The paucity of hope - and other victims of Obama's tax-cut deal
By Harold Meyerson
WashPost
Tuesday, December 7, 2010;
Changelessness we can't believe in. Not much of a slogan, I admit, but a pretty fair statement of where we're at after the president's tax deal with congressional Republicans.
It's not that the deal doesn't have some good features. Extending unemployment insurance, cutting payroll taxes, and preserving tax credits for college tuition and low-paying jobs are all imperative, even if some provisions, such as continuing to provide unemployment insurance amid the deepest and most intractable recession since the '30s, shouldn't be in question in any nation with a claim to moral leadership (or even moral adequacy).
Yet it is anything but clear just how much oomph these measures, not to mention the across-the-board tax cuts, will lend our faltering recovery. Holding income tax rates at their current level would merely perpetuate the economic status quo. The extension of unemployment insurance is the deal's most effective provision for maintaining the amount of money in circulation - but it does nothing to raise that level. Like most of the provisions that came from the White House, its effect is more humanitarian and anti-contractionary than stimulative. That doesn't make those provisions less necessary - far from it - but neither are they a panacea for the nation's economic ills.
But the price the Republicans extracted in return for staying their assault on common decency was uncommonly steep: Directing public funds to enriching the rich, despite the evidence that this will do nothing for the economy. With an assist from outgoing Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who thoughtfully tends to the interests of Sam Walton's heirs, they propose a huge cut in the estate tax. Income tax levels on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans will not be restored to the higher levels enacted at the start of the Clinton presidency (during which 22 million net new jobs were created) but kept at the levels to which they were reduced at the beginning of George W. Bush's presidency (during which just 7 million net new jobs were created until the downturn, which wiped them out).
(More here.)
WashPost
Tuesday, December 7, 2010;
Changelessness we can't believe in. Not much of a slogan, I admit, but a pretty fair statement of where we're at after the president's tax deal with congressional Republicans.
It's not that the deal doesn't have some good features. Extending unemployment insurance, cutting payroll taxes, and preserving tax credits for college tuition and low-paying jobs are all imperative, even if some provisions, such as continuing to provide unemployment insurance amid the deepest and most intractable recession since the '30s, shouldn't be in question in any nation with a claim to moral leadership (or even moral adequacy).
Yet it is anything but clear just how much oomph these measures, not to mention the across-the-board tax cuts, will lend our faltering recovery. Holding income tax rates at their current level would merely perpetuate the economic status quo. The extension of unemployment insurance is the deal's most effective provision for maintaining the amount of money in circulation - but it does nothing to raise that level. Like most of the provisions that came from the White House, its effect is more humanitarian and anti-contractionary than stimulative. That doesn't make those provisions less necessary - far from it - but neither are they a panacea for the nation's economic ills.
But the price the Republicans extracted in return for staying their assault on common decency was uncommonly steep: Directing public funds to enriching the rich, despite the evidence that this will do nothing for the economy. With an assist from outgoing Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who thoughtfully tends to the interests of Sam Walton's heirs, they propose a huge cut in the estate tax. Income tax levels on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans will not be restored to the higher levels enacted at the start of the Clinton presidency (during which 22 million net new jobs were created) but kept at the levels to which they were reduced at the beginning of George W. Bush's presidency (during which just 7 million net new jobs were created until the downturn, which wiped them out).
(More here.)
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Changelessness we can't believe in. Not much of a slogan, I admit, but a pretty fair statement of where we're at after the president's tax deal with congressional Republicans.
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