Shock of shocks... Tucker Carlson decided to completely distort what Peter Orszag wrote about a compromise to extend the Bush tax cuts for a couple of years in his article in the New York Times, One Nation, Two Deficits. Here's what Orszag wrote about the need to possibly compromise with Republicans.
In the face of the dueling deficits, the best approach is a compromise: extend the tax cuts for two years and then end them altogether. Ideally only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now. Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the high-income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it.
Why does this combination make sense? The answer is that over the medium term, the tax cuts are simply not affordable. Yet no one wants to make an already stagnating jobs market worse over the next year or two, which is exactly what would happen if the cuts expire as planned.
Higher taxes now would crimp consumer spending, further depressing the already inadequate demand for what firms are capable of producing at full tilt. And since financial markets don’t seem at the moment to view the budget deficit as a problem — take a look at the remarkably low 10-year Treasury bond yield — there is little reason not to extend the tax cuts temporarily.
A benign bond market, however, is a luxury we won’t enjoy forever if we fail to tackle our long-term fiscal problem. What’s more, losing the confidence of the bond market could prove painful, since it is widely known that our fiscal trajectory is unsustainable and market sentiment may therefore shift quickly and unpredictably. In any case, as the economy recovers, the dominant problem will move from depressed demand to excessive budget deficits. [...]
The beauty of extending the tax cuts for only two years is that canceling them doesn’t require an affirmative vote. It happens by default, so Congressional deadlock works in its favor. And it would essentially solve our medium-term deficit problem, reducing the deficit by $200 billion to $350 billion a year from 2015 to 2020.
And here's Tucker's nonsense:
CARLSON: This is a big deal.
VAN SUSTEREN: Why?
CARLSON: He is flatly contradicting kind of the essence of the Obama economic program when he was a central part of the formulation of that program. He is saying... he is basically arguing the opposite of what Obama is saying, look we need to not raise taxes in the next couple of years because we know for a fact that doing do hurts job growth and that's the most important thing and we probably can't afford, he argues in the Times today a middle class tax cut because we're basically out of money.
Uh... Tucker. That's not exactly what he said. He said ideally only the middle class tax cuts should be continued right now but a compromise for a couple of years on the tax cuts for higher earners might be worth it to get it passed through Congress. I really don't expect much else from someone like the heir to the Swanson food fortune Tucker I posted about here.
There really is just no giveaway to the rich that this man didn't decide he liked. Thankfully it looks like the Obama administration is not going to give in on this matter so we'll get to see the Tucker Carlson's of the world continue to squeal about their taxes being raised. Mine might go up a little bit too if all of them get canceled, but I'll manage to get by and I'm not going to complain about it because I realize fully that I don't have anything to complain about with still being gainfully employed and lucky enough to have a job that pays a living wage in this economic environment. If making these rich whine bags like Carlson who want to cry about contributing to our society means I pay a little bit more as well, I'll gladly do it.
Obama Against a Compromise on Extension of Bush Tax Cuts:
President Obama on Wednesday will make clear that he opposes any compromise that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy beyond this year, officials said, adding a populist twist to an election-season economic package that is otherwise designed to entice support from big businesses and their Republican allies.
Mr. Obama’s opposition to allowing the high-end tax cuts to remain in place for even another year or two would be the signal many Congressional Democrats have been awaiting as they prepare for a showdown with Republicans on the issue and ends speculation that the White House might be open to an extension. Democrats say only the president can rally wavering lawmakers who, amid the party’s weakened poll numbers, feel increasingly vulnerable to Republican attacks if they let the top rates lapse at the end of this year as scheduled.
It is not clear that Mr. Obama can prevail given his own diminished popularity, the tepid economic recovery and the divisions within his party. But by proposing to extend the rates for the 98 percent of households with income below $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals — and insisting that federal income tax rates in 2011 go back to their pre-2001 levels for income above those cutoffs — he intends to cast the issue as a choice between supporting the middle class or giving breaks to the wealthy. Read on...
And you've just got to love both Greta Van Susteren and Tucker Carlson's love for the poor downtrodden rich at the end of this segment. They'd all really love to contribute more, but don't call them "cheats" says Van Susteren. They contribute to charities, so how can they be bad people? And Tucker wants to know how much the Obama administration has given to charity. As though fiscal and tax policies should in any way ever be conflated with anyone's charitable contributions.
Sorry Tucker, but you and your rich friends throwing a bone to a favored charity is not the same as making sure the have mores do their part to take care of the most vulnerable among us. If the rich were going to do the right thing and care about the poor people in the world, they would not be exploiting our labor markets with a race to the bottom and happy to use slave labor across the world as long as our laws or the laws of any country they're doing business in doesn't stop it.
What a sad, sad sorry man for even trying to make that argument to begin with. I think he's smart enough to know better, but he just doesn't care how badly he lies on the air as long as it promotes the Republican Party's ideology.
The pitiful thing is that we outlawed slavery in the United States, but then we exported it so we didn't have to look at it any more in places like China and India, along with importing it with the thousands of Mexican immigrants who are abused as well, but also ignored other than to be demonized by the right as a threat to our country while we take advantage of their cheap labor.
And in the mean time we get the likes of Tucker Carlson playing concern troll for those that can afford it paying more in taxes when our deficit does need to be brought under control, playing concern troll for the rich and wondering how they're going to get by if those Clinton tax rates are restored, and pretending like Republicans giving to charity is going to ever make up for businesses exploiting cheap labor. Shame on you Tucker and Greta too for your little GOP propaganda session here.
We do have some serious problems in our country and these people obviously aren't serious about fixing them at all.
