Here’s how it really went down.

As part of the Democrats’ stimulus bill in 2009, the Making Work Pay credit reduced taxes by 6.2 percent, up to $400, on earnings, phased out between $75,000 and $95,000. (The numbers were double for couples.) It expired at the end of 2010.

Instead of renewing the MWP credit, Republicans insisted on replacing it with a two-percentage-point cut in employees’ payroll taxes, which reduced the average tax cut for low-income taxpayers and quadrupled the average tax cut for high-income payers — even though the poor are far more likely to spend those tax cuts and stimulate the economy.

The payroll tax cut cost almost twice as much as the MWP credit, but it didn’t affect the Social Security trust fund because the Treasury filled the hole with general revenues. In other words, they borrowed and increased the deficit. Apparently, Republicans didn’t care as much about the budget deficit as they did about tax cuts for the rich.  

Immediately after the President signed the payroll tax cut, leading House Republicans told The Hill that they had “no plans to extend” the tax cut beyond 2011.

They continued this message throughout the summer. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said, “Temporary tax changes don’t work to create economic growth.” (Which we know to be false. The 2008 tax rebate increased the average household’s spending by $495, keeping consumption level while housing wealth plummeted.) House Speaker John Boehner called the tax cut “another little short-term gimmick.”

In the face of this opposition, Democrats pushed to extend the payroll tax cut, as well as extend unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for the long-term unemployed and postpone cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors (a.k.a. the “doc fix”). All were scheduled to expire on December 31.

Instead of increasing the budget deficit again, Democrats proposed paying for these extensions by increasing taxes slightly on incomes over $1 million. Senate Republicans blocked this proposal twice.

On December 13, House Republicans passed their own version. In addition to extending the payroll tax cut, UI benefits, and the “doc fix,” their bill allowed states to drug test all UI recipients, reduced the maximum UI eligibility from 99 weeks to 59 weeks, required the President to decide whether to build an oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf within 60 days, extended tax reductions for corporations, loosened environmental regulations, allowed higher premium increases for flood insurance, permitted state public safety networks to use the public spectrum for private purposes, increased the guarantee fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and froze the salaries of federal workers for the following year.

With the deadline fast approaching and no compromise in sight, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed to postpone the debate — but not at the expense of the 160 million Americans whose taxes were set to go up in two weeks. On December 17,  the Senate passed a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, UI benefits, and “doc fix,” with plans to work out a longer deal after the holidays.

House Republicans rejected the deal. Boehner said it would increase “uncertainty” in the economy. He wouldn’t even let the House vote on it.

Of course, he was lying. He never wanted the tax cut. He said so six months earlier. And he reiterated that point when he packaged it with a laundry list of Republican demands that he knew Democrats wouldn’t accept. He was trying to raise your taxes.

Fortunately, he didn’t get away with it. On December 22, he caved. On December 23, President Obama signed the two-month extension.

But House Republicans will live to fight another day. The question is: Will they fight for you?

==========

This op-ed was published in today’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

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– James E. Clyburn (U.S. House of Representatives)

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Gingrich: “We need a strategy of defeating and replacing the current Iranian regime with minimum use of force. We need a strategy…of being honest about radical Islam and designing a strategy to defeat it…

“We need a strategy in central Asia that recognizes that, frankly, if you’re Pashtun, you don’t care whether you’re in Pakistan or Afghanistan, because you have the same tribal relationships.

“But if we were serious, we could break the Iranian regime, I think, within a year, starting candidly with cutting off the gasoline supply to Iran, and then, frankly, sabotaging the only refinery they have.”

The new round of sanctions on Iran recently announced by the US, the UK and Canada have helped drive the price of Brent crude over $100 a barrel…

Oil supplies are tight, and if the US and Israel really could succeed in taking the 2.3 million barrels a day that Iran exports off the world market, on top of the Libyan reductions, it would likely put the price up to more like $200 a barrel (i.e. for Americans $6-$7 a gallon for gasoline).

The US…cannot hope to both replace Iranian production and meet increasing Asian demand with any known “all-energy” policy in the short to medium term. That is a science fiction scenario.

Iran has more than one refinery. The US doesn’t have the assets in Iran to conduct such extensive and massive “sabotage.” And, Iran could “sabotage” things right back. If he means bombing Iranian refineries from the air, that would be an act of war.

There are no [Pashtuns] in Iran or Central Asia, and Gingrich’s bizarre comments on Islam and Central Asia have nothing to do with Iran or its gasoline and petroleum production. Most post-Soviet Muslims in Central Asia are Tajiks or Turkic and are relatively secular.

As far as I can tell, Gingrich wants war with the whole Muslim world.

Newt’s War on Poor Children — Charles M. Blow

Nearly two weeks after claiming that child labor laws are “truly stupid” and implying that poor children should be put to work as janitors in their schools, he now claims…, “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.”

[But, the fact is,] three out of four poor working-aged adults — ages 18 to 64 — work.

[Most] poor children live in a household where at least one parent is employed. And even among children who live in extreme poverty…a third have at least one working parent. And even among extremely poor children who live in extremely poor areas…nearly a third live with at least one working parent.

[Even] as more Americans have fallen into poverty in recent years, the crime rate over all — and, specifically, among juveniles — has dropped.

Gingrich Culls War Hawks for His National Security Team — Ali Gharib

Gingrich announced his national security team…:

• David Wurmser: In 2007, a U.N. official called Wurmser one of the “new crazies” who wanted to attack Iran. In 1996, Wurmser co-authored a paper…advocating the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.
• Ilan Berman: Berman…has advocated U.S.-led regime change in Iran… [He’s] also attempted to minimize negative effects of [a military] attack and, in 2005…, said Iran is a “prime candidate” for Iraq-style pre-emption…
• James Woolsey: Woolsey advocated for the Iraq war, supports illegal Israeli West Bank settlement construction, and now pushes a confrontational stance on Iran. In 1998, Woolsey signed onto a…letter urging the military removal of Saddam Hussein…
• Robert “Bud” McFarlane: In 1988, McFarlane plead guilty to four counts of withholding information from Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal, in which he played a major role, even secretly travelling to Iran in the early arms-for-hostages part of the affair.

Fact Checking the Tea Party Debate: Republicans Stumble on Tax Issues — Citizens for Tax Justice

Gingrich [said] that he is “cheerfully opposed” to raising taxes by closing the sorts of corporate loopholes that benefit GE and other corporations, while also conveniently leaving out that he actually works as an advisor to GE.

Gingrich and the Destruction of Congressional Expertise — Bruce Bartlett

Gingrich said the [Congressional Budget Office] “is a reactionary socialist institution which does not believe in economic growth, does not believe in innovation and does not believe in data that it has not internally generated.”

Most policy analysts from both sides of the aisle would say the C.B.O. is one of the very few analytical institutions left in government that one can trust implicitly.

Gingrich said, “If you are serious about real health reform, you must abolish the Congressional Budget Office because it lies.”

Gingrich did everything in his power to dismantle Congressional institutions that employed people with the knowledge, training and experience to know a harebrained idea when they saw it. When he became speaker in 1995, Mr. Gingrich moved quickly to slash the budgets and staff of the House committees, which employed thousands of professionals with long and deep institutional memories.

In addition to decimating committee budgets, he also abolished two really useful Congressional agencies, the Office of Technology Assessment and the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. The former brought high-level scientific expertise to bear on legislative issues and the latter gave state and local governments an important voice in Congressional deliberations.

The amount of money involved was trivial even in terms of Congress’s budget. Mr. Gingrich’s real purpose was to centralize power in the speaker’s office, which was staffed with young right-wing zealots who followed his orders without question.

Sorry, Newt. You Never Balanced the Budget — Robert S. McIntyre

In fact, the budget surpluses that we enjoyed from 1998 to 2001 had nothing to do with [Gingrich's] balanced budget act. Instead, the surpluses stemmed from a dramatic surge in federal revenues, mainly personal income taxes.

In 1993, Bill Clinton undid some of the Reagan tax cuts for the wealthy, in a bill that every Republican in Congress opposed. In the years that followed, federal revenues shot up. By 1996, the deficit had fallen by more than half from its 1993 level.

In 1998 tax revenues continued to soar… That was enough to produce a $64 billion budget surplus. …this had nothing to do with the ’97 budget act, which, because of its tax cuts, actually reduced the 1998 surplus slightly.

How Newt Gingrich Added $16 Trillion to the National Debt — Bruce Bartlett

According to the latest Medicare trustees report, the unfunded liability of Medicare Part D is $16.1 trillion.

[Just before Congress voted on Medicare Part D], Newt Gingrich [wrote in the] Wall Street Journal: “Every conservative member of Congress should vote for this Medicare bill. [...] If you are a fiscal conservative who cares about balancing the federal budget, there may be no more important vote in your career than one in support of this bill.”

The Republican Candidates’ History on Mandates — Sarah Kliff

Newt Gingrich has repeatedly supported the mandated purchase of health insurance… ”I agree that all of us have a responsibility to help pay for health care,” he told “Meet the Press” earlier this year.

Newt Gingrich’s Doctoral Dissertation — Robert Paul Wolff

“Belgian Education Policy in the Congo: 1945-1960 A Dissertation Submitted on the Sixth Day of May, 1971 to the Department of History of the Graduate School of Tulane University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Newton Leroy Gingrich.”

There is no evidence in the text that he traveled either to Belgium or to the Congo, and he seems not to have interviewed any of the principal actors, Belgian or Congolese, even though the dissertation was written only a handful of years after the departure of the Belgians from the Congo.

Colonization is seen almost entirely from the perspective of the colonial power, not from that of the indigenous population. The rule of King Leopold II, who literally owned the colony as his private property until, at his death, he willed it to Belgium, is widely understood to have been the most horrifyingly brutal colonial regime in Africa. Gingrich acknowledges this fact once in the dissertation.

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“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public…” — Adam Smith, 1776

Walt Disney, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures, and Warner Brothers are all members of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). As an executive of Columbia Pictures and MGM/UA, I attended meetings of the MPAA.

In my opinion, the MPAA solely serves the interests of their major members. It is an association of gigantic companies who abuse the system as much as possible in order to maintain their market share and profitability without seriously violating the law — and, when possible, attempt to change the laws to their benefit. Were you to attend one of their meetings and mention something like their responsibility of serving in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity,” they would need to send out to have the phrase explained to them.  

Many years ago, I watched as the MPAA President, the most charming Jack Valenti, tried to raise campaign financing from the studios for members of Congress who supported “our cause.”

Richard M. Nixon demonstrated the power of a “pissed-off President” when he instituted the Prime Time Access, Financial Interest, and Syndication Rules. To me, this was a clear “don’t mess with me” message not to be critical of minor issues like our war in Vietnam.

Today, the MPAA companies have far too much to lose by annoying the Congress or the Administration. As a result, they give us smiling news anchors like Brian Williams, who gives America nothing substantive in the news and virtually no documentaries. And heaven forbid they be critical of the Administration or the Congress!

Many years ago, during a Vice Presidential debate with Senator Quayle, Senator Bentsen said to Quayle: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

Well, I knew Walter Cronkite, and I can safely say that Brian Williams is no Walter Cronkite. The “times” are certainly different, but when Cronkite told America that we were losing the war in Vietnam, America believed him.

Nowadays, the feds have allowed these providers of entertainment, news, and information to merge into media powerhouses and to meet in a trade association like the MPAA. In these meetings, do you think they sit around and discuss how they can better serve the public — or perhaps, as is more likely, how they can enhance their “reach” and profitability?

A friend who requested anonymity sent me the following note. The subjects he raises are, for the most part, ignored by the big media players:

The difference between the effective coherence of the tea party and the disorganized Wall Street Protest lies in what happened after it started. The tea party starts with a woman in Minnesota who was angry about the financial situation of the government. The money provided to the nascent movement enabled it to bring in a number of other disaffected groups of a conservative bent with varying agendas — fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, libertarians, religious right, gun advocates, etc. and indeed racist groups. Sarah Palin’s hyperbole during her run for Vice President and afterwards undoubtedly fostered the evolution of the cohesion.

The Democrats, and Obama, should look at the Wall Street Protest closely. They should find articulate visible figures with moderately liberal agendas and slogans, support them in advocating their different positions in the media, and provide them with two or three easily understood slogan/messages. With that done they could convert the current protest into a movement that would positively advance the Democratic agenda. What is needed is a coherent cant that will provide passion and direction around which the protest can coalesce.

Failure to do so will constitute an extraordinarily unhappy missed opportunity. Providing coherence of the protest could be more valuable to the 2012 election than a good part of the money that he will spend and the rhetoric he will put forth.

While I agree with my friend, I believe that it is the responsibility of broadcasters to raise these issues in prime time programming. It is, in a manner of speaking, “payment” for their being able to make all of the money that they are making which has become the foundation of their vast array of media holdings.

So why have the broadcast networks not done (to the best of my knowledge) any serious coverage about these issues?

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that “journalists” like Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. control so much of what we see, read, and hear…

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– T. A. Frank (New York Times)

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