Senate Democrats are scrambling to rewrite portions of President Barack Obama's jobs bill, even as Obama tries to blame Republicans for Congress' failure to act.Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell moved to call the president's bluff Tuesday by pushing for a quick Senate vote on the bill, but Democratic leader Harry Reid derailed the effort as all sides maneuvered for position in a potentially defining battle in the 2012 presidential campaign.[...]
To pay for his package of tax breaks, unemployment benefits and new spending on public works projects, Obama has proposed higher taxes on family incomes over $250,000 and on the oil and gas industry.
The first request troubles Democratic senators from states like New York, New Jersey and California, where large numbers of families could be hit by the increase. The second has drawn opposition most prominently from Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, whose state is home to numerous oil and gas operations.
The president also proposed higher taxes on hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners, but those increases, too, would disappear under the changes Reid is expected to unveil as early as Wednesday.
WTF????
Look, I get there's a political calculus at play here (damned SCOTUS): millionaires are the fastest source of campaign funds for any candidate for the House or Senate, so the last thing you want to do is piss them off.
But these are "last thing" times.
And I get the whole $250,000 income problem suffered in the northeast, California, and other high tax, high income states. $250,000 really doesn't sound like much when you can easily pay $70,000 a year in rent and need two incomes to survive.
We'll adjust, Senator Reid, those of us in the bluer states who understand this is a crisis of immense proportions.
(or you could just, you know, bump that threshhold up to $300,000 or $500,000 and still capture an enormous bounty.)
And oil companies? Really, Sen. Landrieu? Do we have to look any further back than the Gulf oil spill to see how little they give a damn about the rest of us? Hell, we still have that stupid $50/barrel price floor, under which the oil companies remain subsidized!
So for the sake of a few megagiant corporations who aren't about to move their facilities in the very near future from the single busiest port in America with access to the entire North American market, you'd force 14 million Americans and their families to get deeper in the dungpile?
ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE, THE LOT OF YOU???????
The protests down on Wall Street and across the nation, tens of thousands of young and disaffected people willing and able to work but unable to find a job that will pay them a decent wage and allow them to make a living, should be the first-- the FIRST AND ONLY-- consideration. You are facing an entire generation of people who will need government assistance to get off the floor and create an economy.
Think about that while you roll in your pathetic hedge fund money, Senators.
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