The Republican Party's top priority is to raise taxes on the poor. Literally.

[YoungDemCA]

A few takeaways from this. First, it's yet another reminder that Republicans don't care about the national debt. Conservative carping about the debt is 100 percent of the time a rhetorical cudgel deployed with utter cynicism against programs they dislike for other reasons. When the topic is food stamps or unemployment insurance, they demand offsets to pay for them. (Because "we're broke," as Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) put it in a similar context.) But when it comes to dropping planeloads of money on corporations and rich people, Republicans will casually blow a half-trillion hole in the 10-year budget without blinking.

We can safely assume that should Republicans win in 2016, they'll take all the reduction in the budget deficit accomplished over the Obama years (at great cost and for no benefit, but that's another story) and do the same thing that George W. Bush did: hand it immediately to the rich.

That's not all, though. Unlike Bush, who gave his eye-wateringly regressive tax cuts a patina of democratic legitimacy by cutting the non-rich in on a small fraction of the spoils, Republicans are now firmly committed to the idea that poor people don't pay enough in taxes. The Earned Income Tax Credit was originally a conservative alternative to the welfare state, but increasingly only Democrats support it. Republicans are convinced that the EITC is riddled with fraud, and that voting for it means giving welfare to unauthorized immigrants. (In reality, the EITC results in quite a lot of technically improper payments, but mostly as a result of unnecessary complexity.)

Massive transfers of money to the rich are one half of the Republican economic policy agenda; massive transfers of money away from poor are the other half. And the cuts would be cruel indeed:


For example, a single mother with two children working full time in a nursing home for the minimum wage and earning
$14,500 would lose her entire Child Tax Credit of $1,725 if the CTC provision expires.

-CBPP

Apparently, cutting the income of a poor working single mother by 12 percent is good and proper conservative policymaking in 2014. Because immigration.

http://theweek.com/article/index/272922/the-republican-partys-top-priority-is-to-raise-taxes-on-the-poor-literally

They get off on their cruelty. Being the anti-Robin Hood is enjoyable for them.

Why are these people in power again?

[okaawhatever]

1. It is a shame that so many have no idea how dangerous these policies are. nt

[NYtoBush-Drop Dead]

14. Stupid is as stupid does

Until the great unwashed in these red welfare states stop voting against their own interests, the rest of us will be screwed right along with them.

[Prophet 451]

2. I have never known a country that hates it's poor like the USA

The GOP, and too many plebs they've brainwashed through their servile media, genuinely loathe the poor and think of them in Dickensian terms; that the poor are to blame for their poverty. That's true of conservatives here (UK) as well.

[hifiguy]

3. The New Fascists' goal is ultimately

to combine feudal economics, complete with a totally impoverished peasantry and an obscenely wealthy aristocracy, with the propaganda, policing and power structure of a fully modern fascist state.

Everyone but the aristocracy and their immediate servitors is disposable. Goldman and the other banksters can manipulate commodities shortages as necessary to cull the herd as needed when denying them medical care doesn't kill them off fast enough.

[Prophet 451]

5. We've seen this before

I'm a Ripperologist (someone who researches the crimes of Jack The Ripper) and to understand those, you need to understand Victorian London. In Victorian London, those who worked, worked for pennies, or a meal, or a dosshouse bed for the night. If you couldn't find work, you got sent to the workhouse where you got food and a bed in exchange for twelve to sixteen hours back-breaking labour every day (the current Tory government have brought this back in spirit by requiring the unemployed to work for free for two weeks a year) or you starved in teh butter. If you managed to find work, it was that same 12-16 hour day. No days off. And if you didn't like it, fuck you, thousands were desperate enough to take it.

There was so little charity that, in the destitute East End, something like 3/4 of women prostituted themselves at least occasionally. The cost of full sex was generally 4d, the price as a shot of gin, or a small meal, or a dosshouse bed for teh night.

Vast dosshouses charged 4d for a bed or 2d for a lean-to, a rope stretched between walls that men leaned against to get what sleep they could in their exhaustion.

That's what they're trying to bring back. And they'll probably succeed too. This time, there won't be a revolt, the plebs have been too lulled by the mindless pablum on tv (the best of tv can enlighten and inspire but most aren't watching the best). The plebs have been so trained that they'll pay for their own bread and circuses. The PtB would be trying to bring back slavery but wage-slavery is cheaper.

[freshwest]

10. +1

[calimary]

13. Yeah, and we're the ones who are loudest about being a "'Christian' nation," too.

It's really distressing to see. The injustice and obscene lopsidedness is just painful to see. Just as it's equally painful to realize that any realistic hope for a solution looks to be really far away.

[Dustlawyer]

18. Too bad their fondness of American Exceptionalism doesn't extend to having the lowest number of

citizens below the poverty line! USA #1!

[hfojvt]

4. I hate to ask (not really)

But just WHY do the CTC provisions even expire in 2017?

Because of Obama's Great Betrayal.

Anybody remember the Great Betrayal? Otherwise known as ATRA - the provision that made most of the Bush tax cuts for the rich - permanent.

Favorable treatment of dividends - permanent
lower tax rates for incomes between $100,000 and $400,000 - permanent
cuts to the estate tax - permanent

ten year projected cost of tax cuts to the richest 5% - $1.3 trillion.

And those tax cuts are - permanent.

Tax cuts for the poor - set to expire in 2017.

Remember how ATRA was sold to us? It was a great victory for Obama. Obama said so himself.

But yeah, sure, let's blame Republicans for the fact that those tax cuts aren't permanent. Because back when Obama had the frigging trump card - taxes set to AUTOMATICALLY go up on the rich, he folded like a cheap suit. Even AFTER his re-election. And then sold his Great Betrayal as a victory for the people.

[airplaneman]

16. I remember I was so bummed when this happened.

2/3 of the tax increase was in this range also. It would have been better to let the Bush tax cuts expire in their entirety.
-Airplane

[BlueMTexpat]

6. Why are these people in power again?

Apart from all the GOP cheating, voter suppression tactics, gerrymandering, GOP media sycophants and black money influencing voters as a result of Citizens' United, "these people" are in power again because too many Dems thought they would make a point about President Obama's not fixing everything that needs to be fixed fast enough or because Dem candidates were not ideologically "pure" enough (in their opinions) by not showing up at the polls for the mid-terms.

And that's the truth. Unfortunately. If we do not vote, we will not win.

The first mentioned are all formidable obstacles. But it is the not voting that kills us.

[hifiguy]

7. All of those things are in play

but the primary drivers are the 24/7 corporate propaganda and lunatic religion. For an example of the latter see this terrifying post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025906288

But if a Democratic candidate espouses corporatist policies which simply boil us frogs a little more slowly, there is no point in voting them into office. The same results will come to pass.

[jwirr]

8. I would suggest that those business owners who are so stumped that the people were not buying

on Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day get ahold of the congressmen that they own and stop this because they are going to lose a lot more business as we get broker.

The Congress has no idea what is going on in this country.

[hifiguy]

9. But they sure do understand what their owners want. n/t

[world wide wally]

11. But, isn't this what voters want to happen because someday they are going to be rich?

The American way… Wait!… the Teabagger way

[jtuck004]

12. That's how it used to work. One party worked to provide opportunity, the other took it away.

Now one takes it away, the other makes banks rich and pretends that it is opportunity.

There is an old saying... "When two politicians agree, you only need one of them."

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. Classic "stinkin' thinkin"....

Their branding themselves as the party that lowers taxes doesn't work so Republicans assume it's because most people aren't paying any taxes so let's raise their taxes so they will value tax cuts and they'll vote for the party that,....uh,....just raised their taxes.

Oh wait,...Republicans will raise taxes and then LIE and say it was the Dems that raised taxes.

Hell, they don't even NEED to actually raise taxes. They can just lie and claim taxes were raised, blame the Dems and claim to be the heroes that will lower them again.

[yuiyoshida]

17. I am willing to bet Money will be removed from those Veterans

who were promised and compensated for disability, and its probably a good chance, that Veteran Hospitals would be shut down and scrapped as well. We think Republicans are evil now, wait till they pull the rug out from under all disabled veterans.

[aggiesal]

19. Look up Dooh Nibor n/t