You can sort out the fiscal cliff for yourself. I’m going out. Have a wonderful evening and a Happy New Year!!
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Happy New Year! Will drink to all denizens of the pond at midnight! Skoal!
Happy New Year’s Frog Pond.
For those of us staying in tonight, what network is everyone watching tonight?
No TV here, but we have a DVD from Netflix to watch. Maybe we’ll see the ball drop on the intertubz.
Good dvd for New Years is 200 Cigarettes.
I was going to go out to a party with my best friend and her boyfriend in Richmond at my other friend’s mansion…but my girlfriend had an anxiety attack yesterday and came back to DC from Philadelphia out of nowhere. So I came to her place and we’re staying in instead.
Those can be truly awful. Hope she is feeling better now.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
BE safe tonight, everyone 🙂
Here’s to a kinder, gentler congress in 2013! Happy New Year all!
Happy new year BT!
You know ur getting old when it’s New Year’s eve and the ball drop is 5 hours away and you are already yawning…may not make it before the countdown…lol.
I’m right there with you.
So every time I get more details of the fiscal cliff negotiations, the more I want to vomit. Now I learn that they have agreed to only put off the sequester for two months AND they are keeping the estate tax limit at $5 million and tying it to inflation.
I am sickened. Guess Obama lied when he said he’d veto an extension of Bush tax cuts for the rich. Dems are getting rolled hard right now.
Guess Obama lied when he said he’d veto an extension of Bush tax cuts for the rich.
Because of the difference between $250k and $450k?
That’s a little overwrought.
what’s that? $8000?
Another glass and a half of champaign, and I’ll be be able to subtract $250,000 from $450,000 and get $8000.
Happy New Year, Martin!
Permanent is a big difference. And coincidentally, the sequester is extended just in time for the debt ceiling! Wooooo!
It’s unacceptable. This is pathetic.
Permanent isn’t a big difference. The negotiations were about setting a permanent rate either way, whether at $250k or whatever.
the sequester is extended just in time for the debt ceiling!
I fail to find this as terrifying as you seem to think I should.
As Noam Scheiber says:
If Obama will cave even when he’s got all the leverage, when won’t he cave? Never, the Republicans will assume. If Obama’s too scared to stop bargaining and let the public decide who’s right in this instance, when the polls appear to back him, then he must think our position is more popular than he lets on. Suffice it to say, these are not sentiments you want at the front of Republicans’ mind as they prepare to shake him down over the debt limit in another two months. The White House continues to maintain that it simply won’t negotiate over the limit. After this deal, why would any Republican ever believe this? I certainly don’t, and I desperately want to.
Obama and Democrats got a lot in this deal that is important for the short and mid term. The long term is the long term. WE will still have to fight things out in two months, two years, five years, ten years. In terms of the leverage that Obama has, the types of things he would get with leverage that is supposedly superior once we go over the cliff are the same things he got in this deal, sensible things that the GOP has adamantly opposed–employment insurance extension, student loan credits, wind tax, etc. This all matters more to me than the movement from 250 to 450 k.
I also don’t know if I am reading this correctly, but doesn’t it say in this deal that the sequester has to be 1/2 revenue and half cuts in the upcoming talks? That means a quarter of the total savings will come from defense cuts, and a quarter from public service programs, and the rest from further soaking of the rich. That is a major twist of the republican arm. As Matt Iglesias pointed out, getting rich people to pay more taxes now doesn’t do anything for someone losing their unemployment insurance tomorrow, or a kid who needs to pay for a university education next year so that in ten years he can give back to the country in really important ways.
Sometimes it seems like we liberals just think that there is some magic moment in which we get everything, and then the fight’s all over. This keeps us from thinking long-term, and thinking long term is Obama’s genius. The awesome leverage that dkos and huffpo folks are touting as if they were responsible for creating it was actually achieved by Obama in his supposedly worst moment as a negotiator (debt limit talks). It was Obama who created this unrepeatable golden moment in the history of our nation. So, my money is on him for the short, medium and long term.
Happy New Year, Booman, seabe and all!
Thanks for the perspective.
You know nothing about negotiating. We had the stronger position BY FAR in this situation. Tax rates were going to go up across the board if nothing happened and no deal was reached. Republicans were going to get the blame for it.
But instead of using that leverage to ensure that we start closing the wealth gap in this country and get the debt a little bit under control, Biden and Obama folded. Remember when Obama was supposed to get $800 billion “for free”? Tonight’s deal was for only $600 billion.
Obama gave up $1 trillion in tax increases for $30 billion in unemployment insurance benefits. They can talk up this shit sandwich all they want but this was awful negotiating by Obama and the spineless Senate Dems.
Obama got the green energy tax credits extended as part of this deal. You have utterly lost the thread if you think the difference between $250k and $450k for the top tax bracket is more important than that.
This deal ensures nothing of the sort. They’ll take the debt ceiling hostage, and Obama will give them 98% of it. End of.
“and Obama will give them 98% of it.”
As always, the claim that “Obama caved” amounts to “He’s going to cave next time, I just know it.”
Lemme guess – he’s going to accept the Chained CPI that he was also going to accept in this round, and in the debt ceiling talks.
It doesn’t matter what the deal was for me, I was not going to be happy with it because permanent extensions of the Bush tax cuts are completely irresponsible, and they establish that Bush and the supply-siders have won.
In any case, the deal taken in isolation — given this insane Congress and the fact that the president insists on permanent tax cuts for people — is not bad. It’s even arguable that it’s pretty good. But we’re going to have another debt ceiling talk, one that created this entire mess in the first place. Discretionary spending took a beating, and we can’t have any investment if we continuously are cutting it. We’ll see.
And it’s not just dkos and HuffPo. Read the articles; it’s Senate Aides, and Senators themselves. They have no confidence in this president.
Meaning, it’s the Senate aides and Senators that the writers at DKos and Huffington chose to quote.
You have to start with the assumption that Obama “caved” in order for the rest of the argument to be the slightest bit compelling…and yet, the argument that he “caved” on this deal (like all the deals on which he’s accused of caving) is “Just you wait and see how much he caves in the next round!”
Looks like we’ll be getting a one-year extension of the wind tax credit, which is HUGELY important for the clean energy industry. A lot of jobs in that sector are on the line.
Progressives need to push in 2013 to have this credit extended for a few more years, or ideally, make it permanent. It shouldn’t be that hard of a sell.
I am really hoping that it’s just that I don’t understand enough about the new deal to understand how it’s a good deal for our side.
Or, to put it another way… I sure as hell hope someone on our side has a big plan for something good, and that somehow this deal is part of it.
We are in New York City on Staten Island, sitting in my daughter’s apartment, giving my son a haircut and petting the cats. We will NOT be going to Times Square. We did go to the Met M of Art, which I have finally spent almost enough time in. It is a well of amazing treasures, and I cannot imagine going there often enough.
We also went to All Souls Unitarian Church Christmas Eve, in which the sermon began “Throughout New York City churches are delivering a message about a man and a mythical being. In All Souls, we have other concerns.” I knew that I had a spiritual home.
May the New Year bring prosperity, success, spiritual enlightenment, and a sense of joy to all!!
Happy New Year!
As for how to celebrate? I might mention something about “Fight Club”, but then again, I’m not talking.
I’m still awake. Looks like I will make it to midnight, thanks in no small part Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper on CNN’s NYE broadcast.
I love the way Kathy Griffin says crazy thing and Anderson Cooper pretends that he’s so uncomfortable. I find Cooper a bit of a phoney but when he’s with Griffin, I find him tolerable.
Happy New Year.
Our taxes just went up.
I expected a Senate vote after midnight, but apparently that will wait until tomorrow if there’s still a deal.
Also until Congress actually votes and the President signs something, the sequester is now in effect.
Merry Cliffmas.
So do you think this will pass in the senate? In the house? Do you think it’s a good deal?
I danced on a lily pad all night and did not fall off! Happy New Year, Pond People!
Happy New Year from IL!!
The Cliff deal isn’t perfect but it’s probably the best we can get given the fact that we still have a Republican House. Either we somehow manage to dislodge them from the House or we’ll make very slow progress for the rest of the decade.
Anyway, Happy New Year to you and your family!
No, Jim. All the Bush tax cuts were going to go away AND defense was going to be sequestered. Now we have no leverage. The rich have their special Bush 15% tax rate and now we have no leverage. What does Obama have to offer two months from now? Only SS and Medicare. Man, am I glad I turned down the USPS retirement offer. It’s back to pre-Johnson elder poverty.
Now we have no leverage.
The defense cuts that are still in the sequester aren’t leverage?
And as far as leverage goes, the Republicans will no longer have the expiration of Unemployment Insurance, the expiration of the green energy tax credits, or the expiration of the middle-class tax cuts during the next round of talks.
It looks like a push to me.
don’t tax rates go up on earnings over 400/ 450,000?
Yes. Also, the tax on dividends and capital gains goes up from 15% to 20%.
what are the new rates on earnings over 400/450,000? [couldn’t find them w. the google]
39.6%, which was the old Clinton tax rate.
5% increase is something, since that’s how Mitt, for example, kept his tax rate so low
That was one way. Credits and deductions were another.
We’ll see if they get addressed in the March deal.
Looks like ayes are overwhelmingly in favor of this bill. toomy, chamblis, kerry, vitter, udall, warner, snowe, portman, pryor, akaka, hutchison, mcain, roberts, thune, etc. all ayes.
harkin, paul and and a few others no. Looks like overwhelming approval.
merkley, aye, bennet, no, rubio no…
89 ayes. should be pretty hard for the house GOP to fight this with such an overwhelming level of support.
I’m trying to find out why it took 60 votes after McConnell was in on the deal. Did it have to do with the lack of ripening?
Sigh. This is the President that I spent so much time trying to re-elect?
I know, I know — it was worth it because Romney would have been 1 billion times worse. I know, and I agree. But when Barak Milktoast Obama talks tough and then caves on stuff he said were non-negotiable just days before, it’s hard to be enthused about the guy.
At least he didn’t cut Social Security – but I see that the GOP is already megaphoning that he offered to do so as if it was something he wanted – and I’ll bet that the Dems don’t bother countering that assertion in the punditry.
Yeah, yeah, it’s 11th dimensional chess and NEXT TIME he’ll have the GOP right where he wants them. Next time will be in two months … I’ll bet he caves then, too.
Don’t worry. NEXT TIME he won’t cave in and agree to a last minute deal that gives the GOP 98% of what they want!
Oh, ferchrissakes.
Why is it always the same people who condescendingly explain that Obama needs to make unrealistic opening offers so he can be talked down, who turn around and claim that being talked down is “caving?”
The automatic expiration of taxes and sequester are what has happened.
The fiscal deal requires a House vote, and Boehner says he will open it for amendments.
Pelosi will have to whip all of the Democrats, who will once again take the fall, if the fiscal deal is to pass the House.
The Senate voted conveniently after midnight; the expiration was a fact and the Republicans can rightly claim that they did not raise taxes.
But the negotiating style makes the next Congress more of the same unless the Senate changes the filibuster.
I’m sick so my New Year’s Eve, not so good. Hopefully have a better day to tomorrow but after that, looks like Obama’s going to suck pretty hard just like in term one. Let’s just hope Boehner saves us again!
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Interesting read …
best for 2013