"I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge."

"If we do it his way then we'll continue in debt, and I just have a disagreement with him about that,"

Mark my word, the handwriting on the wall will become clear enough pretty soon and, by mid-2013 at the latest, Chambliss will announce that he will retire rather than seek re-election.

Georgia is one of the most solidly Republican states in the country. Especially in a mid-term election, no Georgia Democrat can hope to win statewide office. Whoever gets the GOP nomination in 2014 will be the state’s next senator, and there are probably a dozen leading Republicans in Georgia craving an opportunity to take on Chambliss in the GOP primary. Nothing that Chambliss does now can save him from his inevitable fate.

He is doomed beyond all hope of redemption.

Here’s the point: A Republican in a purple state can go wobbly without much fear of reprisal. But if a Republican in a deep-red state like Georgia is permitted to get away with flaunting his “bipartisanship” on such a fundamental issue, then every GOP Senator might be tempted to join the RINO Caucus, becoming a bunch of treacherous self-serving sellouts like Arlen Specter and Lisa Murkowski.

A clear matter of principle is at stake, and no personal considerations should prevent conservatives from uniting in this crucial cause. It doesn’t matter whether you like Grover Norquist or not. This isn’t about Grover. This is about preserving the integrity of the Republican Party.

Just as it was necessary to prevent John Cornyn and Jim Greer from “anointing” Charlie Crist as the Florida GOP Senate nominee in 2010, so now it is necessary to retire Saxby Chambliss.

So let it be written. So let it be done. - Robert Stacy McCain

Reading Putin’s speech without knowing the author, one would think it was written by Reagan or another conservative in America. The speech promotes smaller government and less taxes. It comes as no surprise to those who know Putin as a conservative. Vladimir Putin went on to say:

“…we are reducing taxes on production, investing money in the economy. We are optimizing state expenses.

The second possible mistake would be excessive interference into the economic life of the country and the absolute faith into the all-mightiness of the state.

There are no grounds to suggest that by putting the responsibility over to the state, one can achieve better results.

Unreasonable expansion of the budget deficit, accumulation of the national debt – are as destructive as an adventurous stock market game.

During the time of the Soviet Union the role of the state in economy was made absolute, which eventually lead to the total non-competitiveness of the economy. That lesson cost us very dearly. I am sure no one would want history to repeat itself.” - Vladimir Putin

As Congress returned Monday, the debate over those programs, which many Democrats see as the core of the party’s identity, was shaping up as the Democratic version of the higher-profile struggle among Republicans over taxes.

In failed deficit reduction talks last year, Mr. Obama signaled a willingness to consider substantial changes in the social safety net, including a gradual increase in the eligibility age for Medicare and limits in the growth rate of future Social Security benefits. An urgent question hanging over the new round of deficit talks is which of those changes Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats would accept today.

While a potential change in calculating Social Security increases was part of the talks with Speaker John A. Boehner last year, the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, made clear on Monday that the administration was not considering changes to the retirement program as part of the deficit talks.

“We should address the drivers of the deficit, and Social Security is not currently a driver of the deficit,” Mr. Carney said.

Moreover, since the Supreme Court upheld the new health care law in June, Mr. Obama has become skittish about cutbacks in Medicaid, the federal-state program for low-income people. The court said the expansion of Medicaid was an option for states but not a requirement. Cutting federal Medicaid payments to states could reduce the federal budget deficit, but could also cripple Mr. Obama’s efforts to persuade governors to expand the program, the foundation of his health care overhaul. In talks with Congressional leaders, Mr. Obama is seeking $1.6 trillion in additional revenue over 10 years and $340 billion in health care savings. If he hopes to get a deal, lawmakers say, the additional revenue will have to come down and the health care savings may have to go up.

Mr. Obama and some Democrats in Congress say they are willing to squeeze savings from Medicare by trimming payments to drug companies, hospitals and other health care providers. They have generally ruled out structural changes that would increase costs for a typical beneficiary.

Payroll taxes are a relic of New Deal Machiavellianism: by taking a bite of every worker’s paycheck and promising postretirement returns, Franklin Roosevelt effectively disguised Social Security as a pay-as-you-go system, even though the program actually redistributes from rich to poor and young to old. That disguise has helped keep Social Security sacrosanct — hailed by Democrats because it protects the poor and backed by Republicans as a reward for steady work.

But the costs of this disguise have grown too great to bear. Whatever its past political advantages, the payroll tax now imposes an unnecessary burden on a stagnating economy. In an era of mass unemployment, mediocre wage growth and weak mobility from the bottom of the income ladder, it makes no sense to finance our retirement system with a tax that falls directly on wages and hiring and imposes particular burdens on small business and the working class.

A growing bloc of emboldened liberals say they’re not afraid to watch defense spending get gouged and taxes go up on every American if a budget deal doesn’t satisfy their priorities. Here’s what these progressives fear: an agreement that keeps lower tax rates for the wealthy, hits the social safety net with unpalatable cuts and leaves Pentagon spending unscathed. In other words, they’d rather walk the country off the cliff than watch President Barack Obama cave on long-held liberal priorities.

“If the Republicans can’t see their way to significant additional revenues targeted toward the people who are best off and targeted toward passive income and other things like that, then we’re better off going over the cliff and readdressing this with a better Congress in January,” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said. “And we would have plenty of time to fix it.”

If tax rates snap back to the higher levels from the 1990s and painful budget cuts start to hit the Pentagon, these Democrats — led by Washington Sen. Patty Murray — believe they would wield more leverage over the GOP to enact a budget compromise on their terms. And with a January deal, Republicans would technically avoid violating the no-new-taxes pledge that most of them have signed because they would then be voting to cut taxes.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Tensions over the so-called fiscal cliff reached a boiling point today as House Speaker John Boehner accused President Obama of acting like he won the November election.

“Our message is clear: Mr. President, we are ready to negotiate with you,” Mr. Boehner told reporters. “But this nonsense of acting like you won the election has got to stop.”

Lashing out at Mr. Obama’s “delusional arrogance,” Mr. Boehner added, “I don’t know what planet he thinks he won an election on, but this whole ‘the American people elected me’ act is getting a little old.

Republicans also know they have a problem: many liberal Democrats are more than willing to return to the Clinton-era tax code, and to allow across-the-board spending cuts to take effect, which disproportionately affect the military, rather than compromise too much with Republicans after the strong Democratic showing in the elections.

“It’s a terrible position because by default, Democrats get what they want,” said Representative James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, who admitted his party is boxed in.

Given the difficulty of compromise, a fallback may emerge as a top option. Republican leaders could take up legislation already passed by the Senate to extend tax cuts on income under $250,000, attach a deferral or cancellation of the automatic spending cuts, and give Mr. Obama nothing else, denying requests for increased infrastructure spending, help for homeowners to refinance their mortgages, and extensions of the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance.

Then Republicans would demand deep concessions on spending and changes to Medicare and Social Security as a price to raise the debt ceiling a few weeks later. Republicans say any such decision to follow that course is still a ways off.

There are significant problems with this possibility, starting with the estate tax. The Senate tax bill was silent on the federal tax on inherited estates, which means if the House passes that legislation at the last minute, estate taxes would rise to Clinton-era levels, with inheritances over $1 million taxed at 55 percent. Currently the value of estates over $5 million is taxed at 35 percent.

The math shows why. Even if Republicans were to agree to Mr. Obama’s core demand — that the top marginal income rates return to the Clinton-era levels of 36 percent and 39.6 percent after Dec. 31, rather than stay at the Bush-era rates of 33 percent and 35 percent — the additional revenue would be only about a quarter of the $1.6 trillion that Mr. Obama wants to collect over 10 years. That would be about half of the $800 billion that Republicans have said they would be willing to raise. In recent days, comments from some Republicans, including Mr. Boehner, their chief negotiator, have hinted that the party — recognizing its weak hand — might be moving toward a concession on tax rates. Seldom mentioned is that Mr. Obama’s revenue total also reflects four other changes from Bush-era tax cuts: higher tax rates on investment income from capital gains and dividends, and the restoration of two other Clinton-era provisions limiting deductions and tax exemptions for affluent individuals.

Together those changes would raise $407.4 billion over a decade — nearly as much as the president’s proposal on higher rates, which would raise $441.6 billion by 2023, for a total of $849 billion. Another $119 billion would come from higher estate taxes, opposed by Republicans and some Democrats.

Before Tuesday’s about-face, the Business Roundtable had insisted that the White House extend Bush-era tax cuts to taxpayers of all income brackets, but the executives’ resistance crumbled as pressure builds to find a compromise for the fiscal impasse in Washington before the end of the year.

“We recognize that part of the solution has to be tax increases,” David M. Cote, chief executive of Honeywell, said on a conference call with reporters. “That’s the only thing that allows a reasonable compromise to be reached.”

Even as the Fortune 500 leaders announced their shift, the White House continued to work behind the scenes to woo some of Wall Street’s most powerful financiers — a group that had largely abandoned President Obama in his bid for a second term after supporting him in 2008.

At one point, according to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, “I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?”

“You get nothing,” the president said. “I get that for free.”

How do you negotiate with this guy? It’s hard, if not impossible. President Obama’s plans are broader, though. He will only accept a deal if it fundamentally splits the Republican Party and begins the process of breaking the GOP’s decades-long opposition to raising taxes. More than anything else, the disruption of the opposition party is President Obama’s goal.

American Majority Action spokesman Ron Meyer told Breitbart News late Tuesday that enough House Republicans have banded together in an effort to unseat House Speaker John Boehner from his position--they just need a leader to take up the mantle.

“At least 20 House Republican members have gotten together, discussed this and want to unseat Speaker Boehner--and are willing to do what it takes to do it,” Meyer said. “That’s more than enough to get the job done, but the one problem these guys face is they need a leader to coalesce behind.”
---
The vote for Boehner’s re-election as Speaker happens on Thursday, two days after Boehner’s decision to support the Senate "fiscal cliff" deal Vice President Joe Biden cut with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on New Year’s Eve.

Middle-class workers will take a bigger hit to their income proportionately than those earning between $200,000 and $500,000 under the new fiscal cliff deal, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Earners in the latter group will pay an average 1.3 percent more – or an additional $2,711 – in taxes this year, while workers making between $30,000 and $200,000 will see their paychecks shrink by as much as 1.7 percent – or up to $1,784 – the D.C.-based think tank reported.

Overall, nearly 80 percent of households will pay more money to the federal government as a result of the fiscal cliff deal. Tax Policy Center, via The Daily Mail, via Gateway Pundit

“What happened?” he asked. “My paycheck just went down by an amount that I don’t feel comfortable with. I guarantee this decrease will hurt me more than the increase in income taxes will hurt those making over $400,000.” - democratic underground poster.

What divides Republicans today is a straightforward tactical question: Can you govern from one house of Congress? Should you even try? Can you shrink government, restrain spending, bring a modicum of fiscal sanity to the country when the President and a blocking Senate have no intention of doing so?

One faction feels committed to try. It wishes to carry out its small-government electoral promises and will cast no vote inconsistent with that philosophy. These are the House Republicans who voted no on the “fiscal cliff” deal because it raised taxes without touching spending. Indeed, it increased spending with its crazy-quilt crony-capitalist tax “credits” — for wind power and other indulgences.

They were willing to risk the fiscal cliff. Today they are willing to risk a breach of the debt ceiling and even a government shutdown rather than collaborate with Obama’s tax-and-spend agenda.

The other view is that you cannot govern from the House. The reason Ryan and John Boehner finally voted yes on the lousy fiscal-cliff deal is that by then there was nowhere else to go.

Republicans could not afford to bear the blame (however unfair) for a $4.5 trillion across-the-board tax hike and a Pentagon hollowed out by sequester.

The party establishment is coming around to the view that if you try to govern from one house — e.g., force spending cuts with cliffhanging brinkmanship — you lose. You not only don’t get the cuts. You get the blame for rattled markets and economic uncertainty. You get humiliated by having to cave in the end. And you get opinion polls ranking you below head lice and colonoscopies in popularity.

There is history here. The Gingrich Revolution ran aground when it tried to govern from Congress, losing badly to President Clinton over government shutdowns. Nor did the modern insurgents do any better in the 2011 debt-ceiling and 2012 fiscal-cliff showdowns with Obama.

Obama’s postelection arrogance and intransigence can put you in a fighting mood. I sympathize. But I’m tending toward the realist view: Don’t force the issue when you don’t have the power.

The debt-ceiling deadline is coming up. You can demand commensurate spending cuts, the usual, reasonable Republican offer. But you won’t get them. Obama will hold out. And, at the 11th hour, you will have to give in as you get universally blamed for market gyrations and threatened credit downgrades.

Duncan Black suggests that there’s still a macroeconomic case for targeting economic aid on people with lower incomes; e.g, food stamps yes, cuts in the capital gains tax no. Very much so! In fact, in a way the same argument I made for not making too much of high-income saving and low-income dissaving also makes the case for aid right now to the bottom half of the distribution.

Here’s how it goes: at any point in time, those with lower incomes include a high proportion of people doing temporarily badly. Many of those people will be “liquidity-constrained” — out of liquid assets, and unable to borrow except at high rates. These are people who will spend a large fraction of any aid, and therefore transfers to that group will have a much bigger multiplier effect than, say, tax cuts for the rich.

It’s even better, of course, to target aid on those we know are in temporary distress — which is why unemployment insurance is an especially effective stimulus.