Democrats and Norquist Slaughter GOP Lambs

Macbeth called it "a sound and a fury signifying nothing." That, dear readers, just about sums up what happened in the US Congress on New Year's Day 2013. The preceding night the Senate passed a compromise bill negotiated by Senate GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden. The vote was 89-9. Eight Senators, including Republicans Marco Rubio and Charles Grassley, voted against the Biden-McConnell deal to avert the fiscal cliff. Senator Rubio tweeted: "How can Barack Obama call his proposal a deficit reduction package if it uses tax increase to fund more spending & it increases the debt....I just couldn't vote for 'the compromise.' I ran for office because I wanted to be a part of solving these big problems, and time and again we're faced with options here that don't really do that," he said. "The real fiscal cliff is the one that awaits us, and nothing happened tonight to avoid that,” Grassley said, adding that Obama had reneged on campaign promises. He tweeted that "cliff negotiation to now show Obama proposes $600 billion increased spending paid for by tax wealthy NOT to reduce deficit like election promise." Grover Norquist, the influential president of Americans for Tax Reform, supported the Biden-McConnell plan. “This is progress in terms of making most of the Bush tax cuts permanent,” Norquist told CNN. “Is it enough? No. Does it do anything on spending? No. But that’s what the next four years are going to be. The next four years will be about clawing back the overspending of the Obama years — and now we need to get the spending down,” he added. “This is the beginning of the game,” he told CNN. “Take the 84 percent of your winnings off the table — we spent 12 years getting the Democrats to cede those tax cuts to the American people — take them off the table. Then we go back and argue about making the tax cuts permanent for everyone, and we engage in a four-year, three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust fight to cut spending every day....The GOP’s strongest tool in that effort is the debt-ceiling power, and the fact that the White House has to come and ask the House and the Senate for money every month or so because the President hasn’t done a budget. That’s where we’re going to have the continuing-resolution fight over and over again,” he said. “The spending fight’s going to last four years. This is not easy.” The House of Representatives passed the Senate bill on an up-and-down vote on Tuesday, unusual in that the vote was allowed by GOP Speaker John Boehner even though his GOP majority was not going to provide sufficient votes to pass it. The bill raises the income tax rate to 39.6% for incomes exceeding $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples, while making permanent the decade-old income tax cuts for everyone else, well above Obama's campaign vow to boost rates on earnings at lower levels - $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for families. The House concession in allowing its Democrat minority to provide the needed votes to pass the bill reversed a quarter-century of Republican opposition to raising any tax rates at all. Besides raising taxes on millions of middle-income families, the bill will extend expiring jobless benefits to the end of 2013, prevent cuts in Medicare reimbursements to doctors, and delay for two months billions in budget-wide cuts in defense and domestic programs slated for this year. The Associated Press quotes Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo, as saying he expects budget policy, including the higher taxes, "...to shave 0.8% off economic growth in 2013." Vitner predicts it will grow just 1.5% in 2013, down from 2.2% in 2012. The compomise bill allows the Social Security tax to go back up to 6.2%, amounting to a $1,000 tax increase for someone earning $50,000 a year, reducing after-tax income for all workers and hitting lower to middle income families the hardest, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, who calculates that the higher payroll tax will reduce economic growth by 0.6% in 2013. The tax increases in the bill on household incomes above $450,000 a year will slice just 0.15% off annual growth, Zandi said. The measure approved Tuesday would also prevent a potential doubling of milk prices and prevent a $900 salary increase for members of Congress in March. Representative Mark Cantor, GOP Majority Leader from Virginia, voted against the bill, along with many Republicans. The House vote was yea 257 - nea167, with the GOP members voting yea 85 - nea151 and the Democrat members voting yea172 - nea16. ~~~~~~~ So, America has a new tax-and-spend law which spends $10 for every $1 saved. This will add an estimated $4 trillion to the national debt in the next 10 years, while there is nothing in the law about either reducing the national debt or establishing a budget. I believe the GOP was badly out-manoeuvered by Obama and the Democrats. They were cornered by their fear of allowing middle class taxes to rise if they refused the compromise - but middle class taxes are rising with the bill. They wanted budget savings and got a few crumbs from Obama's continuing spending spree. Perhaps the greatest treason of all came from Grover Norquist and his "no new taxes" pledge signed and adhered to by many Republicans. But, Norquist inconveniently told the GOP House to vote for the Biden-McConnell compromise and fight later on the budget issues still to come. Republicans followed Norquist like lambs to the slaughter and they were left savaged and bleeding on New Year's evening. Perhaps it will occur to the new GOP House being sworn in tomorrow that political leadership is not about signing pledges. It is about putting one's principles and vision and intelligence to work for American citizens.