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The House of Representatives voted Tuesday night to approve a Senate bill to avert a feared fiscal cliff.
The measure that sought to maintain tax cuts for most Americans but increase rates on the wealthy passed the Democratic-led Senate overwhelmingly early in the day…
The legislation would raise roughly $600 billion in new revenues over 10 years, according to various estimates
Despite the median income for most American households being roughly $50,000, the top tax rate for households subject to the 39.6% rate is cut off at $450,000 while the median income for most individual Americans is roughly $26,000, the top tax rate for individuals subject to the 39.6% rate is cut off at $400,000. Just keep saying shared sacrifice (over and over again).
Most of the Bush tax cuts were made permanent and the payroll tax cut holiday was allowed to expire raising taxes immediately on workers. Left out was the carried interest loophole:
The top rate for dividends and capital gains starts at the $400k/$450k level. Note: this increase is in addition to the 3.8% add-on tax for capital gains and dividends included in the health bill. In addition, nothing done specifically on carried interest.
America will remain a distorted society with severe inequality, and we haven’t even gotten to the spending cuts yet. Hello debt ceiling.
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With cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicade coming in a few weeks!
The Leaders of the following groups should be fired or quit
Move On.org
Progressive Change
AFL-CIO
because the House Dems they supported kicked them in the teeth last night! nothing new here!
We should write letters telling “trojan horse Dems” I mean House Dems to stop all the Drama, when they vote to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicade, we real progressives want them Laugh, Jump for Joy, Smile, for the cameras! :) “we don’t need all the sad speeches”
Last night Kabuki games were Oscar Worthy!
Nancy Pelosi is the Steven Spielberg of DC politics! This was a terrific production.
The events of the last two days will go down as one of the great crimes of American history.
They are no longer the Bush tax cuts – they are now the Obama government underfunding.
Needless to say, Social Security and Medicare are on the table.
If the Obama Tax Cuts expired at midnight Dec 31 dividends would have been treated (as they should be) like ordinary income. Haven’t heard whether that is still the case.
the 450k threshhold is not that big of deal, imo. the cutoff for higher cap gains and dividend tax rates, as well as the ACA cap gains tax rate is set at 250K.
the big money is in cap gains and div income, aka the Mitt Romney club. along with the estate tax wimper of an increase are the real crimes of this bill.
at 450k income, the Dems figured they could convert a lot of professional people over to their side, people who could actually write campaign checks. This group of people are often carrying huge college and grad school debt.
the real targets have been identified, millionaires and billionaires, and their taxes have been raised. that sets a precedent for any cuts to anything to be offset by tax increases to the idle rich. that seems to be the logic of the Dems.
What middle class? You mean working people in servile relationships with corporations? People conditioned by corps into dependency….