Kill Bill H.R.1586!(Will Tax on Bonuses For TARP Recipients 90%)

A bill before Congress will Impose an additional income tax of 90% on bonuses paid to employees or former employees of covered Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) recipients after December 31, 2008. The bill has been approved by the House and has currently been placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders. Calendar No. 36.

Some may feel Congress is justified since taxpayer dollars are being used to bail out companies who made bad decisions. It would be naive to believe Congress is taking such an action on behalf of the people to deter companies from rewarding incompetence. Keep in mind if Congress had not given taxpayer dollars to these companies in the first place then these companies would have been at the very least forced to become more efficient via reorganization(Chapter 11) or go out of business(Chapter 7). Capitalism would have eliminated inefficiency in either situation. Captialism has now been distorted if not eliminated thanks to Congress and the Executive branch. Instead Congress expands the size and scope of government yet again, uses the IRS as a means of punishment and control with HR 1586 and takes more money from the private sector to put in public coffers thereby taking more power from the people. It's another blatant power grab.

It gets better. Health care has been bogged down in the Senate due to the tremendous and unrelenting pressure constituents have imposed on their Senators over the past few months. Yesterday The Senate Finance Committee rejected a government run health care plan, aka, public option. Harry Reid is determined to pass government run health care by any deceptive means possible. His latest devious strategy is to to attach a socialist health care bill to a House-passed non-healthcare bill. That bill is H.R. 1586. Ironically, nobody knows what that legislation looks like, because it has not yet been written. Yet many members plan to rubber-stamp socialist health care without reading or understanding the bill.

The first step is to get a socialist health care bill out of the Senate Finance Committee. Then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) can say that the two Senate Committees, Finance Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, have passed a bill which will allow him to take extraordinary steps to get the bill on the Senate floor. The second step is to merge the two bills. Step three will be to attach the final Senate bill to H.R. 1586.

There are two methods people can take to prevent Reid and his fellow socialists from attempting to deceive yet again. First people can contact their Senators via phone, email and fax demanding such an onerous bill as H.R.1586 be defeated on a Senate vote.

The Second is method has to do with preventing any health care mark up from being voted out of committee. The Senate Finance Committee has it's own Rules of Procedures. Rule 4 of the Rules of Procedure for the Senate Finance Committee reads: "Rule 4. Quorums. - (a) Except as provided in subsection (b) one-third of the membership of the committee, including not less than one member of the majority party and one member of the minority party, shall constitute a quorum for the conduct of business." That means, at least one Republican Senator on the Finance Committee needs to be in attendance in order to pass any legislation out of committee. In other words, 10 Republican Senators (Charles Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Olympia Snowe, Jon Kyl, Jim Bunning, Mike Crapo, Pat Roberts, John Ensign, Mike Enzi and John Cornyn) could stop ObamaCare cold right now by simply saying they will not support it under any circumstances. If those 10 Senators would simply say "no," and deny Democrats on the Finance Committee a quorum; ObamaCare would be done and finished. It would die in committee. It is imperative people contact these ten Senators demanding they make it clear to the Democrats that Republicans will not participate in any quorum to vote a health care mark up out of committee.

This is a two prong approach we must employ simultaneously with increasing and unrelenting pressure as we did prior to the August recess! Keep hammering with phone calls, emails and faxes away and don't give up! Below are some toll free numbers to the Capital switchboard.

A couple of bad strategies here.

First, you won’t get a complete Republican boycott of the Finance Committee. Snowe will show up. It is also very likely that Hath (don’t count your Hatch before he chickens) would show up as well. Those two (and possibly others) want to move beyond partisanship.

Second, H.R.1586 is probably dead in the Senate. It is such an obvious poison pill that I doubt it would make it into the Health Care debate. But the Dems are so committed to passing Health Care Reform, I doubt any “poison pill” amendment will kill the Health Care bill. So, be careful with the poison pills. Adding anything to this bill will probably get the objectionable stuff enacted faster.

Man50D, what are those phone numbers?

scooby321 wrote:

Let them pass it. Its is Unconstitutional.

That strategy has worked so well for us in the past. </sarcasm>

From the desk of
cc2k:

A couple of bad strategies here.

First, you won’t get a complete Republican boycott of the Finance Committee. Snowe will show up. It is also very likely that Hath (don’t count your Hatch before he chickens) would show up as well. Those two (and possibly others) want to move beyond partisanship.

That's only an assumption. It is fact they are more likely to attend a quorum if people don't inundate them with calls, faxes and emails. The more people contact them demanding they don't participate, the more likely they are not to attend. Keep in mind the original deadline of the socialists to pass health care was before the August recess but Congress felt such tremendous pressure over the August recess and currently that they have still not passed a bill!

Second, H.R.1586 is probably dead in the Senate.

Again another assumption. Obviously Harry Reid doesn't think so otherwise he wouldn't bother attaching health care as an amendment to this bill.

It is such an obvious poison pill that I doubt it would make it into the Health Care debate.

Reid's purpose of attaching a health care bill as an amendment to HR1586 is to avoid a debate because he knows it wouldn't survive this process. It would only require a straight up or down vote on HR1586 itself.

I doubt any “poison pill” amendment will kill the Health Care bill. So, be careful with the poison pills.

Any federal health care legislation and HR1586 are the poison pills! They need to be stopped!

Adding anything to this bill will probably get the objectionable stuff enacted faster.

That's exactly what Harry Reid wants to happen! That's why we need to demand the Republicans not quorum for a vote and oppose HR1586!

Man50D, what are those phone numbers?

I stated what the numbers are in the last sentence of the the body of the thread. They are toll free numbers to the Capital switchboard.

Man50D wrote:

I stated what the numbers are in the last sentence of the the body of the thread. They are toll free numbers to the Capital switchboard.

OK, I missed that part.

As someone with telecommunications and networking experiences, I want to add a word of caution about those numbers.

There is no toll free number for the capitol

Some representatives and Senators have their own toll free direct numbers, but that is the exception and not the rule. If you want to use one of their numbers, be sure you get it from a reliable source (*.house.gov or *.senate.gov web pages are reliable).

The numbers you posted are toll free forwarding services operated by third parties. These can be maintained by unions, lobbyists and other groups. Often you get a recording about some issue and advocating a position on that issue before the call is forwarded to the Capitol switchboard. If you disagree with the position in the recording, don’t worry, your tax dollars don’t fund that message.

There are pros and cons to using these numbers. The biggest advantage is you can use the money of someone you disagree with to pay for your call. The disadvantages are many. First, the operator of the forwarding service gets your phone number. Even if you block caller ID, the person paying for a toll free number still gets your number when you call their toll free number. Second, the organization running the number might make a fundraising call to you at some point. Even if you are on the "do not call" list, they may believe that by paying for your phone call, they have established a "business relationship" with you. Finally, unless you are certain of what your Congressional Representative or Senator's staffers sound like, you can't know for certain where the number is actually forwarded to. Theoretically, you might be calling actors instead of the real capitol switchboard. If someone wanted to suppress public outrage about an issue, they could make these calls disappear. I have no evidence this has ever happened, but the possibility of advertising one number on network newscasts, CNN and MSNBC, and the same organization advertising a slightly different number on Fox News, Rush and Hannity could be an interesting ploy. The side you support forwards to the actual capitol switchboard, the side you disagree with goes to actors in a call center someplace.

The first two issues can be avoided by using a pay phone, with the added bonus that the people running the toll free number pay an extra $0.60 for calls from a pay phone. The last issue is probably just my personal paranoia. If you know the voices of your Rep and Senators staffers, you will know who you are talking to. Otherwise, you might want to avoid numbers you aren't sure about. Personally, I prefer calling the numbers I find on my Senators' and Rep's official web sites.

From the desk of
cc2k:

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