Jan 08 2007
Pelosi on Taxes, the Party Continues
The Democrats, looking to make a dent in the budget, are looking at the taxes paid by the wealthy:
Democrats are not ruling out raising taxes for the wealthiest people to help pay for tax cuts for middle-income families, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.
She spoke of pursuing an estimated $300 billion that people owe in back taxes, eliminating deficit spending and reducing wasteful federal spending.
Deficit spending has been around before and is out of control again. On Friday, the House adopted a new rule for budgeting to help stop deficit spending:
A budget rule, known as the ”pay as you go” rule, that was approved by the Democratic-run House on Friday requires that tax cuts have corresponding cuts in government spending or tax increases elsewhere to pay for them.
‘What we’re saying is Democrats propose tax cuts for middle-income families. And we want to have `pay-go,’ no new deficit spending. We’re not going to start with repealing tax cuts, but they certainly are not off the table for people making over half a million dollars a year,” Pelosi said.
Much of this debate is in response to the President’s call for a balanced budget in 5 years. Of course, war spending could throw that timeline off a bit:
Bush’s spending decisions also came under fire from the new chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis.
“How can you ever expect to get to a balanced budget if you’re spending $100 billion a year on Iraq borrowing the money to do it, if you’re giving $50 billion a year in tax cuts to people who make over a million bucks a year and paying for that with borrowed money?†Obey said.
One week in and already fighting:
To many Americans, Pelosi is a new face. But despite her efforts to greet them as a grandma from Baltimore (she is from Baltimore and she is a grandmother, but she is also a wealthy San Francisco matron who’s been a mover and shaker for years), Pelosi will be judged quickly as a veteran politician.
Her strategy of a 100-hour blitz of legislative action and new rules — specifically, ethics reform to “break the link between lobbyists and legislation,” a minimum-wage increase, cutting student-loan interest rates, implementing the 9/11 commission’s recommendations, broadening stem-cell research — seems a little too cute. Her party’s majority in Congress is thin, and the president is already hinting that he suddenly found his veto pen.
You know, the term ‘Political Party’ is really appropriate for these people. We elect officials who, regardless of their “beliefs”, get to party like Delta House and have the American people pay the bill. Neither side wants to go home, so they work together to make sure nothing happens to stop the party. Hey everyone, Nancy’s mixing drinks today. Anyone thirsty?
I say it’s time for double-secret probation.
