and what side got us into this?

Tommy and Norah sitting in a tree; actually, Tommy she did say “we” and that included both you and her, without a shaddow of a doubt.

And no Tommy, it wasn’t the tea party holding the country hostage, it was Harry, nancy and the democrats who refused to bring CCB to the senate floor.  No amount of spinning you do will ever truly lay this at the feet of the tea party, which is not even a party but a bunch of american citizens standing up for their rights.

it was a congress who was incompetent, a democrat led congress that has refused to put up a budget, a democrat controlled administration – the house, the senate and the WH, who refused to address this issue when they could and instead tried to make a chaotic situation.

yes Tommy…this is laied clearly at the feet of Obama and his democrat minions; you can try and spin all you want….but anyone with a brain, anyone with knowledge of how the government works, knows full well that this circumstance belongs soley and wholey to Obama, hehimself the one.

Nice try though….what is that saying round these parts:  oh year:  EPIC FAIL

“What Carney says is true, but no previous President, or Congress, has had to deal with a Tea Party with the strength and inclination to decimate this country rather than tax a billionaire.”

That line has no basis in fact and proves you to be nothing more than an extremist hack.  You are not a serious person.  You are a hyper partisan living on the extreme of the uber left-wing. 

Super Congress .

You are one whacked out Super Liberal , huh ?

Congrats on getting to ax press ferret Carney a question !

When someone intervenes after a friend’s addiction spins out of control, the one who intervened often finds herself attacked by the very person she’s trying to help. So while the attacks coming from addicted government officials and their enablers in the media have been atrocious, the Tea Party has to keep pushing this country to help itself. Even this deal, made through crazed shrieks of protect, only buys this country a little more time. And we still haven’t truly heard the words, “Hello, I’m Washington, DC, and I have a spending problem.”

(Oh, and that picture: really, Mediaite? REALLY?)

Obama lost this battle.  And not because of today’s vote.  He lost because the American voters now can tell which party wants to raise taxes and spend more borrowed money, and which party wants to act prudently.  It’s no coincidence that Obama’s approval rating hit an all time low this week — and has dropped ten percent in just 8 weeks.  The more they learned about the President’s views, the less they liked them.  The public now sees this administration for what it really is, and there is really nothing Obama can do to hide his agenda.  It’s very unlikely that he will be able to recover from this. 

I’m going to get a good chuckle when Obama gets re-elected over the losers your party is putting up.  

Um, that would be BOTH sides.

The normal historical process for raising the debt ceiling is a clean up or down vote.

So having ANYTHING attached to it is a win for the Tea Party.    

So sick of our country being held hostage by these nutcases.

Once again, we have the baggers, who represent 25-30% of the population, dictating to the other 70%.

The Hooverites won and they will again if Democrats don’t stand up to who really caused the Reagan/Bush/Bush deficits and who the Tea Party expects to pay the bill for the corporate orgy – grandma!

Time too quit rolling over and finally start disputing this revisionist history and backwards economics by the Republicans who’s policies repeatedly fail and invariably lead to pain and suffering for most Americans. 

How many of the “Tea Party”Republicans know or will admit that every Democratic president since WWII REDUCED the deficit and every Republican since Nixon’s first term INCREASED it? How many know or will admit that all of Obama’s programs the next ten years constitute only 10% of the debt? And much of that to save the country once more from irresponsible trickle down, lassiez faire regulation gutting economic illiterates.

Facts are strange things sometimes, someone should try using them against those who would destroy what has made America great by lying about who doesn’t believe in the real America.

Very weak, Democrats, very weak.

The tool Jay Carney kept babbling on about… what? Didn’t he see all of those legs in the front row? Triggers? Trip Wires?

What is disgusting is Tommy Christopher’s comment: “What Carney says is true, but no previous President, or Congress, has had to deal with a Tea Party with the strength and inclination to decimate this country rather than tax a billionaire.”

What is killing this Country, my communist, socialist friend, is that o’bama hasn’t met an American that he is not willing to tax, even the non-billionaires. So 250K is “billionaire” status but the senate median of 175K per year is “poverty”?

Didn’t your historic president say that the rhetoric, lie showing guns with tea, should stop? Mediaite, I did not request an anti-American thought killing jour-know-lest retard like this one.

Insightful. Brilliant. Full of substance. For a liberal retard. But still horribly WRONG.

If Congress is smart they’ll redo the tax laws and the Bush tax cuts will become irrelevent. So instead of the biased Tommy Christopher us against them scenerio maybe something constructive will happen.

How many of the rest of the 70% have a clue and are active in politics?

Tommy didn’t get it then, he doesn’t get it now, he will never get it.  This isn’t about taxing a billionaire, which is what Tommy wants to claim it is.  Tommy is on Obama’s team…always has been, always will be.  It is what makes this site so interesting…a media site whose team member is not only part of WHCA but works for Obama on top of that.

Funny stuff, for sure.

Ok, who do you have that could actually win?  Mitt Romney…the Republican Al Gore?

More of them have a clue than the baggers do.   They may be more active in politics, but they’re motivated to get involved by conspiracy theories and a persecution complex.   

How many of the Teabaggers have actually ever gotten involved for something positive  rather than just to bitch about stuff?? 

Stimulus , Healthcare , shoved down their throats without an explanation. Called racist, stupid baggers and unamerican. Housing crises, 9.2% unemployment, 14 trillion debt , and you expect them to dance with morons like you. They have a right to bitch.

http://youtu.be/ZvUIsbksNEo
MSM: ‘Satan Sandwich’ v. Real Econ.
The media has been all over the “sugar-coated Satan Sandwich”. Who
cares!? What they should be talking about instead of sandwiches and
Grover Norquist tweets, is the way the debt deal will change America.
We’ll take a look and then tell you about a new poll from the Hill that
finds one third of likely voters think America’s best days are over.

I find this fascinating from Britain, the way the story played out it looked like it was the Tea Party’s game, and they lost. They seem to be the ones spinning for all they are worth right now, but I can’t see how the idea that the whole sorry mess and the ongoing threat to the AAA credit rating will not ultimately end up at their feet. There are some rumblings that the AAA should be withdrawn anyway based on this fiasco and the sheer sise of the US public Debt.

Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers will be most upset

Transremaxculver.

Etiquette dictates that china pistols be placed underneath the teacup and saucer…

(sheesh…)

Surely you’re kidding.   “Shoved down their throats without explanation”??  Congress debated the friggin bill for the better part of 6 months.  How much more time do you need to understand it?

Healthcare is complicated…sorry it doesn’t fit neatly on your bumpersticker or in one of Herman Cain’s 3-page bills. But if you really WANTED to understand the bill, you could just do a little reading and see what was in it. The bill was posted online.

Obama campaigned on the healthcare bill…and guess what? He got elected. (And it wasn’t even close).

He promised to do a healthcare bill, so why were the Teabaggers so “shocked” that he actually wanted to get it done?

As for the name calling, the Teabaggers have called us “anti-American” “terrorist sympathizers”, “socialists” “Communists” “libtards” and on and on.

A little delutional. Stimulus was a joke. Healthcare was a bigger joke. Americans going to town hall meetings and getting crucified in the press for asking questions that nobody could explain or answer correctly.
You talk about the baggers bitching, take a look at your posts and that’s all you do. Try something new, that act is getting tiresome. 

So, the press is supposed to take bunch of 70 year olds in tricorn hats and “Don’t Tread on Me” shirts seriously?

Perfect example of why the Tea party gained strength. 

Quote: “ If Congress fails to pass the “Super Congress” legislation (which will not be subject to amendments or filibuster), deep across-the-board ($1.2 trillion, half in defense, half non-defense) will kick in, which the White House believes gives both sides a powerful incentive to reach a deal.

Carney repeatedly explained what a powerful incentive the “Super Congress” would have to reach a deal, since the trigger provisions would be “onerous for both sides.” (end of quote)

Has anyone besides Judge Andrew Napolitano figured out that this is all totally unconstitutional? Taxes don’t go up, spending doesn’t go down, unless Congress votes. Congress cannot abdicate this responsibility by creating a special joint committee. They can make a rule that, when the recommendations of this bill come up for debate, that there won’t be any amendments nor any filibusters. But there still has to be an up-or-down vote.

Yea Jerry this is so strange. It just seems to me some kind of political hocus pocus, that will not work. Where the heck did they come up with this ?

We all knew the USA has a debt problem, but a bigger
problem has emerged that no one has been able to see yet. The Tea Party has
proven from their experience that any group, with lots of money, including
Muslim extremist can rent a large hotel spa, like Rancho Las Palmas Hotel
Resort and Spa in Palm Springs California, post guards on the roof, and on all
corners of the property to keep out the non-invited, exclusive for one day.
Invite the Tea Party organizers, Republican congressman or anyone who may be
beneficial to their cause. At this time they can organize and unite together
under one idea to get Republican Congressman onboard to support their plan to
make Obama a one term president, mainly because he is a Liberal and a big
supporter of Labor Unions even if it requires destroying the financial creditability
of the United States of America. This is all in-fighting, a dirty way for reputable
business billionaires and government officials to be acting in front of all of
America and the World. The sad part of this whole gangster oriented plan is, if
the Tea Party organization can pull a stunt like this off and not have our government
officials demand an investigation, then Osama Bin Laden’s followers can do the
same thing and get away with it like the Tea Party did. All they need are bund
of Muslim Republicans. America, get ready to go to prayer meeting, 5 times a
day.

bingo

Debt ceiling trigger?  Sounds like more violent imagery.

Bush wars, bush tax cuts, bush recession.

Wrong. This is the first time demands have ever been attached to a debt ceiling increase.

I just wonder if Americans will resent having the tea party’s radical agenda shoved down their throat at gun point.

LMFAO. Tea tards have no clue they are shooting themselves in the face. They must really like taking that koch up their @ss, just like you and your toothless whore mother.

That would be a very good idea, Gar. The current tax system is a mess. Congress made a good effort to fix it in 1986, but then in the 1990s and 2000s added more brackets and credits and exemptions and complications. 

Ideally, every individual tax return could be on the two sides of a one-page form. And every tax return for sole proprietorships and partnerships and corporations could be on fewer than five pages.

Another tough guy behind a computer screen that proves my point. Hope you were able to handle the little chubby while you were coming up with that gem.

The Democrats turned the Great Recession into a controlled lab experiment for Keynesian theories, and they have failed. I hope, for the sake of the country, that we never have to duplicate this experiment. It did not work in 1930-39; it did not work in 1974-80; and it has not worked this time.

Instead of demonizing the people who recognize this, why not try thinking for yourself? Look at the numbers, determine which policies worked and which ones didn’t. When policies don’t work, no matter how many times they’re tried, then maybe they are based on a incorrect theory.

I don’t demonize anyone, but you’re wrong. I have looked at the numbers and it’s clear Keynes had it right and Hoover/Mellon, et al had it wrong. Revising history and ignoring economic data seem to be a feature rather than a bug for some.
 

Andrew Mellon was Coolidge’s Treasury Secretary, and was totally opposed to Hoover and his entire branch of progressive Republicanism. Coolidge inherited Hoover as Commerce Secretary, and famously said of Hoover, “That man has been giving me uninvited advice for years, and all of it bad.”

Hoover’s actual policies — big increases in federal spending, trying to prop up prices and wages — were for the most part continued by Roosevelt. (In fact FDR campaigned in 1932 on a pledge to end out-of-control spending and to balance the budget.) 

It is not popular with Democrats when I say this, but referring to the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations as a single policy experiment makes sense. Hoover didn’t have a name for his policies, Roosevelt did, but they were pretty much the same: a lot of public-works spending that gave work to some of the unemployed, but did not revive the general economy.

One thing of note: a lot of the money spent in the 1930s actually went for infrastructure like highways, bridges, flood control and hydroelectric dams, other water projects, government buildings, etc. The so-called stimulus bill passed in 2009 was mostly transfer payments, with only about $115 billion out of $821 billion total going for infrastructure.

In 1995, Republicans demanded 2.5 billion dollars in tax cuts, welfare reform, health care spending caps, and a path to a balanced budget.  They ended up getting much smaller concessions when a deal was finally struck in 1996.  There was also a mini debt crisis during the Reagan years if memory serves, with the positions reversed - Reagan wanted a clean debt ceiling billl and Congress wanted to attach new taxes to the measure.  Both times involved “extraordinary measures” from the Treasury similar to what they did this time, though legislation passed after the 95/96 debt ceiling impasse protected some of the trust funds they raided that time from being hit again in the future.

While Tommy’s line about taxing billionaires is a bit of hyperbole, the oft-repeated mantra of “250k a year doesn’t make you a millionaire” is a bit misleading.  Roughly 2% of American households, or around 2.2 million, earn $250k or more per year.  The United States has roughly 3.4 million millionaires living it it, based on total assets not counting primary residence.  A millionaire can make less than $250k, and someone making $250k can have less than a million dollars worth of assets, but there is a huge overlap between high earners and millionaires.  The vast majority (I can’t find exact statistics, but an extremely conservative estimate would be around 80%) of people earning over 250k are also millionaires.  If 20% (and it’s very likely less than that) of households earning $250k or more aren’t millionaires, we’re talking about 0.4% of households in the country.  That such a vanishingly small minority of households has such a huge groundswell of support is baffling.

The approval rating for Republicans in Congress has taken a much bigger hit than President Obama has in the same period.  The numbers for the president’s approval rating are not indicative of how an election will turn out in any case.  Many of the people who are newly voicing disapproval are liberals who are disappointed at the lack of revenue increases and protections for social programs in the debt deal.  While they may feel disillusioned, they’re not going to vote for a Republican in 2012.  Ronald Reagan’s approval rating in 1983 was in the low 40s, but he went on to trounce Mondale in 1984.  The low approval rating he had in ’83 was from his own party reacting to the tax increases in ’82 and ’83, but they still turned out to vote for him a year later.

Unless a dark horse Republican candidate appears, I don’t really see an electable republican in the current field, so I expect President Obama to win reelection, even if it’s only because he’s the least bad option.  Since Republicans retook the house by campaigning on the economy, and have done nothing substantial to fix it, and disillusioned the extremists in their base by not repealing health care reform and agreeing to a debt limit increase at all, I expect many of the freshman Republicans to be 1 term Congressmen.  Republicans have redistricting authority for Congressional districts in 18 states for the 2012 election, compared to only 5 for Democrats, so they have a chance of maintaining their majority in the House, but it is by no means certain.  Of particular concern to Republicans is the new redistricting commission in California, which holds 53 seats in the House.  Since 2000, legislators in California have agreed to protect incumbents to increase the state’s overall influence in the house, resulting in very few turnovers since then and 19 of the 53 seats going to Republicans.  The new lines are being drawn by a non-partisan commission, and about 44% of registered voters in CA are Democrats, compared to about 32% Republicans, so they’ll likely lose at least several Republican seats with the new districts.  On the other hand, Republicans are extremely well positioned to take control of the Senate.  There are 33 seats up for re-election in 2012, 21 of which are currently held by Democrats, and 9 of those are tossups.  All 9 of the Republican held seats will likely remain Republican, so Republicans only need to take 4 of the questionable 9 Democratic seats to take over the Senate.

Actually, the normal historical process for raising the debt ceiling is burying it deep in other legislation.  It’s usually hidden in a non-controvertial long bill like defense authorizations so that the legislators have political cover for voting for it.

The tea party makes up substantially less than 25-30% of the population.  The number of people who called themselves Tea Party supporters was around there a year ago, but the percentage of people who were active members (active member defined as having attended an event or donated money) was 4%, and the number of people who were listed as members of the various Tea Party organizations around the country was 0.2%.  Support for and membership in the Tea Party has declined since then, though that is to be expected in an election off year.  As a vocal minority, the Tea Party has been very effective in gaining representation in government and particularly in framing this debate, so it’s not surprising people think they’re a bigger group than they are.  People are roughly 1.5 times more likely to think the moon landing was a hoax or 4.5 times more likely to claim to have seen a UFO than they are to be active Tea Party members.

The normal historical process for raising the debt limit will never be the model for future votes. 

When Congress raised it before, there should have been spending cuts or budget reforms attached to the legislation, each and every time.

I am so sick of hearing people repeat whatever was sent to them in a tweet.

Those claims about Democrats vs Republicans decreasing/increasing debt (not deficits) only hold water if viewed in a very specific way.  The definition that this holds true under is publicly held debt that the Federal Government is wholly responsible for as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product.  By that definition, every president from WW2 to Reagan (including Nixon if you count Nixon and Ford together) has reduced the debt, as has Clinton.  By any more reasonable definition, most presidents have not decreased the debt. 

For example, publicly held debt does not count Federal Reserve notes, which started being issued in 1914.  That’s US Currency to you and me.  There is roughly $2.5 trillion dollars in federal reserve notes in circulation, but those are obligations of the Federal Reserve, not the Federal Government, so they don’t “count.”  The currency in circulation has increased steadily since the notes were first issued.  The term “publicly held debt” doesn’t include intra-government debt either.  Both sides define debt however it suits their purposes at the time, but the current $14.3 trillion dollar debt includes over $5 trillion in debt the government owes itself, in the form of securites held by various trust funds, mostly Social Security and Medicare.  During the Clinton years, intra-government debt increased more than publicly held debt decreased, so the “surpluses” were largely accounting gimmicks.  Separating the publicly held portion of the debt from the intragovernment portion does make sense for certain applications, since the publicly held portion competes with other investments for investment capital and the government held portion does not, but it doesn’t make sense in the context of determining how much the government owes in total, or whether there is a surplus or not. 

The debt also doesn’t include debt that the government guarantees, but isn’t wholly responsible for.  That category includes debt issued by various gvernment agencies as well as trillions in government guaranteed loans.  It also doesn’t include tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities, mostly things like pensions, veterans benefits, Social Security, and Medicare. Publicly traded companies have to credit liabilities when they’re incurred, but the government credits them when they’re paid.  The accounting practices used by the government would land the board of a private company in prison.
Even if we ignore all of the actual debts of the government and only consider publicly held debt in inflation-adjusted dollars, the only president to actually reduce the debt during their time in office was Roosevelt, who reduced it by about $10 billion.  Every president since then has increased the debt when measured in money, not percentage of GDP.  Measuring debt as a percentage of GDP is not a useless statistic, but it’s not an accurate measurement of the actual debt either, particularly because GDP is subject to cyclical variations.  This is most notably illustrated by the Clinton years, where high GDP growth resulted in gross national debt as a percentage of GDP declining by more than 10% while the actual (inflation adjusted) dollar amount of the debt increased by $1.42 trillion.

The upshot is that virtually anything you ever hear a politician say about debt or deficit is a carefully worded sound byte designed to misdirect while (usually) avoiding lying outright.  For example, the “deficit reductions” in the debt ceiling bill are reductions against the CBO baseline, which increases spending by roughly 7% per year.  Inflation is generally 2-3% per year, so reductions compared to the baseline are not actual reductions at all.  The baseline budget also doesn’t include various types of spending, notably war spending, and part of the savings are savings in interest on public debt, which is not usually counted in CBO cost estimates for legislation (meaning this bill that reduces interest costs has it counted, but all of the spending bills that increase it doe not have it counted.) 

There are many ways to compare federal expenditures in different years to get the results that you want to get.  A deficit hawk might compare total outlays in non-inflation adjusted dollars to get results skewed in their direction, while a socialist might compare inflation and population adjusted non-defense discretionary social welfare spending while ignoring every other category.  A reasonable person with no axe to grind will look for a fair way to compare years and draw conclusions.  To my mind (which I believe to be reasonable, I’m a registered independent and have no love for either political party), a fair way to compare different years is to compare inflation and population adjusted mandatory spending, non-defense discretionary spending including veterans benefits, and inflation-adjusted defense discretionary spending as 3 separate categories of expenditures.  Using that method, spending from 2001 (the last year with a “budget surplus,” though that doesn’t include intragovernment debt) to the present has roughly increased by 74% for defense, 32% for mandatory spending, and 0% for non-defense discretionary spending.  The defense amount can be further broken down to exclude military construction and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which case it has increased 47%.  Using the same population and inflation adjustments applied to revenue, revenue is down 18% in the same period.

From this information, a reasonable person can draw the following conclusions:

  The current trend in mandatory spending is unsustainable, and adjustments have to be made to the benefits paid by Social Security and Medicare, which make up the bulk of mandatory spending.  Since the government accounting practices put trust fund surpluses into the general fund and spend them, increasing Social Security or Medicare taxes will not alleviate the problem.

  The current trend in defense spending is unsustainable.  The US needs to draw down it’s foreign wars and avoid costly future entanglements wherever possible, as well as undergo a sizable reduction in force and reduce or eliminate plans for some weapons under development. 

  The current trend in non-defense discretionary spending is sustainable.  This is especially frustrating since this is the area that politicians on both sides of the aisle are willing to cut, but this is not the area causing the problem, and cuts to non-defense discretionary spending do nothing to change the problematic trends.

  The current trend in revenue is not sustainable.  Additional revenues need to be secured, either through increased taxes, regulatory policies and investment in infrastructure that will result in real economic growth, or a combination of both. 

Some foreign ratings agencies don’t give US treasuries top ratings, and haven’t for some time.  Their opinions aren’t all that important because they’re not SEC approved Nationally Recognized Statistical Ratings Organizations, whose ratings are the only ones that can be used for certain regulatory purposes, and consequently whose ratings virtually all private users turn to.  The government can bring substantial pressure to bear on NRSROs, though the influence of the government has been substantially reduced by the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act of 2006.  Even with the reduced influence they can weild, I’d be extremely surprised if we see a ratings downgrade from any of the big 3 ratings agencies (Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch), and pretty surprised if we see one from any NRSRO.  The golden status of US Treasuries is due in part to the US Dollar being the international reserve currency, so notwithstanding ability to pay, Treasuries are inherently protected against currency fluxuations to some extent.

That is the deal.  Tommy’s explanation wasn’t entirely complete.  The joint committee will draft a bill that will be subject to an up or down vote.  If they fail to agree (by simple majority) to the text of the legislation, or the full Congress fails to pass it by simple majority, the deficit ceiling can be raised if both houses vote for a balanced budget amendment by 2/3 majority and send it to the state legislatures for ratification.  Barring that, a ceiling increase will automatically be accompanied by the across the board cuts.  Calling it “half in defense” is also a bit misleading, since a bone thrown to the war hawks was to include State Department funding, foreign aid, and Homeland Security as defense, though all of those are extremely small compared with actual defense spending.

As an aside, Andrew Napolitano is an idiot.  Stop watching him.

Health care passed before Republicans took the house. It’s amazing how nimrods like you can expect results in six months on something that a totally Democrat run government in two years couldn’t achieve.The American public is tired of the status quo and I suspect a lot of incumbents being retired one way or the other.
You can trust polls, I’ll trust what I see on the street. People are pissed and the expectation of what this president was going to do has been a great disappointment. They’re not as vocal because they’re gun shy from the accusations being thrown at them. Republicans had a very low approval rating before the elections of 2010 yet changed the landscape of this country.

Net worth of those individuals might put them over a million but’s it’s disengenuous to say these people just save their money and don’t pump it into the economy. My bet is these individuals contribute more per their income on a %  than any other group. My guess is they carry a fair amount of debt

If they save anything, they don’t contribute as much as a percentage of income as someone who saves nothing, so I don’t know what you mean by more per their income on a % than any other group..  I’m also not sure what their debt has to do with their net worth, since it’s deducted from your assets to determine whether you’re a millionaire or not.

If you own a business that makes 200k a year when you do your personal financial statement the business will have a worth of 2 million on paper, 10x earnings is acceptable. You could payyearly personal 60k worth of debt and in your mind should be taxed like a high earner. Reality is the asset of the business, if you liquidate, makes you a millionaire, and also makes you unemployed.

First, why are you calling me a nimrod?  Second, what results do you think I expect in 6 months that a Democrat run government couldn’t achieve?

The Republicans in the house have boxed themselves in on the jobs issue, and haven’t sent any bills to the Senate addressing it.  The only employment related legislation that I know of is the JOBS act, which will let states cut unemployment benefits without losing federal unemployment funds and use those funds to either pay their portion of unemployment benefits or subsidize unemployment insurance rates, and the VOW act, which extends high fees on VA housing loans that are set to expire to pay for job training for veterans.  I don’t totally hate either bill, but neither does anything to stimulate job growth, which is what the current crop of Republicans campaigned on.  The only major legislation they’ve passed is the budget and this new debt limit deal.  The only other major legislation they’ve proposed is a couple of abortion bills and a toothless health care repeal bill.  Since they have vowed not to raise taxes and not to increase spending, there really isn’t much they can do to fulfill their promises.  All they can do is try to lay the blame for high unemployment at the feet of the Democrats, which will be a hard sell come election time.  The “think how much worse it could have been” argument didn’t work for the unseated Democrat incumbents in 2010, and it won’t work for the Republican incumbents in 2012. 

The approval rating of Republican Congressmen in 2010 led to many of them being replaced.  Republicans gained 6 seats in the Senate and 44 seats in the House, but had 12 freshmen Senators and 93 freshmen Representatives.  Not all of the difference is attributable to incumbent Republicans being turned out, but many are. 

Excellent responses from you and Steve, much appreciated and much food for thought. It certainly shows how inadequate the soundbites are in addressing the serious issues in this age, where “both sides” are incapable of offering viable solutions within the confines of our current political system.

Thank you both very much!

Excellent responses from you and Steve, much appreciated and much food for thought. It certainly shows how inadequate the soundbites are in addressing the serious issues in this age, where “both sides” are incapable of offering viable solutions within the confines of our current political system.

Thank you both very much!

For some reason it won’t let me reply to your latest comment about a small business being worth 10 times income.  Anyway, “net worth” only measures the book value of a business, not its market value.  The book value is the value of it’s assets minus its liabilities.  Also, small businesses don’t generally have market values of 10 times earnings.  Sole proprietor businesses generally market at 3 times earnings or less, plus value of assets.  Their 60k in debt would be deducted from the rest of their assets to determine their net worth.

Also, the 250k (or 200k for a single person) number is modified adjusted gross income, not gross receipts of a business.  If you own a small business and make 200k a year, your MAGI is substantially less than that.  Business owners are able to take many deductions that aren’t available to people who aren’t self employed.  Beyond that, the tax hike proposed is only on the money you make in excess of 250k (200k for an individual).  That means that, if you make 201k, you’ll pay the same taxes as someone making 200k, plus the higher rate on the last 1k.

WTG Tea Party. You really have the progressives rattled. You know when this
happens you are on the right course.

WTG Tea Party. You really have the progressives rattled. You know when this
happens you are on the right course.

1x sales or 3x earnings. Something in the middle which usually works out to 8 to 10x earnings.That’s how my accountant does it. Anyhow you’re mixing apples and oranges. There are highly leveraged individuals out there that make great money and have little net worth.There are lower wage earners that hold old property that would make them millionaires. If you want to liquidate personal assets such as jewelry or art or cars, most will be worth much less on the open market than it’s book worth, To compare the 200k to 500k with millionaires or billionaires is disingenuous. You might be able to borrow off your net worth but you can’t pay bills with it.

Still won’t let me reply to your most recent post.  Anyway, that’s how your accountant does what?  The net worth of a business is the bottom line of its balance sheet, assets minus liabilities.  It has nothing to do with sales or earnings. 

While it’s true that there are highly leveraged people who make good money, they are a very small percentage of the total population.  See the calculations in my earlier post.  As far as people with old property but low wages, they won’t be affected by tax hikes, but the way the millionaire list is calculated excludes most of those people.  It includes “individuals with $1 million or more in investible assets, not including primary home, collectibles, consumables and consumer durables.”  That means your house, your car, your clothes, your Mickey Mantle rookie card and Picasso weiner dog don’t count. 

Based on the things you’ve said so far in this conversation, I don’t think you have a firm understanding of who would be affected by a top bracket tax increase, or what it takes to be counted as a “millionaire.”  I could be wrong about that, but we’re straying far from the original point.  My point was that I estimate around 0.4% of households earn enough to be affected by the tax increase and AREN’T millionaires, so it’s surprising how many people are leaping to their defense.  I’ve always wondered why middle class and lower income republicans support tax breaks for the wealthy so strongly.  My only guess is that they think they’ll join that club someday.

Tommy,
People are on to the Tea Party, every sane person knows what there about and all them will be voted out in 2012.  But like you said, how much damage can these lunatics do to the country between now and then?

Funny but the sad part is thats true.

I don’t know but I see them all the time shouting and running around in their Revolutionary War Uniforms. Isn’t that patriotic?