Congressman from New York says President has shown "remarkable compromise"...

[kentuck]

by agreeing to raise the tax limit from $250K to $400K. He said that he always thought the $250K level was too low. That was not a lot of money in parts of his district, he said.

Rep. Steve Israel, DCCC Chair, was on MSNBC Chris Jansing show just a few minutes ago.

[Walk away]

1. That's true. $250,000 a year makes you middle class in my county.

However, I haven't met too many people who were worried about small tax increase on earnings above that amount.

[kentuck]

2. What is the big difference in your county??

Is it the rent ? What is the average rent or mortgage? Does food cost that much more? How about gasoline? Is it about the same as everywhere else? Where do all the extra expenses come from in your county? $250K sounds like a lot of money to me and I believe I could live just about anywhere in the world on that amount? And how do those folks that make $30K per year survive in your county?

[dsc]

6. rents are pretty damn high in many parts of the country

and home prices even higher. Average 3 bedroom in nyc is 3865 a month or 46380 a year. Now that said, a couple making 285,000 a year, assuming a fairly even split of that income, would be better off seeing the payroll tax continue and clinton rates at 250k than under Obama's current proposal. If both wage earners make at least 110k, then the SS taxes they are currently saving amount to 4,400. Under the Clinton rates, they would pay an extra 1260 meaning they would be 3140 to the good. Even if all the income is made by one earner they still are better off under Obama's original plan by 940.

[Walk away]

11. Everything is more expensive here. I live in tiny a two bedroom cottage.

My house is less than 700 square feet on a small piece of property. My yearly taxes are currently over $9,000 a year and (even in this market) my tiny 80 yr old, one bathroom, hardly updated house in a blue collar neighborhood is going for about $350,000 to $400,000. A normal 3 bedroom house in Northern Bergen Cty is going to run at least $500,000 and taxes can be $20,000 or 30,000 a year. Even my health care costs more. My premiums for the same company and the same policy is almost a thousand dollars more than it would be if I were a county away. That is because it is more expensive to do anything here.

If you live in the NYC suburbs and make $30,000 a year and single...you cannot afford to live alone in a safe neighborhood. You are barely scraping by. If you have four kids and making that kind of money you are in trouble and most likely on food stamps.

I have a friend who just bought a house in the suburbs of Dallas. It is in mint condition, three times the size of my house and cost less than a third of mine.

I always think about my friend Dan who sold his 2 bedroom condo in Basking Ridge and moved to Cincinnati for his job (where he was paid the same salary as here). He sent me a photo of his huge house with a built in pool with the caption "Living like a Rock star!".

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

3. A majority of Americans do not make anywhere near $250K.

$250K is not middle class, but I have seen that people cannot live within their means so they feel that they are middle class. A nephew of mine told me how his friends cannot make it on $250K a year. Unbelievable.

If I were making that much my wife or I could stay home, raise out child and not have to worry about mortgage or retirement.

[Walk away]

12. That $250,000 is for a married couple so I guess your wife will sitll have to work.

Here, where I live, a family of four with a yearly income of $250,000 has a nice house that they maybe paid off early, a college fund for their kids and a nice life with vacations and money for some nice toys. That's middle class. That is a teachers salary and maybe a plumbing contractor or an electrician and a physical therapist.

Lawyers, general contractors and doctors pull in $500,000 or $1,000,000 a year. They are junior rich.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

13. The majority of America lives on about 50K per year...or less.

http://www.sfgate.com/business/bottomline/article/Median-household-income-falls-again-3875894.php

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, real median household income fell for the second year in a row in 2011 - two years after the official end of the Great Recession - to $50,054. (that's about 20% of that magic $250k) That's an 8.1 percent drop from 2007, just before the recession's onslaught. Hardest hit: white and African American households.

Spare me how hard it is to live on $250k. I'm really losing interest.

[Walk away]

14. No one said that it was hard to live on $250,000.

I am just saying that where I live $250,000 per household is the comfortable end of Middle Class. If you can't understand that after it's been explained to you then I can't help you ever understand.

[HughBeaumont]

10. In many, many, MANY other counties, 250k a year makes you nice-house-having rich.

In all parts of Ohio, for example, $250,000 a year is a king's ransom.

[Scuba]

4. I'm ok with that assuming the biggest takers pay even more to make up for it ...

... seems when you're taking home, net, after expenses and taxes, $100,000,000 every week, you can afford to pay some more taxes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021276224

Remember, the real money isn't in payroll, it's in capital gains and other investment income.

[forestpath]

5. Yes, it's a great "compromise" when seniors have to make up the difference.

[Johonny]

7. If that was the biggest compromise I wouldn't care

If Republicans want to take in slightly less revenue from the upper middle class and pay the debt, they pretend to worry about, at a slower rate then meh. There wasn't a hard fast unmovable reason for the 250,000$ it was the one number I think you could compromise on. It's the social security and medicare that appear to be thrown in that is deal breaker. Pushing the line in the sand a little higher IMO doesn't make very much difference (I think the number was 200 billion in 10 years) and more to the point illustrates that Republicans don't really care about the debt and even if they do are not capable of rationally dealing with it which gives Dems election material for 2014. Touching social security and medicare is going to be hard to rationalize with the democratic base and in no way helps on any level. Although it would be nice if DCCC chair spun it in the most obvious way "Well we are trying to pay down the debt created by reckless tax give aways to the rich, but Republicans keep telling us they want to keep adding debt at a slight higher rate than us. Go figure, and they claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility." Democrats always seem terrible at messaging. The Republican plan is worse at doing the stated goal that the Republicans are pretending to do, I don't see why that message is so hard for Democrats to latch on to and repeat over and over... I mean the polls show the public doesn't need a lot of convincing on this.

[arjazz]

8. He will get a huge golden parachute when he is done

[warrior1]

9. That's over 20k a month.

Hell of a lot of money.