Yes and the regressive payroll taxes are also going up. However my point was that the McConnell bill made taxes lower than they would have been without the bill. Calling the bill a tax hike is disingenuous. Like it or not the bill had the effect of lowering taxes.

And there you and Erick are, willing to help flush America down the drain just to throw some self-righteous tantrum. Throw out the Bush tax cuts? Sure! What could be more conservative than that?

“That *Minority Leader* McConnell, despite all odds, managed to save as
much of the Bush tax cuts as he did and *set them in stone*, all while
not giving an inch on spending, is wobbly?”

Indeed. Instead of the cliff, 98% of Americans now get the Bush tax rates permanently. Some rates like qualified dividends got backed up to 20% instead of 15%. The AMT – fixed permanently. There is a lot in this bill that the Republicans – and we taxpayers – could breathe a sigh of relief over, so long as we make under $500k.

Sure it’s a crappy bill. Reid wrote it. But he wrote a bill that McConnell fought to make as Republican-friendly as possible AND NOTHING THAT ANY MCCONNELL CRITIC HAS WRITTEN HAS EXPLAINED HOW AND WHY THEY WOULD BE ABLE TO GET A BETTER DEAL.

In other words, Erick Erickson may talk about this cr8ppy deal as proof of McConnell’s incompetence but its pure bluster unless and until he explains how HE would get Obama to accept something much better.

Lot’s of silver linings on this deal … and if a Government shutdown is another likely outcome, well, another silver lining.

I think he’s just wrong.

Semantics.

Sadly, it’s not.

We lost the election, and now we have to feel the consequences.

Without a conservative in the executive, we were never going to get the ‘full bush tax cuts’ renewed. We have to accept that.

Until people on here accept this fact, it’s pure fantasy.

We got as many ‘tax cuts’ as we could from the deal.

Pretending otherwise, is just as disingenuous as unskewed polls.

If Erick wants to run redstate like that, that’s his call….

Are we children? Do you believe in our system of government somebody rubs a lamp after winning an election and we all get ponies? Did you think that turning around one hundred years of exploding government was going to be easy?

Instead of whining about how your leaders supposedly disregard you, how about you accept your own responsibility for their failure? You’re a voter or presumably know a few. Did you deliver a filibuster proof Senate and the White House? Did you send the Democrats packing to the wilderness? What have you done?

If you want to roll over and die, do so. But damn it, that’s no excuse to throw away our real achievements from the last ten years.

As Mark Levin says every Friday: The government is shutting down this weekend, and we’ll all be just fine. Just give it a long unpaid holiday break; folks like getting unpaid leaves; I say give everyone an unpaid leave. Companies do it instead of firing people.

Yes, of course.

Last I checked, Dems won the executive and half of the legislative… that would seemingly imply that ‘non-Dems’ lost the executive and half of the legislative. No?

No, but the tax hike prevented bigger automatic tax hikes which would have been worse for the economy and expanded the constituency for government largesse.

It’s not a question about gaining anything, it’s a question of limiting our losses, and this bill did that, no matter how badly.

Maybe you can convince Allen West (who voted no) to move back up to Atlanta, where he was raised. Perhaps Georgians wil appreciate him more than the folks in St. Lucie county.

There you go again.

The base would have been enthused if we just “let it burn.”

I don’t think you know what the word schizophrenic means. Try not lobbing charges of men tal illness around, thanks.

Have you read what you just linked? I have and it has nothing to do with the debt ceiling limit but the actions the federal government can take in a scenario where the appropriations process stalls. And cast your mind back and remind me how well the last government shutdown worked out for Republicans – and that was a shutdown due to the spending Bill – Clinton flat-out refused to even negotiate on the debt ceiling and so it was barely an issue because up until recently, the debt limit was always extended because that’s just what happened.

I’m simply setting out what Obama and the Democrat’s position is almost certain to be – and it’s a compelling position because, in essence, it is true. Congress as a tri-partite body agreed the spending which necessitates the debt limit increase – this is not disputable. Refusing to raise the debt limit is Congress refusing to pay the money which Congress agreed to pay.

Frustratingly though you seem to have missed the main point of my comment which is why I think the debt limit process worked last time, and why it might not this time – whilst the make-up of Congress hasn’t changed from Democratic President-Democratic Senate-GOP House, one fundamental aspect has changed – 1/3rd of that equation is no longer seeking re-election.

http://crfb.org/blogs/what-we-know-about-possible-fiscal-cliff-deal

“There you go again”, to quote someone.

The base would have voted against TARP and Plan B too, and they’re paying the price for the latter now.

The base would have been happy with more people forced to depend on big government because when people go on welfare rolls, they apparently feel the burden of themselves on taxpayers. They’d have paid the price for that too.

The base would have traded $3.9 trillion in tax hikes and 770,000 more people out of work and on welfare for $3 billion a year in spending cuts. They’d have paid the price for that too.

To quote someone else, “If you want to cut your own throat, don’t come to me for a bandage.”

True, but it sounds typical.

Giving up taxes without spending cuts was a fool’s choice. You’ll never see those spending cuts now, and the next time the Dems need more money, they’ll just go back to the tax well. They know the Republican leadership will fold faster than a house of cards.

We “gave up” on taxes because we were, by default, going to give them even more than they had asked for, in fact almost four trillion more, in exchange for $3 billion a year less in spending, and I don’t know how anyone can accept that 133:1 deal as being better than what we ended up getting. The fiscal cliff would have meant little more in spending cuts, lots more in taxes, and lots more in welfare bums.

Erick. Good insightful post once again but consider this……

One of the reason BHO won re-election is not because he had a good vision for this country, or because Obamacare has suddenly became very popular or the economy had recovered. Obama won because in part because he is very likeable and he seems to “care about people like”.

Now, who on the GOP side has an ounce of likeability to that of BHO? Would you like to volunteer Rubio to be the face of these negotiations? If the answer to these question is no, then Obama will win the upcoming fiscal battles as the GOP leadership will cower like the inept fools they are. These fiscal battles needs effective communicator which the GOP leadership clearly lacks.

I know the GOP desperately wants a ‘W’ in their win column to cheer them up. The only problem is that wanting it that bad may blind them to the reality that they are coming off very badly because they don’t seem to have a coherent position relateable to the average American.

If the mantra of ‘debt on future generation’ was a wining message, we would be counting down the days to swearing in President-Elect Romney.

Oh yeah, and to all of you guys, if the Democrats had agreed to a full extension of the Bush tax cuts, with few spending cuts compared to current policy, or in fact a little more compared to current law, would you be hounding House Republicans for agreeing to such a deal? Because Erick never gave me the impression, yet yesterday he turned around and said that the problem was that keeping taxes as low as possible didn’t make people “feel the burden”, even though before that, he was pushing a full extension as an alternative to the various plans, as were many of you. I’m pretty sure $30 billion in less spending didn’t suddenly convert you to $4 trillion in tax hikes.

This may be obvious (i’m new to RedState) but as bad as this deal is, it does seem that Obama got what he wanted in terms of tax increases for earners > $400K, so rhetorically he can’t play this “screw the rich” card again, at least anytime soon. For the R’s, it seems we can say “OK you won. You got your taxes on the 2%. Now what are you going to do? It seems the burden to produce entitlement reforms is clearly on the shoulders of Obama now and the R’s need not negotiate against themselves until he produces them.

Never forget that the Government can not spend a dime without the explicit authority of the House and John Boehner. If Republicans keep spending a trillion plus dollars a year that we don’t have, you can put the blame squarely on the House. They should use the same logic for spending that Obama used on taxes. Let’s pass the bill that has spending that both sides can agree on while we negotiate what we disagree on. Obama will never accept that, but pass the bill a let Obama shut down the government. People really don’t care if the IRS and the EPA and the rest of useless regulators take an extended holiday. Unfortunately, winning this will take stones that Republicans don’t appear to have. I don’t know why though. It isn’t that complicated, or unpopular. What is unpopular is ruining our currency by borrowing 40% of every dollar we spend.

No, I won’t draw a line. Because then you’ll try to creep right up to the edge of it.

If you want to keep your ability to comment, try to stay far clear of the line. Because whether you’re too close may depend on my mood at the moment.

Rightly focusing on the future, which is all nice and dandy, but you still haven’t done anything to douse the flames created by your insistence on making the worst the enemy of the less bad all this while.

You are always so close to the line that I question your sincerity as a conservative. You spend more time defending establishment Republicans and insulting conservatives than I’m comfortable with but then I’m not a moderator.

I guess I am not sure what you hope to accomplish by the tone of your post. I take it that you want anybody with a differing viewpoint to just go away so you can continue to live in the echo chamber, the same echo chamber that confirmed your belief that Obama would never be re-elected? Furthermore, being nasty and patronizing has never won over anybody in my experience. If what you want is to only talk to people who hold your exact same opinions then go start your own blog and get off this one. I for one come here to understand the full continuum of political thought that exists in this country right now and am constantly amazed at how much we ALL have in common.

Let’s face it. Washington is broken beyond repair. Both parties cannot be trusted nor believed. The beast that governement has become grows on it’s own. It’s become a tumor on the middle class. We now exist to serve it, not the other way around. There is no truth anymore, no bedrock core values upon which to build something positive. As a result, I’m drawn over and again the the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
This is a compelling concept that needs serious consideration once more.

Your post illuminates a few things, that there are really two schools of the need to reduce federal spending. The first, and perhaps reflective of where you are coming from, is the debt and deficit. Your points are spot on; the only way to get to a balanced budget is to go after entitlement and defense spending. The second school, reflected by the posts below, are all about reducing the size of government, not balancing the budget. I find it interesting that they completely bypass your points about what is actually contributing to the deficit and continue talking about the programs they wish would go away. That is fine, but just be honest about it. I for one think that most Americans are ready to have a serious conversation about reducing spending on entitlements AND defense, but our elected officials are extremely wary of putting these things on the table for 2 reasons: special interest groups (defense) and fear that if they are the one who puts the specifics about reducing spending on entitlements that it will be used against them in the next election. But anyway, my point is that I think you are all talking about different objectives under the umbrella of reducing spending.

I could care less what you think about my opinions.

I agree that anti deficiency act (ADA) is a real threat to those who enable gov’t spending. I’m a federal contractor in finance/budget for several agencies, and every federal employee I’ve encountered would be seriously concerned about their name enabling spending above congressional limits. Jail is threatened for intentional violations of ADA. Then, spending becomes a matter of categorizing emergency/critical functions and non-critical functions. Once non-critical functions are identified, those should be 1st programs to be cut or phased out. Obviously this subjective so Libs would probably view DoD as non-critical, however ADA is not inconsequential IMO.

Why don’t you stop whining about tax cuts?

pkripper, good to know that the ADA law is actually viewed as a real threat with consequences…in an era where so many other laws, more precisely, the Constitution, seem to be ignored at will to suit the agenda of some. Informative real-life input is always good to read.

I disagree with the comment “they have nothing to show for it”. The president and congress have committed to spending an additional $930 billion tax dollars, we don’t have, and given up nothing in return. We all know this additional revenue will go to fund new programs that redistribute the wealth and nothing will be done to stop the deficit spending or work down the enormous debt. And the king has said he won’t negotiate over a new debt ceiling. Based on his past successes he will get it. With Boehner back as Speaker that is a guaranteed win for Obama.

Apparently, minting coins to get around the artificial debt ceiling is gaining momentum. wh.gov/UpcC

Again, I am curious as to what I am missing here.

At this point, excepting the sequestration, as is, doesn’t sound too bad to me.

Both politically and realistically, I don’t see how the Republicans can follow through on a threat to default on America’s debt.

Leave the moderating to the moderators. If you’re going to comment, respond to the contents of the comment and don’t act as if your opinion about the appropriateness of a commenter’s tone matters. Because it doesn’t.

thats a great way of putting it.

I must agree with you. I have always said the republicans need to take off the gloves and get nasty. If that does’nt happen this country is lost to the scumbags on the left.