{"id":8465,"date":"2012-07-24T08:48:02","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T15:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=8465"},"modified":"2012-07-24T08:48:02","modified_gmt":"2012-07-24T15:48:02","slug":"off-the-cliff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/07\/24\/off-the-cliff\/","title":{"rendered":"Off the cliff"},"content":{"rendered":"

The more I look at the situation we face today, the more convinced I am that the wisest course for Democrats and the best course for America is to jump off the fiscal cliff.  Although more and more people are seeing the wisdom of that move, most of the media is acting as though those people do not exist.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"24FiscalCliff\"The Congress is set to begin debating this week whether to extend hundreds of billions of dollars in expiring tax cuts in what amounts to a round of shadow boxing in advance of the real battle after the November elections.<\/p>\n

Both the Democratic-led Senate and Republican-led House of Representatives will take up the expiring tax rates in coming days, but the outcomes will be very different and will settle nothing.<\/p>\n

Still the votes may provide some hints on the prospects for party cohesion – especially for Democrats – on the tax issue after the election.<\/p>\n

"For Senate Democrats, the primary goal is to avoid the optics of late 2010 when they couldn’t really come together," said Helen Fessenden, an investor adviser at Eurasia Group. "They want to avoid the public message of division."<\/p>\n

U.S. lawmakers from both parties fear the blame for pushing the country over the so-called fiscal cliff of expiring lower tax rates on December 31, and automatic spending cuts set to kick in days later unless Congress steps in. The Congressional Budget Office says failure to act could spur a recession in 2013.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The tax cuts, passed under Republican President George W. Bush, expire at the end of the year unless Congress and President Barack Obama agree to extend them in one form or another, as they did after a bitter struggle in December 2010.<\/p>\n

Republicans want to extend the tax cuts for at least another year with an eye toward a broader reform in 2012. They are playing to small-government Tea Party advocates and voter worries about the economy and sluggish job growth.<\/p>\n

Democrats want to extend the lower rates for the first $250,000 of an individual’s income and allow rates to rise for income earned above that threshold.<\/p>\n

They are making a play for what polls show are a majority of Americans who believe the rich should pay more to reduce deficits\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Reuters<\/a>><\/p>\n

Note that, while the authors did an excellent job explaining the fiscal cliff, they did not even mention the lawmakers that favor digging in and refusing to cave-in to Republican demands.  Reaching a settlement after the election will head off the recession the authors mentioned.<\/font><\/p>\n

We\u2019re faced with three basic facts.  First, we cannot reduce the deficit without increasing revenue.  Second, over the years, trickle down has gushed up so much over the year that the only ones who have any revenue are the super rich.  Only they can afford to give back some of our money that Republican welfare for the rich has given them.  Third, the only way Republicans will ever negotiate in good faith requires a figurative axe hanging over their political necks.  Refusing to cave-in and letting the fiscal cliff work for us is the only strategy that fits those facts.<\/font><\/p>\n

Lawrence O’Donnell discussed jumping off the cliff with Ed Bartlett, senior policy analyst in the Regan White House, and Asst. Secretary of the Treasury under GHW Bush.<\/font><\/p>\n

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Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

Bartlett is certainly no bleeding heart liberal, and even he points out that the Republican hypocrisy here is extreme. Republicans are saying that spending costs jobs, unless it’s what they want.  Thast will make your veggies grow organically!  Republicans are running scared. We should keep them on the run.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The more I look at the situation we face today, the more convinced I am that the wisest course for Democrats and the best course for America is to jump off the fiscal cliff.  Although more and more people are seeing the wisdom of that move, most of the media is acting as though those […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}