Posted on 12/02/2011 9:28:20 AM PST by tobyhill
House GOP leaders are considering tacking legislation to advance the Keystone XL pipeline to attract Republican votes for a package to extend a payroll tax holiday that would hit American workers with an average $1,000 tax hike on Jan. 1 if it is allowed to expire at year's end.
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) met behind closed doors with rank-and-file lawmakers Friday morning, but opposition to continuing the payroll tax break still runs high among conservatives in the House, showing the difficulty Boehner will face in drawing backing for the measure.
The prospect of adding the legislation to advance the pipeline, which the Obama administration has put on hold, did little to generate support for the forthcoming package. GOP leaders proposed a list of domestic spending cuts that could be used to pay for extending the payroll tax cut, unemployment insurance benefits and other measures that expire at the end of the year. They also suggested tacking on a GOP-led environmental deregulation measure.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
No.
You support the tax increase?
Maybe if Boner included an impeachment of H0lder.
opposition to continuing the payroll tax break still runs high among conservatives in the House
This is the kind of “conservatism” we had before Reagan. Somebody - was it Jack Kemp? - called it “root canal conservatism.” Somebody else said it another way: “Republicans used to be the tax collectors for the welfare state.”
Are we going back to the days before working class Reagan Democrats could identify with the GOP? Is the GOP’s philosophy that the middle and lower classes need to pay more taxes?
If so, Obama will be laughing all the way to his second inaugural.
Why don’t you just send in a larger tax check to the federal government on your own, voluntarily. Please leave me out of it. I don’t need my payroll taxes raised, thank you.
Help me out here Boehner...
SS/Medicare has a less than 1% shortfall. It is - according to most politicians - a pay as you go system. Current workers deductions are paying current benefits.
The shortfall means this:
SS/Medicare revenue comes from a payroll deduction for people who work. 6.2% for employee - plus 6.2% the employer matches.
So Boehner, there is a small shortfall you politicians point to. less than 1%. Why not make the payroll deduction 6.3% and 6.3% for the employer ????????
Problem solved.
Instead - you poop for brains liar politicians made a “tax holiday” - you reduced the EMPLOYEE portion to 4.2%.
You lying scumbag populists.
SS/Medicare therefore has even less revenue.
Just so you guys can buy votes with a few extra dollars in everyone’s paycheck.
And, you lying scumbags - the SS/Medicare “SO CALLED TRUST FUNDS” have $2,500,000,000,000 (approximately) of “so called Treasury debt” that they hold as “so called investments”.
Well, you lying politicians - why are bothering us citizens ?
Sell some of those securities for the few billion you need to cover the less than 1% shortfall this year in SS/Medicare.
And just leave the payroll deductions alone.
IT’S ABOUT TRANSFER OF WEALTH, ISN’T IT ?
You want Federal Income Tax revenue to the government to START BEING USED TO FUND THE SHORTFALL.
Then...
after LUMPING them together in citizens’ minds, you’ll say “the government has to cut is costs”.
And you’ll keep hiring Federal employees and raising their pay and benefits.
And you’ll CUT what you pay out in SS and Medicare. SS is what you really want to cut. Because it gets paid directly to PEOPLE.
Medicare gets paid to THE MEDICAL INDUSTRY. And you still want the MEDICAL INDUSTRY to support your reelection.
Even if you do cut MEDICARE payments - you just PUSH HIGHER what SENIORS have pay for medicines, copayments, premiums for “extra” insurance they buy.
So admit it - SS and Medicare are not some thing that one can fall back on and retire on.
They are subsistance living where the cash paid into them has been, is and will be used by politicians to grow the Federal government and gain political support from the “healthcare” lobby and us poor citizen-rube sheeple.
IMHO.
So how are we going to fund SS if we do not ask workers to contribute to the SS fund? I guess we can just borrow the money from China.
The house should simply pass a clean extension of the lower payroll tax rate and an extension of unemploymnent benefits by half of the last extension and send them to the senate.
Boehner and the house need to stop being involved in these stupid negotiations. Pass bills and then have the senate pass bills. The senate hasn’t passed anything.
What Harry Reid wants is for everybody to get together so everythings decided ahead of time and there’s no debate or amendments on the floor.
This is legislating. Harry wants aristocracy, a few deciding what the rest of the people shall have, force it through the technicality of the legislative bodies, and the socialist advance rolls on.
Boehner, Cantor, and McConnell are willing accomplices to this plan.
The problem is that this particular reduction in payroll taxes just further shifts the burden onto the 53% that are paying federal income taxes.
Without any changes, Social Security is committed to paying a certain amount in future benefits. It doesn't matter whether it receives enough revenue in payroll taxes to support it. If there's a shortage (it started last year), the difference must be made up from general revenue, or more Treasury bonds must be sold to borrow it.
If you reduce the payroll tax, even for a short time, it aggravates the shortage. And it shifts the burden onto the 53% that actually pay income taxes. The other 43% only pay payroll taxes, if they are wage earners or self-employed. Aside from excise taxes it's the only federal tax they pay.
Since federal income taxes are not being raised, it's simply piling more debt on their children and grandchildren -- who will eventually have to pay more income taxes (if they are in the 53%) to pay the bond holders when the bonds are redeemed.
Help me out here. Do members of Congress pay Social Security taxes?
I know I do, and they’re too high. Any freeper who wants to pay more to the federal government, out of concern for deficits or debt in Social Security or any other federal program, is free to send more of your money in, voluntarily.
Don’t force me and family to pay more out of our income. You might be able to afford to be generous to the government. But I can’t afford it.
Without any changes, Social Security is committed to paying a certain amount in future benefits
Social Security isn’t “committed” to anything. Congress could wipe out the benefits tomorrow, and you wouldn’t get a penny in reimbursement for all the taxes that have been taken from your paycheck throughout your working life.
Social Security is not an investment fund, it is a tax that feeds the federal government. It’s a Ponzi Scheme. You want people to be forced to pay more into this Ponzi Scheme? We’re in a Bizarro World. In a normal world, that kind of thinking would be found only on Democrat Underground, not Free REpublic.
What’s really happening here, among freepers, is that so many of us will oppose anything that Obama proposes, just because it’s coming from Obama. They’ll even take money away from their families, by paying higher taxes, if Obama proposes lower taxes.
I don’t like Obama either, but that still isn’t going to make me support higher taxes.
IF Obama said your nose was nice, would you cut it off to spite him?
Well if you seriously cut SS you will be putting millions, perhaps tens of millions out on the street. Folks that paid into SS all of their working lives, not sure that would be a good idea.
So how are we going to fund SS if we do not ask workers to contribute to the SS fund?
Isn’t that Nancy Pelosi’s argument for raising every other kind of tax? “How are we going to fund the government if we don’t ask people to pay more taxes?”
Not a good day when some freepers start echoing Pelosi.
I don’t like Obama either, but that still isn’t going to make me support higher taxes.
DITTO!
That's correct. But, it would require a change in the law. Social Security administrators can't just arbitrarily do it. That means the bill would require 50% of the House and 60% in the Senate (because it would be certain to be filibustered).
Social Security is not an investment fund, it is a tax that feeds the federal government. It’s a Ponzi Scheme.
I don't dispute that. But, without changes to the expense side, these changes to the income side will just accelerate the coming crisis.
Well taxes are required to fund government. Are you suggesting that the USA not collect any taxes?
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