{"id":4682,"date":"2010-09-12T13:42:47","date_gmt":"2010-09-12T18:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=4682"},"modified":"2010-09-12T13:47:11","modified_gmt":"2010-09-12T18:47:11","slug":"house-g-o-p-leader-signals-he%e2%80%99s-open-to-obama-tax-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2010\/09\/12\/house-g-o-p-leader-signals-he%e2%80%99s-open-to-obama-tax-cut\/","title":{"rendered":"House G.O.P. Leader Signals He\u2019s Open to Obama Tax Cut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The New York Times<\/em> ran the story <a title=\"New York Times Story\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/09\/13\/us\/politics\/13cong.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>House G.O.P. Leader Signals He\u2019s Open to Obama Tax Cut<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIf the only option I have is to vote for some of those tax reductions, I\u2019ll vote for them,\u201d Mr. Boehner said, in response to questioning by the television show\u2019s host, Bob Schieffer, who pointedly asked if Republicans were willing to hold the tax breaks for most Americans \u201chostage\u201d to insist on continuing the lower rates for the highest earners.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think raising taxes in a very weak economy is a really, really bad idea,\u201d Mr. Boehner said, adding, \u201cI think there is a growing chorus on Capitol Hill to extend all of these tax rates.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In recent days, Mr. Boehner has called for extending all of the Bush tax cuts for two years and freezing government spending at 2008 levels.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If the Obama administration and the Democratic leaders in the Congress had any sense, they would point out to Mr. Boehner that &#8220;raising taxes in a very weak economy is [only] a really, really bad idea&#8221;, if you do not plan to redeploy that money to some other kind of stimulus.\u00a0 Also, &#8220;freezing government spending at 2008 levels&#8221; is a very, very bad idea in a weak economy.\u00a0 Cutting taxes and spending is the wrong approach.\u00a0 Raising some taxes and increasing spending to compensate is a better approach.\u00a0 They really need to explain why their approach is better.<\/p>\n<p>It seems Boehner could not resist throwing in his usual song and dance,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In addition to the lower marginal income tax rates, aides said that  Mr. Boehner would like to continue the current moratorium on the federal  <a title=\"More articles about estate planning.\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/your-money\/planning\/estate-planning\/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier\">estate  tax<\/a>, which is also due to expire on Dec. 31.<\/p>\n<p>The one-year elimination of the estate tax has allowed some extremely  wealthy Americans to leave enormous inheritances without paying any  federal tax. Republicans have long criticized the estate levy as double taxation because the assets were generally taxed once as income when they were first earned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The money passed on in an estate may be largely unrealized capital gains that have never been taxed.\u00a0 The recipient already gets to step up the cost basis of stocks to the current market price on the day of receipt which wipes out the tax liability on the untaxed capital gains.<\/p>\n<p>The Republicans are really good with playing tax hocus pocus to try to convince us that the wealthy bear an unfair tax burden when the exact opposite is true.\u00a0 The wealthy get unfair tax breaks that the less wealthy don&#8217;t get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times ran the story House G.O.P. Leader Signals He\u2019s Open to Obama Tax Cut. \u201cIf the only option I have is to vote for some of those tax reductions, I\u2019ll vote for them,\u201d Mr. Boehner said, in response to questioning by the television show\u2019s host, Bob Schieffer, who pointedly asked if Republicans [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4682"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4686,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4682\/revisions\/4686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}