SSSSSHHHHHH!!!!
You broke the CODE! You can't speak the reason that there is NO difference between (R) and (D)!
You can't say that PUBLICLY! You'll alert the watchdogs here!
AAAAH! Too late!
Posted on 02/09/2006 6:43:27 AM PST by harpu
Cutting taxes is always harder than it should be, but this is getting ridiculous. Montana Senator Max Baucus -- the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee -- invoked an obscure budget rule this week in hopes of tripping up the proposed two-year extension of the 2003 investment tax cuts. The 15% tax rate on dividends and capital gains is scheduled to expire in 2008, and Republicans want to extend it through 2010.
Mr. Baucus's ploy is based on estimates by the Joint Tax Committee that the lower rates will "cost" the Treasury some $30 billion in revenue after 2009. In the real world, as opposed to Congress, we already know those lower rates have more or less paid for themselves thanks to a rising stock market and stock turnover.
Total tax receipts also increased by $124 billion more than the Joint Tax whiz kids predicted. But now the same estimators who guessed wrong about 2003, 2004 and 2005 are being cited by Mr. Baucus as the reason that the feds will lose revenue after 2009. Congress would be better off relying on forecasts from Larry, Curly and Moe.
- snip -
Republicans can call Mr. Baucus's bluff by linking the capital gains and dividend rate extensions to the one-year patch in the AMT. If Democrats want the latter, they have to accept the former. This will set up a fascinating political choice for New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her other blue state colleagues. Of course, if they'd merely drop their political pretense that the lower capital gains rate costs revenue, they could make everyone happy. But if they want to play chicken with the finances of millions of their own middle-income voters, so be it.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The more I see about the arcane rules of the Senate, the more p-o'ed I get. How can we get some transparency in this body? Do we have to scrap it and start over?
It's time for Montana Republican's to put up a candidate that will eliminate "Massachusett's Third Senator". This time try to find a combat veteran (to contrast with the draft dodger), with a normal wife (to contrast with the Harvard Flake) who is a self made man (to contrast with the panty waste son of privelige. Ohhh, and make sure he has not run a hair dressing school...
Sad to say but; the good people of Montana have made their bed with this POS now the rest of the U.S. must learn to gay and swallow his ineptness.
Make the rate ZERO, get rid of the "holding period", and extend it forever.
Schedule D is gone...tax simplification at its finest!
I don't think so. He's lucked out every six years. Remember Tom Daschle, George McGovern and Frank Church. Harvard liberals are not representative of the plains or high desert states. The only reason they get elected is because the R's run duds.
SSSSSHHHHHH!!!!
You broke the CODE! You can't speak the reason that there is NO difference between (R) and (D)!
You can't say that PUBLICLY! You'll alert the watchdogs here!
AAAAH! Too late!
oooh, there is a BIG difference between Tom Coburn and Max Rodham Baucus; the problem is that there are not enough Tom Coburns.
Perhaps...but when the RNSC supports folk like Specter over Toomey...Chafee over Laffey...with the approval and aid of Bush...
Where is the support for other Coburns to oust other Baucus'es? Why spend that much money if the (R) leaders will throw you under the bus for "Comity" sake?
I agree with you and that is why I give money directly to Helms/Laxalt/Reagan/Buckley/Burr/Coburn as opposed to going through the RNC.
Repeal the 17th amendment and let the state legislatures pick their Senators. No more national party blocs.
-PJ
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