More on can kicking and tax hikes
by digby
With all the talk of undoing the sequestration deal (I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!) and kicking the can down the road for another six months, it’s also looking more and more obvious that all the Bush tax cuts are going to be extended as part of it. Which was probably the point of all this crapola to begin with.
It’s not the end of the world. The economy is still dragging and deficit reduction should be the last thing anyone’s worrying about. Maybe we could try to get unemployment under control and then see how it looks, eh? Full employment tends to enrich the coffers quite a bit what with all the extra people working and businesses giving raises and whatnot.
Once we get a real recovery underway, then let’s take a look at this and see if it just might be enough to put a sizeable dent in what’s left of the deficit without putting disabled kids and old people out on the street:
In one episode recounted in Woodward’s book, Senate Democrats lit into White House Legislative Affairs Director Rob Nabors for pointing out that raising taxes on millionaires — no matter how much they were taxed — would never close the deficit without adding in cuts to cherished entitlement programs.
Well, that’s assuming that completely closing the deficit is necessary in the first place and that the economy is incapable of growing enough to adequately pay it down with the help of what is historically a very modest tax hike on the people who won’t even feel the difference. I don’t know and neither does anyone else. So, maybe we could wait to throw granny and disabled Junior out on the streets at least until we’ve tried that. Certainly we could wait until the negative market reaction everyone keeps talking about actually shows some sign that it might happen.
Most people have obviously bought into deficit fever and those with the not-so-hidden agenda have moved in with precision to take advantage of it. But that doesn’t mean it’s real.
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