The politicians are ranting and raving about the impending
disaster, catastrophe and Armageddon that will surely destroy the economic recovery,
plunge the nation into a recession and produce wide-spread misery and suffering
across the nation. Yes they are up to their old tricks, preparing the masses
for the political brinksmanship that they will tout simultaneously as both a
partisan and bi-partisan victory that they managed to accomplish to save us
all.
Now here’s the part
that the politicians aren’t promoting. The fiscal cliff was the bi-partisan
agreement reached last year in order to prevent the doom and gloom scenario
that we were all collectively facing. And by the way the financial world has
indicated that the prior cliff that the politicians caused because well their
just incompetent cost the country even more in interest charges due to their
inability to compromise on a good solution. The politicians aren’t explaining
that this is a crisis of their own making and is a direct result of their not
finding solutions to the obvious problems because their ‘principles’ and ‘values’
get in the way. In other words, they can’t do their jobs because they have to
adhere to some strict code that is at odds with their duty and responsibility
to the country and the people.
So let’s examine one of the ‘principles’ that prevents success:
no increase in tax rates (even for a small select group of citizens). Many of the
Republicans took a pledge to not raise taxes as a central tenet of their political
philosophy and commitment. Now some Republicans are explaining that they may
have to terminate their commitment to their prior oath to this principle, for
the good of the nation. Considerations of some limited increase in tax rates
may be necessary to address the problems facing the country. This would all be
reasonable if there wasn’t a flaw in the logic. Now perhaps they will claim and
argue that there is no flaw, no error or self-denial at work here; but it’s not
what they think or claim at this point, it’s what you think.
In 2011, Congress passed the Sequestration bill that
committed Congress to reduce the 2013 budget if they don’t come up with a plan
to replace the $900 billion in cuts with which they threatened themselves. Now
are approaching the deadline that will evoke the Sequestration consequences
because Congress is demonstrating their inability to do their jobs. So the ‘Bush
era’ tax-cuts will expire and tax rates will rise across the board for everyone
in 2013. Let’s get this straight, Congress agreed to allow the tax-cuts to
expire for everyone. So the difference between letting the current tax rate
cuts expire and raising tax rates actively is that in one case the public will
pay more in taxes and in the other the public would pay more in taxes. This
distinction is a very important and significant difference indeed.
So Republican Congressmen/women voted on a bill that would
not raise tax rates it would only allow tax-cuts to expire. How exactly do you
think they can show the financial difference, or the difference in costs to the
tax payer, or the difference in its impacts on the economy? Wasn’t
Sequestration a vote for raising taxes? I am not saying it wasn’t for a good
reason or that it’s not something that they shouldn’t have done; but how is it
not doing the very thing that supposedly they would not do? I suppose that they
perhaps made a mistake and in the spur of the moment they thought first about
the needs of the country before they thought about their party’s political rhetoric.
So now we have tax rates about to rise, and Congress is
desperately looking for a solution that doesn’t make them have to accept the
consequences of the unthinkable agreement that they made.
Tomorrow, a simple view of how easy it is to
deal with this particular problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment