$900 Billion per year.
Not total - per year!
I have been reading the right leaning newspapers for accounts of this tax cut 'deal', or fold, capitulation if you prefer. They are of course focusing on it as a win for the Republicans, which it is.
Buried deep in the accounts of the deal are the details:
Highlights of the $900 billion-per-year deal include:
- A two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts for Americans - the rich, the poor and the middle class - including the millionaires whom Obama wanted to pay more.
- A 13-month extension of unemployment benefits.
- A one-year, 2 percentage-point reduction in Social Security taxes.
The reduction in payroll taxes, from 6.2% to 4.2%, is aimed at putting more take-home cash in workers' paychecks.
Republicans crowed over their victory at the negotiating table, while some Democrats considered opposing the deal.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/...
This exceeds the entire two year total of the $780 Billion Stimulus Package. Remember that? How untenable this cost for creating jobs was, because of the hole it would shoot into the deficit?
Have you even heard anyone mention the cost, let alone caution against it blowing a hole in the deficit?
And it didn't take even 24 hours for the inevitable argument to make them permanent. Anyobody who thought these would be 'temporary' was taken for a fool
The deal would postpone the hikes for two years and extend unemployment benefits for 13 months.
There's good news there: As even Obama and some other Dems understood, any kind of tax hike would clobber the already weak economy.
That's a big admission by Bam & Co. that taxes thwart growth. But if they admit that, why not make current rates permanent, rather than freezing them for a mere two years?
Don't Dems want growth in 2013?
Such a move would provide small businesses and investors with additional certainty, boosting the economy further
Never mind, that President Obama says he thinks they're a poison pill. Really, they're admitting that they're good. Right?
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/...