Santorum - Droopy in a Sweater Vest?

[_Brackite]

Jason, surely you understand that the President isn't a dictator. He cannot force legislation past a stonewalling Republican congress. Name me a single thing Obama has managed to do during his presidency? They reject everything he proposes. So how in the world can you blame Obama? I blame the wealthy idiots who funded the astro-turf Tea Party movement, which led to the biggest wave of elected backwoods-hick politicians the country has ever seen. I mean we're talking about some true idiots here, who go on record from the start and say that their primary purpose is to make sure Obama never gets reelected. They've claimed to support something until Obama supports it, and then they suddenly reverse to make sure Obama doesn't get anything passed. This is like a kicker saying he will make sure no one ever returns a kickoff for a touchdown, because he is going to kick the ball out of bounds every time.

President Barack Obama had a super majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives during his first two years of office. The Democrats had a filibuster-free Senate from July of 2009 until January of 2010. During that time, the Senate Passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also known as 'ObamaCare' by Party line vote. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) ended up Passing the heavily Democratic controlled House of Representatives in March of 2010, and then President Barack Obama ended up signing that bill into law. The Democrats still control the Senate, but they no longer have a filibuster-free Senate.
President Ronald Reagan Never had a majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives during his eight years of Presidency. The Republicans did have control of the Senate from 1980 to 1986, but they never had a filibuster-free Senate during that time.
President Bill Clinton had a majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives during his first two years of office. The Democrats controlled the Senate during Bill Clinton's first two years of office, but they did not have a filibuster-free Senate. President Bill Clinton tried to get a stimulus package passed of his own back in 1993, but the Republicans filibustered that stimulus package, and it never got signed into law. President Barack Obama's stimulus package did pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and it got signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2009.

[_Bond James Bond]

President Barack Obama had a super majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives during his first two years of office. The Democrats had a filibuster-free Senate from July of 2009 until January of 2010.

The Democrats had 59 votes, that's not filibuster free when the Republicans are the minority.

[_Brackite]

President Barack Obama had a super majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives during his first two years of office. The Democrats had a filibuster-free Senate from July of 2009 until January of 2010.

The Democrats had 59 votes, that's not filibuster free when the Republicans are the minority.

Democrat Al Franklin got sworn in as Senator in July of 2009. From July of 2009 until January of 2010 there were 59 Democrats within the Senate with one ultra-liberal independent Senator from Vermont.
The Following is from Wikipedia:

Bernard "Bernie" Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is the junior United States Senator from Vermont. He previously represented Vermont's at-large district in the United States House of Representatives. Sanders also served as mayor of Burlington, Vermont.

Sanders is a self-described democratic socialist,[1][2] and has praised European social democracy (though he has also criticized its contemporary "Third Way" departure). He is the first person elected to the U.S. Senate to identify as a socialist.[3] Sanders caucuses with the Democratic Party and is counted as a Democrat for the purposes of committee assignments, but because he does not belong to a formal political party, he appears as an independent on the ballot. He was also the only independent member of the House during much of his service there.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders



In January of 2010, Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts got elected to the Senate, ending the filibuster-free Senate for the Democrats.

[_Bond James Bond]

Democrat Al Franklin got sworn in as Senator in July of 2009. From July of 2009 until January of 2010 there were 59 Democrats within the Senate with one ultra-liberal independent Senator from Vermont.

In January of 2010, Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts got elected to the Senate, ending the filibuster-free Senate for the Democrats.

No there were 57 Democrats + 2 Ind. (Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman) = 59 votes in the Democratic caucus.

110th Congress (2006 election): Democrats had 51-49 votes with Ind.
111th Congress (2008): Democrats had 59-41 votes with Ind.
112th Congress (2010): Democrats have 51-49 votes with Inds
113th Congress is 2012 election

I will give that the Democrats had 60 vote majorities briefly from July 9 2009-August 25 2009 and again from Sept 25 2009-Feb 4 2010 during which time nothing major happened legislatively so the super majority meant nothing. (see 3rd link for timeline)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_Unit ... ess#Senate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_Unit ... egislation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_Unit ... ty_summary

Most major controversial legislation happened after these majorities:
Health care reform was signed March 2010
Don't Ask-Don't Tell repeal was December 2010
Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform was July 2010

[_moksha]

"Gone are the days when the Republican Party used to put forward big, bold, visionary stuff," Huntsman said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Yeah, those Republicans blew their chance, of having somebody who was bright, articulate and did not have his head stuck in the tea party jar, by not embracing Huntsman.

[_EAllusion]

A flat tax replacing the current progressive income tax with a poverty exemption is still regressive if revenue neutral. It just starts being regressive at the line drawn for poverty. You can take the repressiveness out by having a rate increase on income earned over various lines, but that is more of a simplified progressive tax than a flat tax at that point. I support replacing most of our tax code with a national consumption or value added tax with a probate for poverty level purchases. Because of the complicated nature of our current tax code, how this shakes out in terms of regressiveness and impact on lower income people is complex. In some ways it would be an absolute boon to the lower ends of the income scale, in other ways it would hinder. It's clear that at some high enough income level (probably pretty high), it becomes regressive. I'm Ok with that.

As for the flat tax being innately more fair, I see why that seems intuitive, but I don't think it is all that simple. If everyone paying the same % rate is somehow more "fair" then why isn't everyone paying the exact same dollar amount even more fair? The intuitive objection seems to be that everyone paying an equal fee would be devastating to those least able to afford it. But that's just another way of saying the tax would be too regressive. And if regressiveness is unfair, then the flat tax gets caught up in the same objection. Equity seems to drive the intuition of a flat tax being fair, but there's a couple different ways to look at what really is equity.

[_EAllusion]

Bear in mind that Droopy has previously stated he favors doubling our military budget. (Which is already almost half of the world's entire military budget and as high as the next 19 nations on the list combined - most of whom are our close allies.) If you double our military budget, you will be running significant deficits at current revenue rates unless you are able to shut down most of everything else the government does. Because Droopy is schizophrenic in how he pulls from various strains of conservativism you might miss it, but he's actually a big fan of big government. He just wants the government to be big in different ways with most of those ways involving projecting force - be it in a foreign land or in your bedroom.

[_Droopy]

A flat tax replacing the current progressive income tax with a poverty exemption is still regressive if revenue neutral. It just starts being regressive at the line drawn for poverty. You can take the repressiveness out by having a rate increase on income earned over various lines, but that is more of a simplified progressive tax than a flat tax at that point

Then you might want to adduce a rational argument to that end, as you have not done it here. Of course, the flat tax, it can always be argued, is always regressive because, no matter how you cut it, anyone making one dollar less than someone else making one dollar more in income is ultimately paying more in taxes while making less at the same time he is actually paying more in taxes while making more. See how that works? Amazing. Someone making $35,000 a year, at a 10% flat tax, would pay $3,500 in taxes. Someone making $1,000,000 a year would pay $100,000 in taxes. However, the person making $35,000 cannot afford anywhere near the same things or the same living standards as the millionaire. $3.50 per gallon of gas costs him more, relatively speaking, as a percentage of his annual income, than it costs the millionaire. Hence, any tax whatever on anyone in a situation in which someone makes less than someone else can be said to be regressive so long as it is not progressive by design.

A consumption tax is a really, really bad idea that is not only steeply regressive at lower income levels (which begs the question of why Delusion is for it and not a flat tax, who's base rate is much lower) but will likely not solve some of the core problems of the present tax system it is intend to address (and which the flat tax does).

I support replacing most of our tax code with a national consumption or value added tax with a probate for poverty level purchases. Because of the complicated nature of our current tax code, how this shakes out in terms of regressiveness and impact on lower income people is complex.

Far more complicated, indeed, than the flat tax. It would also likely simply be a new federal tax that would be compound with ever higher state taxes. The actual tax burden may, in the end, be little changed.

And who cares about revenue neutrality? One major purpose of any serious tax reform must and should be ultimately to being a process of defunding and shrinking, in absolute terms, the size, scope, and functions of the federal government.

As for the flat tax being innately more fair, I see why that seems intuitive, but I don't think it is all that simple. If everyone paying the same % rate is somehow more "fair" then why isn't everyone paying the exact same dollar amount even more fair?

Because everyone doesn't make the same dollar amount.

The intuitive objection seems to be that everyone paying an equal fee would be devastating to those least able to afford it. But that's just another way of saying the tax would be too regressive. And if regressiveness is unfair, then the flat tax gets caught up in the same objection. Equity seems to drive the intuition of a flat tax being fair, but there's a couple different ways to look at what really is equity.

The flat tax is only regressive, to a degree that it is relevant, at really low levels of income. At some point, and I think $36,000 is well into that region, the regressivity that exists is going to be washed out by several features of a low tax, high productivity economy, including rising wages and salaries, a dynamic, growth friendly, competitive economic environment, low inflation (providing the federal government also ceases its obsession with debt and inflation) and by the effectively small ratio of regressivity compared to the benefits received, both in the short and long term, in such a tax regime (of which economic benefits are only one aspect).

[_Droopy]

Bear in mind that Droopy has previously stated he favors doubling our military budget. (Which is already almost half of the world's entire military budget and as high as the next 19 nations on the list combined - most of whom are our close allies.) If you double our military budget, you will be running significant deficits at current revenue rates unless you are able to shut down most of everything else the government does.

CFR that I favor doubling it (I may have said that, but I don't recall doing so). In any case, I do favor a substantial increase, as the American military has been reduced, at this juncture, to a skeleton crew force that is beginning to resemble those of the Western European nations. This nation, however, is a superpower and has the responsibilities and relationships of a superpower, and our military is not now capable of sustaining even a single major war in a single theater without significant strain on personnel and material. The potential threats faced in the real world, as presently constituted, potentially dwarf out ability to respond adequately.

There is no need to create deficits by increased military spending. Fantastic amounts of money are being squandered at present in pork, "stimulus," crony capitalist subsidies (green energy), the funding of gigantic, rogue administrative agencies employing unionized functionaries at salaries upwards of double what people doing similar work in the private sector make, and ineffective, redundant, overlapping welfare spending that has no constitutional, rational, or moral basis. We do not need the IRS, EPA, Department of Education, Department of Energy, National Endowment for the Arts, and a number of other agencies that have no constitutional basis for their existence and can be either shut down or can be dismantled from the ground up and reformed as lean, effective, modestly sized government agencies with limited, well enumerated missions and objectives. The money saved would dwarf what is actually necessary to fund a safely adequate military (something like the DOT, if we really wanted to keep it for some reason, could function at a fraction of its present size, scope, and budget).

Because Droopy is schizophrenic in how he pulls from various strains of conservativism you might miss it, but he's actually a big fan of big government. He just wants the government to be big in different ways with most of those ways involving projecting force - be it in a foreign land or in your bedroom.

This is the major problem with philosophically incoherent but heatedly doctrinaire "strong" secular libertarianism that is another bastard offspring of the Enlightenment born simultaneously with the Left, the other ugly ducking of the same movement.

Delusion wants to pretend to the "classical liberal" tradition when, in reality, he is really far more related to the sixties cultural revolution and its totemization of freedom than to classic liberalism's idea of ordered liberty grounded in religious morality and realism about human nature and the human condition.

Scratch the surface a bit underneath this Mahresque "libertarianism" and you will fined what should more precisely be called libertinism and a celebration and support of the same social radicalism and moral relativism so beloved by the Left.

[_EAllusion]

Then you might want to adduce a rational argument to that end, as you have not done it here. Of course, the flat tax, it can always be argued, is always regressive...

And that argument would be right. Because math.

A consumption tax is a really, really bad idea that is not only steeply regressive at lower income levels (which begs the question of why Delusion is for it and not a flat tax, who's base rate is much lower) but will likely not solve some of the core problems of the present tax system it is intend to address (and which the flat tax does).

I guess you missed that part where I called for a poverty prebate. Either that or you don't know what it is. In either case, it would not be regressive at lower income levels. Add in the fact that many other kinds of taxes that would be ended that tend to disproportionately affect lower income brackets and the low end is likely to come out ahead. (Plus everyone having a sizable monthly check from the government will provide a weak safety net all by itself.) The tax becomes regressive when the the equation shifts away from the prebate/tax structure changes to the raw regressive nature of the tax. If you're not familiar with how the math shakes out, that is a surprisingly high income level where it starts to flip.

http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer

Far more complicated, indeed, than the flat tax. It would also likely simply be a new federal tax that would be compound with ever higher state taxes. The actual tax burden may, in the end, be little changed.

It would be revenue neutral. Adjusting the rate would determine if the burden is the same or changed. It would simplify the tax code way beyond its current state and would be more simple than what you advocate simply because it would eliminate a variety of other forms of tax (capital gains, corporate, FICA, etc.) The law would have to be structured in such a way that not adding in selective breaks is a sacrosanct rule, otherwise the same screwup of the tax code is inevitable. But that's an issue with any tax plan.

Because everyone doesn't make the same dollar amount.

Well, that made no sense. I guess you couldn't google free republic for that answer.

The flat tax is only regressive, to a degree that it is relevant...

The effective tax rate would decrease as wealth increases if you changed the current income tax to a flat tax. In order to avoid that, you'd have to revamp the entire tax system (just like I propose). Further, the less able you are to afford, the more burdened you'd be by the change which is where the "fairness" intuition goes all awry.