Our favorite minority attention whore, House Republican leader and next Speaker of the House John Boehner, seems to feel as though all this nonsense over extending the Bush tax cuts is chicken crap, whatever that is supposed to be. Did he mean bullshit? Just tell us what’s on your mind, Mr Boehner, we won’t hold it against you if you say bullshit on C-SPAN. “I’m trying to catch my breath so I don’t refer to this maneuver going on today as chicken crap, all right?” he said. “But this is nonsense, all right? The election was one month ago. We are 23 months from the next election, and the political games have already started trying to set up the next election.” No no, homie, this has nothing to do with the next election, this has to do with y’all just getting around to this now when no one’s cared since 2002.
If there are any doubts as to the stimulative or depressive effect of a tax rate change in terms of tax receipts received by the Treasury, check out this WSJ op-ed by W. Kurt Hauser which tells us that historically, tax revenues as a share of GDP have averaged just under 19%, whether tax rates are cut or raised.
Anyway, regardless of our feelings on the matter (many of which include expletive-filled rants like “WTF, why are you guys just now trying to figure this out?!”, “please! Can’t you work well with others for just once in your life” and/or “Gee, maybe if we addressed the problem of an overly complicated tax system this wouldn’t be such an epic pain in the assets”), the House has finally made a decision. Frankly we couldn’t be happier to see the light at the end of the W-2 on this at last.
A mere 29 days before the scheduled December 31st Tax Cut Armageddon, the threats votes have been counted and it appears as though the yeas have it. With 6 minutes to go on the vote and with little help from House Republicans, Democrats rallied together to get the 218 votes they needed to extend tax cuts to those earning up to $250,000 and then some.
It doesn’t really matter because there’s no way the Senate is going to let this fly so you may go back to whatever you were doing and start socking away a few bucks for your 2011 tax bills.
Ahhh political process. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion from the driver’s side.
