Republicans have agreed to $150 bln-$200 bln in increased tax revenues in budget talks: Senator Kyl

http://www.reuters.com/ ^

[Windy City Conservative]

Republicans have agreed to $150 bln-$200 bln in increased tax revenues in budget talks: Senator Kyl

[Windy City Conservative]

Sorry everybody. This is at the top of the Reuter's web page. Hopefully it is not true. Hopefully it is only the Senate who have made such a deal. $200 billion tax increase? Crazy!

[loveliberty2]

Well, forget votes in 2012 for Republicans who betray the Republic in such a manner!

[God luvs America]

not necessarily....they could easily be calling the rats bluff- they now have the PR muscle to demand massive budget cuts they know the rats won't adhere to....lets just see how this plays out...

[Houghton M.]

The article refers to fees for government services. This might be real taxes, if so, the Pubics have sold us out. But it might not be. The devil’s in the details.

[Nip]

I still remember the budget deals struck by Democrats with President Reagan and President Bush (’41). In both cases, separated by a little more than 10 years, the ink was hardly dry when the Democrats broke their promises.

I fully expect that any agreement made between the Republicans and the democrats in 2011 to suffer the exact same fate.

My response to those republicans foolish enough to attempt a deal; with the Democrats is for them to pack their bags - they have completely forgotten who their employer is - “We, the People...”

[rokkitapps]

I am hearing the tax increases are “loopholes” being removed and it is a deal that includes corp tax rate reductions.

Who knows... we will see.

[Windy City Conservative]

We’re talking about Republicans here. They don’t have a strategy besides caving in. Also, they don’t have any PR muscle now, and they won’t gain any now, by making it look like they are compromising. They are not just making it look like they are compromise; they are compromising. I guess David Brooks get to ‘em.

[ilgipper]

Notice no substantial discussion of cuts have even been floated. Whether this is true or not, our side somehow finds a way to negotiate from weakness every time. They needed to layout proposed cuts months ago to start the negotiation. None were floated for public discussion. I don’t know how they win this debate because no cut will be big enough to still not put the government on a catastrophic path to collapse.

[EternalVigilance]

Typical Washington nonsense.

The Democrats get to claim they raised taxes, and the Republicans get to claim that they just closed “loopholes.”

It’s an old story: the Democrats propose to tear down the Washington Monument, and the Republicans respond with a plan to do it in three stages.

[TomGuy]

Pubbies apparently missed Rush’s program today.

Read my lips!!!!! Vote the B*STARDS out!

Where’s that $100 Billion in cuts the GOP promised in 2010??????

[Houghton M.]

No,the Rats will claim that they made “spending cuts in the tax code.”

[9YearLurker]

Over what period, 10 years? I hate how they use so many different time frames.

[Clintonfatigued]

I need to know more before I reach any conclusion about this claim. Perhaps this revenue that Kyl mentioned is being raised by closing unproductive tax loopholes, not increasing tax rates.

[God luvs America]

i do agree with you to a large extent- the GOP fights like little girls and bend over to the rats...but again- lets see what happens...

[taxcontrol]

We should be able to get that by altering the AMT so that the minimum a person has to pay on their taxable income is the lowest tax bracket - regardless of credits, deductions or exemptions.

[God luvs America]

i do agree with you to a large extent, though i think you are dead wrong about not having PR on their side if they propose some sort of reigning in of corp tax loopholes- the GOP fights like little girls and bend over to the rats...but again- lets see what happens...

[EternalVigilance]

Well yeah, to the general public. To their leftist constituency they will brag that they raised taxes on the rich.

[God luvs America]

agreed 1000%- some day someone in the GOP is gonna grow a pair and tell obozo and the rats if he wants those who pay the most to pay more (those who work 50/60/70 hrs-week btw) then make sure the 63.5million that pay nothing start to pay their “fair share”....

[Oceander]

The rest of the Reuters squib is not particularly revealing:

"If the government sells something and gets revenue from it, that's revenue. If there is a user fee of some kind and we want to raise that to keep up with the times, that's revenue. And if you add up all of the revenues that we Republicans have agreed to, it's between $150 billion and $200 billion," Kyl said on the Senate floor.

The first point - sales receipts are revenue - isn't even hard enough to be in Accounting 101; the second point - raising user fees to keep up with the times - is too nebulous to really be meaningful.

It would make sense, for example, if - and this is just a hypothetical - the entrance fees to national parks had been set at $20 back in 1980 and never adjusted for inflation. If $20 was the market value of the right to enter and enjoy a national park, then that value, as measured in depreciating dollars, should have been indexed for inflation. Indexing that $20 in 1980 dollars to find the equivalent amount in 2011 dollars yields an amount of about $52.

Thus, in this case, it would make perfect sense to raise the entrance fee from $20 to $52 - unless there were good evidence that the intrinsic market value of the entrance right has fallen relative to other goods - i.e., people value it less than they did in 1980 - in which case the increase in that entrance fee would be less than $52. Conversely, it might be economically rational to raise it more than to $52 if the evidence suggested that people value that entrance right more today than they did in 1980 (which isn't so far-fetched considering how widespread the green cult is today).

That is precisely what a private business would do, and there is nothing intrinsically objectionable about the government doing the same thing, given that we've all essentially agreed to the concept of entrance fees on national parks in the first place.

[UB355]

Not true his quote was just shown on Fox News. He said revenues other than raising taxes. I.e. Selling excess Federal property and raising fees.