Tom Harkin for President!

[MannyGoldstein]

Watch this video and tell me why it shouldn't be so!

Sen. Tom Harkin doesn't like the cliff deal

A smart and decent man, if not sensible.

[DJ13]

1. He would be "Deaned" by the MSM

No candidate for President that cant be controlled by the 1% will ever get the nom.

That was the lesson that JFK was for the rest of us.

[mattvermont]

2. I like the thought, but

I know Tom From wayback....and he is too old and too midwest nice. He would be shark meat, like the last time he ran.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Elizabeth Warren would have been shark meat a decade ago.

Now she's Senator Warren.

I think America has changed, particularly in the last two years.

[mattvermont]

4. Perhaps true, but 77 yo on next election cycle? nt

[Carnage251]

7. She would've never been shark meat in a state as left wing as Massachusetts

Their house delegation has been all democrats since 1997 and their last republican senator before brown lost reelection in 1978.

[MannyGoldstein]

8. Governors Weld, Cellucci, and Romney might disagree

We went moderate for a decade or two.

[ProSense]

5. Here's the problem.

Aside from the threshold moving to $400,000, this deal was better than the previous Senate bill that everyone wanted the House to pass.

Harkin voted for that bill (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=2&vote=00184), which didn't include most of the provisions in the current deal.

The estate tax was a sticking point with even Democratic Senators (the Senate bill that passed kept it at $5 million with a rate of 35 percent). This is how the proposals facing Republicans measured up:

1) Accept the President's proposal with "dividends to be taxed as ordinary income" and the "estate tax to be levied at 45 percent on inheritances over $3.5 million."

2) Pass the Senate bill, "which currently taxes inheritances over $5 million at 35 percent," but excludes Obama's dividend proposal.

3) Go over the cliff when "the estate tax is scheduled to rise to 55 percent beginning with inheritances exceeding $1 million."

G.O.P. Balks at White House Plan on Fiscal Crisis
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/us/politics/fiscal-talks-in-congress-seem-to-reach-impasse.html

The deal increased the rate to 40 percent.

As for estate taxes, the rates will rise from 35 percent to 40 percent for estates valued at over $5 million dollars, however the Republicans did succeed in building in a provision which allows the amount of the exemption (currently five million dollars) to be indexed to the rate of inflation.

On second thought: This bill includes no spending cuts.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022109603

May not matter though. Looks like the House is going to kill the bill.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022111551

[Jim Warren]

6. Old school Democrat

of the kind that informed my political views oh so many years ago, and those of my father and his father too.
He'll be said to be too old and out of the loop for the current political scene, a real measure of my deep disconnect with politics today.