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| I won? Hey, that doesn't make any sense. |
For once The New York Times gets it right, here, emphases added:
Just a few years ago, the tax deal pushed through the Senate in the early hours on Tuesday would have been a Republican fiscal fantasy, a sweeping bill that locks in virtually all of the Bush-era tax cuts, exempts almost all estates from taxation, and enshrines the former president's credo that dividends and capital gains should be taxed gently. ...
... a hard-fought compromise that [Republicans] could have easily framed as a victory. ...
The bill would do much more than head off the automatic tax increases and spending cuts. It would fix in place a tax code that for more than a decade has caused struggles over regular sunset provisions, temporary solutions and fleeting incentives. The bill would finally make permanent five of the six income tax rates created in 2001 by the first Bush tax cut. It would codify Mr. Bush's successful push, in 2003, to make tax rates on dividends and capital gains equal so that one form of investment income is not favored over the other. ...
The 10-year price includes $762 billion to lock in the Bush tax rates of 10 percent, 25 percent, 28 percent and 33 percent, along with some of the Bush-era 35 percent bracket; $354 billion to continue Mr. Bush's expanded child credit; and $339 billion to secure Mr. Bush's 15 percent capital gains and dividend rates for families earning less than $450,000. The alternative minimum tax fix would cost the Treasury $1.8 trillion, according to the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.
Democrats say they had little choice. The Bush White House and Republican Congresses structured the tax cuts so that letting them expire would be politically difficult. Add the threat of across-the-board spending cuts if Congress does nothing, and President Obama felt he had no choice but to extend most of the tax cuts or watch the economy sink back into recession.
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!
