Trump's tax plan released to the public today is ambitious and pro-growth

The Trump tax plan can be reviewed here.

Notable features include exemption from federal income taxation entirely for up to about 73 million households who make up to either $25,000 individually or $50,000 jointly.

This is in the spirit of the original income tax law, which for its first few years, that is until the demands of World War I and the bureaucratic state came into play, taxed the incomes of no one except the very wealthiest.

It is unclear whether the plan retains the child tax credit or the earned income tax credit, two programs which effectively transfer welfare to lower income families who pay no income tax anyway and who receive through these two vehicles what is effectively a rebate of Social Security taxes they pay as employees, eliminating its regressivity.

For the rest there are just three tax brackets of 10%, 20% and 25%, kicking in at joint incomes up to $100K, up to $300K and beyond $300K. Presumably, but not stated, short term capital gains are taxed at these ordinary rates. Long term capital gains tax rates are 0% up to $100K of joint income, then 15% and 20% up to $300K and beyond $300K of joint income.

Business taxes are slashed to 15% no matter the size, which is YUGE for American competitiveness.

The AMT is eliminated entirely, along with the marriage penalty and . . . the death tax. It's going to be unbelievable!

Deductions are capped for the richest Americans, but deductions for charity and mortgage interest are retained.

We'll see what the dynamic scorers will have to say about it for revenues, as time goes by.

Conservatives give thanks for the achievements of John Boehner, libertarians, the ignorant and the stupid just snarl

• Saved taxpayers $762 billion over ten years by making the Bush tax rates permanent for 98% of all filers beginning at the dawn of 2013
• Saved taxpayers $1.8 trillion over ten years by finally fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax for all victims of bracket-creep
• Saved taxpayers $339 billion over ten years by maintaining the 15% capital gains tax rate for incomes below $450,000
• Saved families $354 billion over ten years by maintaining the child tax credit
• Cut average annual federal deficits of $1.3 trillion 2009-2012 by 57%, to $556 billion on average 2013-2016 by ending the emergency Social Security Tax reductions and instituting the sequester spending cuts
• The S&P 500 immediately responded with total returns in 2013 of 32.39%, the fifth best year since 1970  
• The moribund US Dollar rose 19%, from below 80 to 95 today as overall fiscal rectitude improved
• Causing oil prices to plummet from an average of $95/barrel 2011-2014 to $52/barrel on average in 2015 
• Causing average US gasoline prices to fall from $3.34/gallon one year ago to $2.28/gallon today
• Helping to keep the all-items consumer price index year-over-year nearly flat, rising just 0.2%

Charles Cook embraces the impotence of contemporary conservatism faced with Donald Trump

Where else but in National Review here, the locus of conservatism as ineffectual cult and ideology, which finds it impossible to revolt against anything except for the rebels:

"As it happens, Trump’s critics do grasp the appeal [of revolt]. What they do not do, however, is act upon it in this manner. The temptation to deliver a bloody nose to one’s ideological enemies is a human and comprehensible one, by no means limited in its allure to the disgruntled part of the Republican primary electorate. But temptation and reasonable conduct are two separate things entirely, and they should always be treated as such. Can one understand the instinct that is on display? Sure. Can one look beneath the surface and do anything other than despair? I’m afraid not. Such as they are, the explanations provided by Trump’s discordant choir are entirely risible and easily dismantled. Great, you’re annoyed! But then what?"

He's obviously proud of it. In 1776 he'd be called a royalist.

Was taking up arms against England "reasonable conduct"? Only a Catholic sensibility could fail to grasp the point. "But then what?" Well, a long war of several years, full of privations and without guaranty of success, followed by another long period of several years preparing for and culminating in a constitutional convention, during which local and colonial institutions were strong enough to support the absence of a centralized framework. The same is still true today, if only the locals more frequently told the federal courts to go to hell, as the Kentucky county clerk recently did.

By definition, an ideology ought to have some ideas in it which form a system, and should be, when all is said and done, unrealistic. That pretty much describes American conservatism since forever: unable to roll back anything, including the income tax, direct election of Senators, universal suffrage, the Federal Reserve Act, the Reapportionment Act of 1929, Social Security, Medicare, the minimum wage, Obamacare, and the enormous regulatory code, and unable to permanently refound the country on any constitutional principles, say, of limited government or separation of powers. Conservatism has a massive record of zero achievement while liberalism's untruths keep marching on like tanks in Tiananmen Square.

Trump's camp, meanwhile, thinks three modest things: the way to make America great again is to restore law and order by starting with enforcing its borders and putting an end to illegal immigration, to bring jobs back to Americans by reforming the tax code, developing energy independence, cutting wasteful spending and punishing unpatriotic corporations who profit from exporting jobs, and to rebuild the military to protect freedom at home and for our friends and allies abroad.

It takes near religious nuttery to call the proponent of these measures "a self-interested narcissist and serial heretic whose entirely inchoate political platform bends cynically to the demands of the moment."

To understand Trump, it takes a village . . . of Protestants.

The libertarian free-traders in both parties have killed the American middle class: Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton, Obama

From Patrick J. Buchanan, here:

The average U.S. family has not seen a rise in real wages in 40 years. This is directly traceable to the loss of more than one-third of all U.S. manufacturing jobs. And that loss, that deindustrialization of America, is directly tied to the $10 trillion in trade deficits since Bush I. Writers who celebrate how U.S. imports have risen in this month or that year almost never mention the trade deficit for this month or that year. Perhaps that is because the United States has not run a trade surplus in four decades, whereas, in the first 70 years of the 20th century, we never ran a trade deficit. Trade surpluses add to GDP; trade deficits subtract from GDP.

And when in a company town the company closes the factory, the town often dies. And all the little satellite businesses—bars, diners, food stores, pharmacies—that rose around the factory, they die, too. The tombstones of countless dead towns across America should read: Killed by Free Trade. Tenured economists on college campuses call this “creative destruction.”

The stagnant wages of two generations of U.S. workers also help to explain the crisis of Social Security and Medicare. For, as workers’ wages fail to rise, or fall, so, too, do their contributions in payroll taxes. If, as Simpson-Bowles contends, our largest entitlement programs are heading for insolvency, free trade played a lead role in that American tragedy. And where is the liberal morality in passing laws to ensure U.S. workers a living wage and clean and safe conditions, and then, through fast track and free trade, signaling their bosses that they can evade these laws by shutting factories here, moving their plants to Asia, paying coolie wages, and subjecting Asian workers to conditions that would earn a U.S. industrialist a tour in Leavenworth?

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I've checked Buchanan's math and he's exaggerating a bit. The total is precisely $9.5 trillion . . . if you go back as far as 1982 under Reagan, but you get the point.

Ann Coulter: It looks like Republicans are throwing the fight on illegal alien amnesty

Seen here:

"It's hard to avoid concluding that Republicans aren't trying to make the right arguments. In fact, it kind of looks like they're intentionally throwing the fight on amnesty. If a Republican majority in both houses of Congress can't stop Obama from issuing illegal immigrants Social Security cards and years of back welfare payments, there is no reason to vote Republican ever again." 

Note to Ann: "intentionally" is redundant when throwing a fight.

Social Security disability rolls are growing annually 9.1% more on average under Obama than under Bush

The average annual addition to the disability rolls under Bush, who added 2.7 million over eight years, was 342,000. Under Obama, who has added 1.9 million over five years through 2013, the average annual addition has been 373,000. The current program total is 12.156 million through 2013. If the 2014 addition rate is similar to the immediate past, the program total is probably close to 12.5 million as of December 31st.

The latest statistical report for the program, released in December, may be viewed here.

Figures cited above are derived from Table 1, page 17, disabled beneficiaries and their non-disabled dependents. Table 66 figures are higher and include the disabled aged 18-64 who also get Social Security and/or Supplemental Security Income, the average cost for all of which in 2013 came to $161 billion. 

Liberal WaPo defends economist who says middle class is just fine because of . . . transfer payments!

Where have I heard this before?

Consider The Washington Post, here:

"CBO saw a dramatic difference in middle class income gains because it captures information that tax records miss, such as income from transfer programs such as Social Security and Medicare, [economist Stephen J.] Rose said."

A libertarian made this same argument to me very recently: that the middle class is intact if you count transfer payments made under the tax code.

For a libertarian to argue with a straight face that the middle class is intact because of income redistribution is an offense to capitalism. To be middle class from the purely economic point of view is to have achieved a level of economic independence and status not shared by the lower class. It is symbolized by home ownership, and by that new car smell every few years. Dependence on government transfer payments to maintain such status does nothing but obscure the truth of what is really going on.

This is consistent with the wider practice of economic liberalism in our time, which is similarly designed to hide the truth while posing as its custodian at the same time.

Mark-to-market accounting rules have been changed since April 2009 under Financial Accounting Standards Board rule 157, making price discovery of many "assets" nearly impossible. Circumstances became catastrophic under the old rule during 2008, so the solution was to change the rule. Call it moving the goal posts.

The Fed, acting as the Board's tag team wrestling partner, through QE has been buying up the crappy assets of the banks and transferring them to its own balance sheet in order to hide the truth of their crappiness and restore the banks to health. At the same time the Fed makes war against the free market with its repression of interest rates to the zero bound, driving up the value of risk assets, especially housing, stocks, bonds and commodities while punishing savers and aspirants to the middle class. It's not a coincidence that this helps only the elites, who cannot continue to spend money they don't have unless they can borrow it on the cheap.

A truly conservative economic universe, that is, one aligned with reality, would not permit any of this. 

Too bad we don't live there anymore. Libertarians shouldn't pretend that we do.

Democrats lost last week simply because voters tired of waiting for full-time jobs to recover

Examine the record here of full-time job losses in recessions since 1969 and you will see that full-time jobs recovered to their previous peaks in 2 years after 1969, 2 years after 1974, about 3 years after 1981, 3 years after 1990 and about 3 years after 2000.

But after 2007? Full-time jobs have yet to recover, over 7 years since peaking in July 2007 at 123.2 million.

It's true that total nonfarm employment recovered to the November 2007 high this June, after 6.5 long years, but full-time is still 3 million below the 2007 peak.

The voting public has been very patient with President Obama and the Democrats. They know this was the biggest jobs debacle in the post-war. From peak to trough between July 2007 and January 2010 14.442 million full-time jobs were lost, beating the 8.1 million lost from 1981 under Reagan by a wide margin, a 9.3% loss. The percentage lost from the peak was also highest in the post-war, down 11.7% in the recent catastrophe vs. the 9.6% loss of full-time jobs from August 1974, the previous most recent top episode for full-time job destruction in percentage terms.

So it's understandable that voters might have re-elected Obama and the Democrat Senate in 2012 on the presumption that such a serious episode would take longer to fix. But even so it was still a relatively close election.

Last Tuesday's nationwide blow-out of Democrats, however, from the US Senate on down through the US House, governorships and state legislative chambers shows that the patience of the country has run out. While full-time jobs have roared back in the last 12 months it is likely that the trend has peaked for the year and that it will be next summer before we see full-time recover fully.

That will be 8 years . . . 5 years too many for many of the millions who lost their jobs to put their lives back together and rejoin the middle class. Five years too many for those who lived in the 5+million homes lost to foreclosure. For them there remains the hope only of minimum and low wage work, food stamps, government disability assistance, Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare and early death.

Obama will be remembered for attempting this hollowing out of the middle class, and some will correctly conclude it was intentional on the part of the country's first Bolshevik president.

"[T]he mass of middle class parasites which lived on the back of the old order is now, equally ready to live on the back of the proletarian State."   

The rising share of US workers not making the average wage 1990-2013

The raw average of net compensation for Social Security purposes has risen 113% since 1990, from $20,172 in 1990 to $43,041 in 2013.

The share of workers not earning as much as the raw average of net compensation has risen 6% over the period, from 63% of workers in 1990 to 66.9% in 2013.

In 1990 there were 127.5 million wage earners, 63% of whom made less than $20,172. If 63% of workers in 2013 didn't make as much as the average wage of $43,041 instead of the actual 66.9%, they would have numbered 98.1 million in 2013. Instead they numbered 104.2 million. 

The workforce recession is "over": Social Security wage earners finally surpass the 2007 peak in 2013

The wage statistics report for 2013 from Social Security came out today and shows that the number of workers for Social Security purposes has finally in 2013 exceeded the level first reached in 2007, after bottoming out in 2010. The level in 2013 is not up by much since 2007, but 200,000 workers is 200,000 workers. Unfortunately, however, the population level is up far more than that over the period . . . by 15 million net. And more people regrettably are also making less than the raw average shown. Between 2007 and 2013 these have increased from 66.6% of workers to 66.9%.

2007: 155.57 million workers/net compensation $6.03 trillion = $38,760 per worker

2008: 155.43 million workers/net compensation $6.16 trillion = $39,631 per worker

2009: 150.91 million workers/net compensation $5.89 trillion = $39,029 per worker

2010: 150.39 million workers/net compensation $6.00 trillion = $39,896 per worker

2011: 151.38 million workers/net compensation $6.23 trillion = $41,154 per worker

2012: 153.63 million workers/net compensation $6.52 trillion = $42,439 per worker

2013: 155.77 million workers/net compensation $6.70 trillion = $43,012 per worker

Total Market Capitalization To Nominal GDP Ratios, Selected Years

I have used the Wilshire 5000 level at year end multiplied by 1.2 as a proxy for total stock market capitalization (except where noted by the month), and the latest summer revisions for calendar nominal GDP, in summer 2014 for the period back to 1999, and in summer 2013 for the period back to 1971.

A ratio close to 1.0 indicates the market is fairly valued relative to GDP. A ratio less than 1.0 indicates the stock market is "on sale" to some extent (for example, a ratio of 0.48 indicates the market is trading at a 52% discount). A ratio of more than 1.0 indicates the stock market is expensive and may be considered overvalued for investment purposes (for example, a ratio of 1.72 indicates the stock market is as much as 72% too expensive).

1971   .975

1981   .480

1987   .595

1990   .622

1994   .745

1997 1.296

1999 1.715
2000 1.420
2001 1.209

2002   .912

2003 1.125
2004 1.170
2005 1.147

2006 1.234

2007 1.228

2008   .740

March 2009   .676

2009   .962

2010 1.071

2011 1.019

2012 1.113

2013 1.410

March 2014 1.407

June 2014    1.446

Historically considered, valuation of the stock market by the end of 2008 made then a much better investing opportunity than was late 2002 and early 2003, almost 20% better. And valuations have remained reasonable throughout 2010-2012 and only became expensive in 2013. The four year period beginning in late 2008 has been an excellent opportunity for those with cash to invest.

I maintain that a primary driver of conditions in 2013 was the midnight hour 2012/2013 resolution of tax uncertainty, in the form of making the Bush tax cuts and alternative minimum tax rates permanent, ending the tinkering with Social Security, and reaching a compromise on capital gains tax rates.

All hail John Boehner.

Libertarians are really about restricting people less, which makes them liberals not conservatives

From The New York Times, here:

[Nick] Gillespie [of Reason Magazine] was unimpressed by Ronald Reagan, who declared a new “war on drugs,” raised the national drinking age to 21, raised all sorts of taxes, preserved Social Security which Gillespie regards as federally mandated generational theft) and in general claimed to champion American individualism while squashing it every chance he got.

“I was never conservative,” he told me as we sipped our gin. “Republicans always saw libertarians as nice to have around in case they wanted to score some weed, and we always knew where there was a party. And for a while it made sense to bunk up with them. But after a while, it would be like, ‘So if we agree on limited government, how about opening the borders?’ No, that’s crazy. ‘How about legalizing drugs? How about giving gays equal rights?’ No, come on, be serious. And so I thought, There’s nothing in this for me.”

". . . Part of why I’m a libertarian is that if you restrict people less, interesting stuff happens.”

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Conservatives restrict themselves. If libertarians restrict anything, it just shows their incoherence.

Damn those speed limit and stop signs, and those cops, which keep me and my kid safe on the way to school, except less so now thanks to libertarianism in places like Colorado, where the interesting stuff which is happening is more traffic accident deaths due to marijuana legalization.

Libertarians. Malcontents. Sectarians. 

The median priced existing home is affordable only to the highest reaches of the upper middle class

From an interesting discussion recently about what it means to be middle class, here:

One helpful yardstick to judge whether you're middle class: Median household income was $51,017 in 2012, according to the most recent U.S. census data. Robert Reich, a professor of Public Policy at the University of California-Berkeley and former Secretary of Labor, has suggested the middle class be defined as households making 50 percent higher and lower than the median, which would mean the average middle class annual income is $25,500 to $76,500.

If you're in the middle of the middle, however – not lower or upper-middle class – that would be an income range between $39,764 and $64,582, says Aaron Pacitti, an assistant professor of economics at Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y.

Again, it isn't official. Nobody gets a membership card to the middle class.

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The former spread, $25,500 to $76,500, comes to about 53 million individual wage earners in 2012 according to Social Security wage statistics, out of almost 154 million total. This spread looks like it comes from dividing the total workers into thirds and seeing where the income lines fall . . . in other words, not a wealth driven measure but grading on the population curve. This means a third of wage earners (about 50 million) make less than $25,500 and a third make more than $76,500.

The latter spread, between $39,764 and $64,582, comes to just 20 million individual wage earners in 2012.

Typically, working couples must combine such incomes to enjoy middle class life styles, which usually means homeownership.

Perhaps a better way to measure membership in the middle class is through housing affordability. Often housing is deemed affordable at about 2.6 times earnings on an historical basis, which implies an existing home price to the $39,764 earner at $103,400 or lower, and $167,900 or lower to the $64,582 earner.

Unfortunately the US existing home median sales price in March 2014 was $198,500, which presently requires an income of $76,300 to be affordable. In other words, you've got to have extreme upper middle class household income just to afford the median priced existing home.

But the median household income in 2012 was just $51,017. That only supported an affordable home at $132,600 or less, not much of a home.

Thank John Boehner: Stock Markets Loved The Fiscal Cliff Deal And Proved It All Year Long In 2013

On January 2, 2013 here we noted how the stock market voted for the fiscal cliff deal by rising 2.5% to start the year. From 1426 on January 2nd the S&P500 rose all the way to 1848 by the last day of 2013, an astounding gain of 29.59%.

The broad market posted so many new highs in 2013 it was difficult to keep count. In point of fact the market averaged one new record high per week in 2013 (actually there were 53, and 54 if you count revisiting).

The fiscal cliff deal's main achievement was that it made George Bush's much maligned tax rates permanent except for the very top earners, for whom rates went up modestly but also permanently. And those same top earners went on to benefit the most from the deal's permanent fix of the Alternative Minimum Tax, a long hoped for resolution as improbable as Democrats surrendering to George Bush. The deal also restored revenues to the Social Security system to the status quo ante after two years of cuts which may have helped consumers but seriously hurt the nation's fiscal health. Deficits fell as a result of that and Republican efforts to hold the line on spending.

John Boehner deserves a great deal of credit for achieving these remarkable results with the Democrats in control of everything else, but I still haven't heard anyone on our side give him his due, except for Ralph Benko at Forbes.

Cough up you ingrates. 

Estimating Retirements Added To Those "Not In Labor Force" 2009-2013

It is often forgotten that retired people are classified as not in the labor force. The measure of those "Not in labor force" has grown to a staggering all time high of 92.338 million, not-seasonally-adjusted, as of December 2013.

Between 2009 and 2013 alone, the figure has grown by 11.05 million, and people like Rush Limbaugh thump loudly about all these people "not working" because of the bad economy.

The question is, though, how many of these are retirements?

I say it's theoretically possible that all of them are.

Those turning 66 years of age each year from 2009-2013 were born between 1943 and 1947.

And here are births from 1943 to 1947:

3.1 million 1943

2.9 million 1944

2.9 million 1945

3.4 million 1946

3.8 million 1947.

How many of these survived to age 66?

The CDC publishes annually the life tables, the latest of which came out a few days ago for the year 2009. A person aged 63 in 2009 (born in 1946) was among the 86% who survived to 63, according to the tables. In the 2008 tables from a year ago, that same person at age 62 was among the 87% who survived to 62. In the 2007 tables at 61 he was among the 88% who survived to 61. Extrapolating forward to 2012, we will estimate that at 66 he was among the 83% who survived.

So for persons born earlier than 1946 we can estimate their survival rate as follows:

Born in 1943, retiring at 66 in 2009: 80% survive, or 2.48 million

Born in 1944, retiring at 66 in 2010: 81% survive, or 2.35 million

Born in 1945, retiring at 66 in 2011: 82% survive, or 2.38 million

Born in 1946, retiring at 66 in 2012: 83% survive, or 2.82 million

Born in 1947, retiring at 66 in 2013: 84% survive, or 3.19 million.

Total theoretically possible retirees: 13.22 million, 2.17 million more than actually left the labor force.

Obviously, not everyone retires at 66. Some keep working. And especially these days some keep working because they have to. The employment level of the 55 and over set has grown by 4.5 million over the period 2009-2013.

It appears to be the case, however, that an even larger number are deferring both Social Security benefits and work because they can afford to: Social Security reports that retired workers and their dependents receiving benefits grew only 5.6 million from the end of 2008 to the end of 2013.

Of the 11.05 million added to "not in labor force", I'd estimate at least 5.4 million are well off enough to forgo both work and Social Security until they reach age 70, and perhaps more than that if Social Security recipients who continue to work according to the rules are counted instead as part of the labor force.

Largest Sums Of Federal Revenue Forfeited Because Of The Tax Code, Joint Committee On Taxation, 2012-2016

$706.6 billion: exclusion of employer contributions for healthcare, health insurance premiums and long term care insurance premiums.

$596.0 billion: reduced rates of taxation on dividends and long term capital gains.

$505.3 billion: net exclusion of pension contributions and earnings to defined benefit/contribution plans.

$364.0 billion: mortgage interest deduction.

$319.7 billion: earned income tax credit.

$305.0 billion: exclusion of Medicare Parts A&B benefits.

$289.4 billion: credit for children under 17.

$259.2 billion: deduction of nonbusiness state and local government income taxes, sales taxes and personal property taxes.

$239.7 billion: deferral of active income of controlled foreign corporations.

$236.1 billion: exclusion of capital gains at death.

$184.3 billion: subsidies for participation in healthcare exchanges.

$182.8 billion: exclusion of interest on public purpose state and local government bonds.

$175.8 billion: exclusion of benefits provided under cafeteria plans.

$172.4 billion: deduction for charitable contributions.

$172.1 billion: exclusion of untaxed Social Security and railroad retirement benefits.

$153.8 billion: exclusion of investment income on life insurance and annuity contracts.

$143.0 billion: property tax deduction.

$124.1 billion: exclusion of capital gains on the sale of a home.

$119.1 billion: credits for tuition for post-secondary education.

The Number Of Wage Earners Is In The 5th Year Of Depression, Still 1.95 Million Fewer In 2012 Than In 2007

The jobs depression is now 5.67 years in length.

The number of wage earners counted by the Social Security Administration reached a peak in 2007 at 155.57 million, and the long-awaited number for 2012 is just out here in the last couple of days: 153.63 million.

2012 marks the fifth consecutive year we have fallen under the 2007 record high for the number of employees earning income subject to Social Security taxation.

The 2012 figure is just under the 2006 figure of 153.85 million wage earners, so you might say things were closer to 2005 levels in 2012 than to 2006.

Robert B. Reichhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-a Pretends ObamaCare Was Rammed Through On A Completely Partisan Vote In 2010 . . . By Republicans

Robert B. Reich pals around with conservative sell-out

In HuffPo, here, where he makes a great case for blaming Republicans for the idea of ObamaCare in the first place, but fails to mention the inconvenient truth that not a single Republican voted for it and that it was Democrats who rammed it down our throats on a completely partisan vote under the extreme circumstances of procedure in the Congress:

There's a deep irony to all this. Had Democrats stuck to the original Democratic vision and built comprehensive health insurance on Social Security and Medicare, it would have been cheaper, simpler, and more widely accepted by the public. And Republicans would be hollering anyway.

Vindictive CNSNews.com blames Speaker Boehner for $3 trillion jump in total public debt

Here:

Thus, all spending and borrowing by the federal government are the de facto and de jure—n.b. constitutional—responsibility of the House of Representatives that John Boehner leads.

Well, yeah, and the Bible says "Judas went and hanged himself" and "go and do thou likewise".

The author of the posting, Terence Jeffrey, never once places the spending and borrowing in their broader historical context of the economic depression which ensued in 2007, long before John Boehner took the reigns as Speaker of the House in 2011.

Never once does Mr. Jeffrey mention the revenue side, which dried up like an old prune in consequence of the panic which saw home prices crash and a record 29.5 million people file first time claims for unemployment in 2009. Nor does he bother to mention the deliberate, bi-partisan decision taken to reduce revenues to relieve the American people in this situation by temporarily cutting their Social Security taxes by 33% for back to back years in 2011 and 2012 when nothing else seemed to be working to revivify the economy. Revenues constrained by declining tax receipts due to depression-like conditions all over the economy coupled with these tax cuts, after peaking in fiscal 2007 at $2.568 trillion, for the next five fiscal years never once got above that level after reaching their low in 2009 at $2.105 trillion. What did Mr. Jeffrey expect to happen given that, the debt to decline?

One suspects Mr. Jeffrey isn't interested, however, in any of the facts and their context, only in slamming John Boehner. Otherwise he'd have mentioned them, and that Boehner's predecessor Democrat Nancy Pelosi increased the debt at a rate 63% faster in 2009 and 2010 than Boehner has in his nearly three years as Speaker.

Really bad form, old boy.

The Far Left Also Realizes Boehner Won. Too Bad Republicans Don't.

The Nation, here:

Because the deal only includes minor concessions, the Beltway consensus is that it represents a resounding defeat for Republicans, who “surrendered” their original demands to defund or delay Obamacare. In the skirmish of opinion polls, that may be true, for now. But in the war of ideas, the Senate deal is but a stalemate, one made almost entirely on conservative terms. The GOP now goes into budget talks with sequestration as the new baseline, primed to demand longer-term cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And they still hold the gun of a US default to the nation’s head in the next debt ceiling showdown.

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Boehner, last August, who got exactly this, despite having to try the so-called Tea Party gambit of defunding ObamaCare, which failed because of all the RINOs in the Senate, and was destined to fail from the beginning for that very reason, if only people like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee had bothered to check their voting records:

“When we return, our intent is to move quickly on a short-term continuing resolution that keeps the government running and maintains current sequester spending levels,” Boehner (R-Ohio) said on a conference call with GOP lawmakers, according to a person on the call.

“Our message will remain clear,” Boehner said. “Until the president agrees to better cuts and reforms that help grow the economy and put us on path to a balanced budget, his sequester — the sequester he himself proposed, insisted on and signed into law — stays in place.”