dooms the chances for fast House passage of the legislation without changes, which could prolong efforts to avert the automatic tax increases and spending cuts that technically took effect on Tuesday. If there is no agreement by the end of the current Congress at noon on Thursday, negotiations would have to start over in the next Congress. Many economists believe that the fiscal cliff’s full effect would drive the economy back into recession.

The Republicans are scheduled to meet at 5:15 PM EST. Regardless of what goes on in the House, the Senate has adjourned until Jan. 3 when the new session begins and it is highly unlikely that they would return.

This will certainly puts Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) in a bad position since he had supported an “up or down vote” on the bill that was crafted by Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-SC), since it now appears that he has completely lost control of the House Republican. The biggest objection of to the bill is the lack of spending cuts as Ryan Grym at “Huffington Post” reports, highlighting the probelms for Boehner:

“We’ve got to provide responsible spending balance long-term,” said Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.) “This bill does not do that.” Republicans who filed out of the House GOP meeting sounded cautionary notes about the fiscal cliff deal, suggesting it faces serious trouble.

House GOP sources said that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), a leader of the conservative wing and a potential threat to House Speaker John Boehner, is expected to vote against the Senate deal if it comes to the floor, breaking the leadership unity that existed around Boehner’s “Plan B.” And Republicans leaving the meeting said that Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Boehner’s leading rival, spoke against the bill, BuzzFeed’s John Stanton reported.

“Leadership is currently listening to the members so as to figure out the best path forward,” Cantor spokesman Doug Heye said.

Cantor told CNN’s Deirdre Walsh flatly, “I do not support the bill,” and said no decisions have been made on how to proceed.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) told the National Review’s Robert Costa that there are “real divisions” between Boehner and Cantor, and that Cantor was vociferous in his opposition, with the upcoming leadership elections hanging over the meeting. He said that conservatives were heartened to see Cantor take on Boehner in front of the entire conference.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is reporting that the Senate’s bill would add $4 trillion to the deficit over a decade.

The House Democrats have their hands tied at this point but if the bill does make it to the floor for debate they do have some action they can take:

If Republicans attempt to offer amendments — as is expected — Democrats will oppose a rule to allow that to happen procedurally.

If the GOP then tries to pass an amended bill, “they will have to do it with their own votes,” said Rep. James Clyburn, (D- S.C.), a member of the leadership. Either scenario would kill the deal.

If the GOP doesn’t offer an up or down vote on the Senate deal, well, that would kill the deal, too.

And then what? “Well, I say that then we wait for the new Congress to come in on Thursday. We’ll have better numbers, more members on our side,” said Clyburn. “Then we offer a new bill that they will like even less. They didn’t like the 450 (thousand dollar in household income) floor on the tax increase? Let’s see how much they like it when we push it back down to 250 (thousand)!”

Former Clinton Labor Secretary and professor at University of California, Robert Reich has voiced the opinion that no deal is a better than a bad deal and advocates going over the cliff.

Up dates to follow.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: Perspective on the Deal

To make sense of what just happened, we need to ask what is really at stake, and how much difference the budget deal makes in the larger picture.

So, what are the two sides really fighting about? Surely the answer is, the future of the welfare state. Progressives want to maintain the achievements of the New Deal and the Great Society, and also implement and improve Obamacare so that we become a normal advanced country that guarantees essential health care to all its citizens. The right wants to roll the clock back to 1930, if not to the 19th century.

There are two ways progressives can lose this fight. One is direct defeat on the question of social insurance, with Congress actually voting to privatize and eventually phase out key programs – or with Democratic politicians themselves giving away their political birthright in the name of a mess of pottage Grand Bargain. The other is for conservatives to successfully starve the beast – to drive revenue so low through tax cuts that the social insurance programs can’t be sustained.

New York Times Editorial: A Tepid Fiscal Agreement

For the first time since President George W. Bush began the country’s long slide into debt by cutting taxes in 2001, an agreement was reached late Monday in the Senate to raise income taxes on the rich. That’s what makes the deal significant: assuming it is approved by the House, it begins to reverse the ruinous pattern of dealing with Washington’s fiscal problems only through spending cuts. [..]

The White House argues that it achieved 85 percent of its revenue goals, raising $600 billion over a decade, a third of which comes by phasing out exemptions and deductions for people with incomes greater than $250,000 a year. And Republicans achieved none of the draconian spending cuts they wanted.

But that battle is far from over. Negotiators have yet to work out a deal to stop the arbitrary spending cuts known as the sequester, which are scheduled to slash $110 billion from the defense and domestic budgets beginning this week. And Republicans are waiting for the Treasury to hit its debt limit in a few weeks, hoping to once again extort more spending cuts.

The Senate has failed to come to an agreement to avoid the mythical “fiscal cliff” and the House has adjourned for the day thus missing the deadline for the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the spending cuts that were agreed to last year. The MSM pundits are of course saying that this is not the be all or end all for an agreement. According to CNN sources told them that they saw little difference in settling the issue Monday versus Tuesday. Apparently it’s a Republican source:

If lawmakers approve a bill on Tuesday — after tax rates have technically gone up — they can argue they’ve voted for a tax cut to bring rates back down, GOP sources said.

So far, according to a report in McClatchy this is what they have argeed to:

Negotiators were working toward a scaled-back package that includes a series of critical tax changes that would extend permanently the Bush tax cuts on most Americans but end them and thus raise taxes for individuals who make $400,000 and families who make $450,000.

Individuals earning more than $250,000 and couples earning more than $300,000 would still be taxed higher because some of the value of their exemptions and itemized deductions would be phased out.

The tentative package would also:

– Extend unemployment benefits for 2 million Americans.

– Prevent about 30 million Americans from having to pay the alternative minimum tax.

– Keep Medicare payments to doctors at the current rate.

– Extend tax credits for children and college tuition.

– Provide tax breaks to clean-energy companies.

– Raise the estate tax, but significantly less than Democrats had wanted. The value of estates over $5 million would be taxed at 40 percent, up from 35 percent.

Left unaddressed, at the moment, are the $1.2 trillion in sequestration-related cuts that will also be triggered on Jan. 1.

The new congress will be sworn in January 3. If Obama and the Democrats are smart they will start tomorrow with a clean slate, as of tomorrow, telling the Republicans to suck it up.

The deficit reduction that has already passed, with debt service savings, equals more than 4x the 2009 stimulus

— David Dayen (@ddayen) December 31, 2012

real fun will come with a distributional analysis of that $2.7 trillion in deficit reduction, showing vast majority paid for by the poor.

— David Dayen (@ddayen) December 31, 2012

It wouls appear that Congress has gotten an early start on dropping the ball.

If anyone had any doubts that the US Government is no longer a “government of the people” but of corporation and Wall St, you need only read the recently released FBI documents that labeled Occupy Wall Street a “terrorist group” and coordinated with banks and cities nationwide to suppress the protests with strong arm tactics and targeted assassinations (see pg 61 of document). This all started before the protest even began without evidence that the protests would be anything but peaceful and despite the internal acknowledgment that the movement opposed violent tactics. The documents prove that the government blatantly lied about the Department of Homeland Security involvement in coordinating the violent crackdown in New York City, Oakland and other major cities. Partnership for Civil Justice obtained the heavily redacted FBI documents revealing that the surveillance began at least a month before the protest in Zuccotti Park began and that the #OWS movement was being treated as potential criminal and terrorist activity.

The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.

“This production, which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF).  “These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity.  These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

“The documents are heavily redacted, and it is clear from the production that the FBI is withholding far more material. We are filing an appeal challenging this response and demanding full disclosure to the public of the records of this operation,” stated Heather Benno, staff attorney with the PCJF.

Author and activist Naomi Wolf reported in The Guardian that these “new documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent.”

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves – was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations’ knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, sat down for an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!

Transcript can be read here

So much for paranoia. The government is out to stop peaceful protest in anyway they can.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Ezra Klein: The Republican Party in one tweet

This is pretty much the Republican Party in one tweet:

Report that #GOP insisting on changes to social security as part of #fiscalcliff false.BTW those changes are supported by @barackobama.

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 30, 2012

[..]

You can see why these negotiations aren’t going well.

Paul Krugman: Brewing Up Confusion

Howard Schultz, the C.E.O. of Starbucks, has a reputation as a good guy, a man who supports worthy causes. And he presumably thought he would add to that reputation when he posted an open letter urging his employees to promote fiscal bipartisanship by writing “Come together” on coffee cups. [..]

First of all, it’s true that we face a time-sensitive issue in the form of the fiscal cliff: unless a deal is reached, we will soon experience a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that might push the nation back into recession. But that prospect doesn’t reflect a failure to “fix the debt” by reducing the budget deficit – on the contrary, the danger is that we’ll cut the deficit too fast.

How could someone as well connected as Mr. Schultz get such a basic point wrong? By talking to the wrong people – in particular, the people at Fix the Debt, who’ve been doing their best to muddle the issue. For example, in a new fund-raising letter Maya MacGuineas, the organization’s public face, writes of the need to “make hard decisions when it comes to averting the ‘fiscal cliff’ and stabilizing our national debt” – even though the problem with the fiscal cliff is precisely that it stabilizes the debt too soon. Clearly, Ms. MacGuineas was trying to confuse readers on that point, and she apparently confused Mr. Schultz too.

Up Date 16:33 EDT: Republican Senators have taken Social Security off the table as part of the negotiations for the “fiscal cliff.”

With the deadline for the expiration of Bush Tax cuts and austere spending cuts, the Senate negotiations have reached a stalemate. At the last minute, the Republicans demanded significant cuts to Social Security benefits. House Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who was described as  “shocked and disappointed” and this may well be the “poison pill” that ends the charade of “fiscal cliff” talks.

The development came after a long weekend of negotiations during which the two sides had been making progress.

The aide said Democrats had shown flexibility on the major sticking points involving taxes. They had not ruled out maintaining the tax on inherited estates at the current low rate, as Republicans prefer. And they had been open to a deal that would allow taxes to rise on many fewer wealthy households than President Obama had proposed. Republicans were seeking tax increases only on income higher than $400,000 or $500,000 a year, while Obama wanted to set the threshold at $250,000 a year.

But Obama was pressing for $30 billion in new spending to keep unemployment benefits flowing to the long-term unemployed, and he wanted to postpone roughly $100 billion in automatic spending cuts set to hit agency budgets next months. In exchange for those items, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) insisted Sunday that Democrats put cuts to Social Security benefits on the table, noting that Obama had offered to do so as part of the big deficit-reduction package he had been negotiating with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio.)

Republicans declined to comment on the new offer, but noted that Obama endorsed the adjustment, known as chained CPI, again Sunday, in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.

President Obama suggested that he was open to the highly unpopular proposal to cut increases to Social Security by linking it to the “chained CPI” in the context of a larger deal.

The other “monkey wrench” that McConnell threw into the mix was estate taxes which are scheduled to increase to the Clinton level of 55% on estates over one million dollars. The estate tax currently exempts the first $5 million of inheritance and taxes the remainder at 35 percent, which the Republicans want to keep. Pres. Obama wants to make it less generous, reducing the exemption to $3.5 million and taxing the remainder at a 45 percent rate. This tax only affects an extremely small number of people.

Under the Republican proposal, 3,800 people would pay the estate tax year, also near an average of $3.3 million. The GOP proposal would raise $182 billion for federal tax coffers over the next 10 years.

Under Obama’s proposal, 6,500 people would pay the estate tax next year, with an average payment estimated at about $3 million. The president’s proposal would raise $284 billion in tax revenue over the next 10 years.

No action by Congress would send the estate tax back to what it was in the 1990s – with a $1 million exemption and 55 rate percent for the remaining share. That would affect more than 40 million Americans.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-SC) has reached out to Vice President Joe Biden to break the impasse.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Chris Hayes: Steve Kornacki is guest host. Joining him will be:

Sen. Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon and leading advocate of filibuster reform; Rep. Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota and co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; Jamelle Bouie, staff writer at The American Prospect, fellow at The Nation Institute; Suzy Khimm, reporter for the Washington Post; Maya Wiley, founder and president of the Center for Social Inclusion; Kevin Williamson, deputy managing editor at The National Review and author of “The Dependency Agenda;” Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express; and Fergus Cullen, former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: Guests on “This Week” are Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY); Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ);  Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD); and Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID.

ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl leads the roundtable with guests the former Vermont governor and founder of Democracy for America, Howard Dean; former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, president and CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable; Politico senior political reporter Maggie Haberman; and Vanity Fair national editor Todd Purdum.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK). Joining him on the panel are the Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan, Vanity Fair‘s Dee Dee Myers, and TIME Magazine‘s Michael Duffy and Joe Klein who offer their take on the fiscal cliff situation with updates from CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Major Garrett and CBS News Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes.

The Chris Matthews Show: Joining Chris for his annual holiday awards show are Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine Assistant Managing Editor; Helene Cooper, The New York Times White House Correspondent; and Sam Donaldson, ABC Reporter.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: In an exclusive, President Barack Obama sits with David Gregory for his first interview on a Sunday talk show in three years.

The roundtable guests are NBC’s Tom Brokaw; historians Jon Meacham and Doris Kearns Goodwin; the New York Times‘ David Brooks; and NBC’s Chuck Todd.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Joining Ms. Crowley are Chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, John Barrasso (R-Wy), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), and Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-MD).

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack warning on a spike in milk prices next year, and why rural America is losing its influence.

And Live at noon, she will talk about the latest news on the fiscal cliff with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID).

Up with Chris Hayes host Chris Hayes tells some of what we should know for the coming year, including what is on the legislative agendas of lawmakers around the country

Sharing what they know are Richard Wolff, Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University; Susan Crawford, Professor at the Center on Intellectual Property and Information Law Program at Carodozo School of Law; Karl Smith, Assistant Professor of Economics and Government at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Chrystia Freeland, Editor of Thomson Reuters Digital and author of “Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.”

North Carolina Senate Set to Repeal Racial Justice Act

The North Carolina state senate voted to gut a law on Monday that allows death row inmates to argue that racial bias influenced their sentencing. Enacted in 2009, the Racial Justice Act requires judges in North Carolina to commute death row inmates’ sentences to life in prison if they find race played a “significant” role in the initial sentence.

State Republicans have long set their sights on undoing the law, the Wall Street Journal reports. The GOP-controlled North Carolina state house weakened the original law in June, changing its language to require that courts prove that prosecutors acted “with discriminatory purpose” when selecting juries and seeking the death penalty. But proving intent, as one attorney told the Raleigh News & Observer, is exceedingly difficult. And Colorlines‘ Jamillah King reports that the new language “represented a meaningful undermining of the point: The law had moved courts to a focus on racially disparate outcomes, rather than a racist intent.”

In 2012, Executions Hold Steady, But Death Penalty Imposed Less

Convicted killer Michael Hooper’s heart stopped beating in an Oklahoma death chamber from lethal injection on Aug. 14. The country’s next executions happened more than five weeks later on Sept. 20 when Ohio killed Donald Palmer, who’d murdered two strangers, and when Robert Harris was executed in Texas for killing five people.

The long gap between executions made 2012 one of the quietest years on death row, since executions peaked in 1999, according to a study by the Death Penalty Information Center.

In all, 43 death row inmates have been executed in 2012, the same number as in 2011. That’s down by 58 percent from 1999 when 98 condemned prisoners were executed.

“The public still wants it on the books, but they see life without parole as a real alternative,” said Richard Dieter, the Death Penalty Information Center’s executive director.

The public considers capital punishment too expensive and doesn’t think of it as a deterrent to crime, he said. “Capital punishment is being clustered and isolated in a few states.”

Minimum Wage Increase Hits 10 States, Boosting Pay For An Estimated One Million Workers

WASHINGTON — New Years Day will bring a small pay bump to some of the lowest-paid American workers, with 10 states set to hike their minimum wages for 2013.

Nearly a million low-wage workers will see their earnings rise because of the increases, most of which come courtesy of state cost-of-living adjustments that account for inflation. Washington State will once again have the highest minimum wage in the nation, at $9.19 per hour, after a raise of 15 cents for the new year. The other states raising their wage floors are Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont.