You know how the GOP geniuses that run the state legislature are proposing to gut the state income tax in order to benefit wealthy folks and corporations, while increasing the sales tax which will hit the poor and middle class where it hurts? The stated reason? Kansas is gung-ho to beggar itself with corporate tax cuts, and Missouri pols fear bordering business will move over the line into Kansas taking a few jobs with them.

If, however, a miracle should come to pass and the Missouri legislature should come to its senses in time to reject this abysmally stupid tax legislation, pols needn’t fear great losses to Kansas (actually, they probably don’t need to entertain that anxiety under any circumstances, but you know how Republicans are). In the light of anti-abortion “personhood” legislation moving rapidly through the Kansas legislature, hordes of families living there may want to relocate to Missouri and other surrounding states, bringing their skill-sets and businesses with them. Seems the Kansas legislature may actually go so far as to make the use birth-control potentially punishable under the law.

How could there not be a backlash if this actually happens? It’s hard to figure out how socially restrictive laws that make regular life difficult for the majority are ever conducive to economic growth. As Ed Kilgore puts it:

If regular Republican-voting Americans had any idea of the radical vision underlying such legislation – something straight out of the Handmaid’s Tale, folks – the solons supporting it wouldn’t even last until the next election. So you’d think they’d be extra careful about supporting efforts to ensure that most of the female population of the state of child-bearing age wouldn’t have to worry about being hauled off to the hoosegow and told they needed to get their procreative groove on or put an aspirin between their legs.

It will also be fun to watch how Kansas, already deficit-ridden thanks to its retrograde tax policies, will cope with the millions of dollars legal fees, etc. that are sure to follow passage of such very litigation-worthy legislation. Not so fun for Kansans though – those who have no choice but to remain in Tea-Party paradise, that is.  

Mitt Romney, smarting from the fact that President Obama publicly commented on his rather protuberant silver spoon, decided to go on the offensive, pouting that Obama “likes to attack” people who are “successful,” and, in a comic effort at misdirection, notes that he, Romney, won’t apologize for the success of his self-made father. We can only assume that he’s not willing to apologize for own silver-spoon-fed self either.

Mitt’s defense of success will probably work better, though, than his wife’s efforts to claim fellowship with struggling Americans by sharing her stories of their youthful hardships. According to Ann, in order to make ends meet and ensure that she could stay home with the brand new little Romneys, graduate student Mitt actually had to cash in some of the stock portfolio with which his father endowed him. Oh the horror!  At least Mitt’s response makes his allegiances clear.

The sad thing is that Mitt’s loyalties don’t differ much from the rest of the GOP. While Mitt’s defending the successful, the U.S. House is going after food stamps. These are the same GOPers who voted uniformly for the cruel Ryan Budget that would gut the safety net, Medicaid and Medicare while giving Mitt and his wealthy friends even bigger tax breaks than they already have – all of which Romney, ever the champion of the successful, adamantly endorses.

Certainly, our Missouri GOP has bought into the defense of the successful big time – although they seem to prefer the other GOP designation for wealthy corporate elites, “job creators.” Efforts by a few rogue Democrats to reform the individual income Missouri tax code are routinely ignored – in spite of the fact that the current outmoded tax structure not only fails to bring in sufficient revenue to meet state needs, but puts the greatest burden on low and middle income tax payers. But that doesn’t mean that the GOP anti-tax drones don’t want to fiddle with the tax code. In fact they’re proposing to cut the state’s insufficient revenue by many more millions by halving the Missouri corporate tax rate – a rate that is already one of the lowest in the country.

And what does the GOP defense of the successful do for Missourians? It certainly doesn’t seem to create many jobs. But on the other hand, we here in Missouri have been treated, thanks to our legislators, to a most edifying debate about whether or not to slash services to the blind or to higher education. Most recently, our stalwart defenders of the successful have been pondering massive cuts to children’s services.

The cuts could affect over 5000 children in day care, many of whose parents might have to give up jobs and return to welfare; result in the loss of 42 jobs and the loss of over $500,000 in federal funds; threaten the Children’s Division’s standing with the Council on Accreditation, and reduce adoption subsidies at a time when the number of children entering the foster system has increased by 10% over past years.

But hey, no matter what pain he’s willing to inflict on folks struggling with hard times, Sen. Kurt Schaefer and his GOP pals on the Senate Appropriations Committee he chairs, the folks who are floating this latest attack on poor Missourians, will no doubt be more than willing to stand with Mitt Romney and continue to proudly defend those who have been successful.

You all probably know that the last congressional budget free-for-all of 2011 is currently pending as the Democrats begin their push to extend the 2010 payroll tax cuts for another year. The extension, originally one of the provisions of the American Jobs Act that the GOP deep-sixed earlier this year, is being offered as a stand-alone bill and is viewed by many economists as crucial to maintaining even the very slow level of growth that has resulted from Republican intransigence thus far. As the New York Times’ Binyamin Appelbaum puts it:

Economists regard benefits for unemployed workers as among the most effective means of increasing growth because people without jobs tend to spend the money quickly.

According to a Treasury Department document released early today:

Without Congressional action by the end of the 2011 calendar year, the 2 percentage point payroll tax cut the President signed into law will expire. If the payroll tax cut is allowed to expire, taxes will increase substantially for nearly every middle-class working American family, and economic growth and job creation will be significantly slower in 2012 as a result.

To be clear, the payroll tax cut that is being proposed would cut the original 6.2% payroll tax to 3.1%, somewhat more than the 2010 cut which took the tax to 4.2%. It would also reduce employer taxes on the first $5 million in taxable payroll to 3.1% as well. Appelbaum notes that it “could create more than 50,000 jobs a month, a significant boost considering that employment climbed by 35,000 jobs, on average, in each of the last three months.”  

The current sticking point? Democrats are proposing to pay for the payroll tax cut extension by levying a 3.25% surtax on income over one million dollars (and remember that we have a bracketed system so only income over a million dollars would be subject to this surtax). Predictably, this sticks in the craw of the GOP, the anointed representatives of the 1%.

So, when our Missouri Senators and Representatives are called on to take a stand one way or the other this week when the vote comes up, what exactly are they contemplating as it affects Missourians?  They can vote against the extension, in effect, according to a Treasury Dept. report issued today, voting to increase taxes on 3.1 million Missourians by a synchronous total of 3.1 billion dollars. As the same report notes, due to the structure of the payroll taxes, the increase would mainly hit poor and middle class earners.

And what would extending the payroll tax cut cost? According to a report prepared by Citizens for Tax Justice, a measly .1% of taxpayers or 3,992 millionaires in Missouri would pay the 3.25 surtax on their income over $1 million, a 2.1% increase in their total income tax. Bear in mind that the adjusted gross income of these 3,992 individuals or families amounts to $2,899,000 each. In summary, a small number of people, many of whom have benefited handsomely from our tax-subsidized civic environment, would be asked to pay a very small amount of their income in order to guarantee a level of economic growth that would benefit all of us, themselves included.

One should note that, given the possibly toxic fallout from their position in these days of the Occupy movement, the GOP has been grasping for a way to wiggle out of what increasingly looks like an intellectually indefensible position. They have, reportedly, been making noises about paying for the payroll tax cut extension by cutting the pay of federal employees who already make 26.3% less than their private industry counterparts. As what the DailyKos’ Joan McCarter brands a diversionary tactic, word is that they would couple this cut to middle class salaries with “a means testing plan to limit Medicare and Social Security benefits for those earning more than $1 million a year.” A little Trojan horse here, that would serve to turn what are now publicly maintained insurance policies into the “entitlements” that the GOP wants us to think they are.

It’ll be interesting to see just where the Missouri GOP contingent comes down on the issue of stiffing the working and middle class to preserve the benefits of their wealthy patrons. I hope that I can predict that our Democrats will do the right thing. No matter, I personally know just how I feel about any politician who thinks that I should carry the yacht and caviar set on my back whenever times get hard. I, for one, have had enough of the unnamed class warfare the GOP has been waging against those of us in the 99% over yea these many years.

Last Tuesday the Missouri Senate passed an $85 million dollar corporate tax cut. The legislature, in its infinite wisdom, believes that this cut is desirable even though we read daily that the state is hemorrhaging revenue and drastic budget surgery is required.

Specifically, the lege passed a bill that would cap and phase-out the state’s franchise tax on large corporations. Franchise taxes are corporate taxes that are based on a calculation of the worth of a company’s assets rather than its income. Generally they are levied at higher rates by states with low or no corporate income tax, and are not levied or are levied at low rates in states with high corporate income taxes. However, Missouri’s corporate income tax rate is relatively low and so has been the franchise tax rate.  

The Missouri legislature has done nothing to offset the revenue lost from this corporate tax cut. And this is significant. Why? Because, according to the budget cutters in Missouri’s statehouse, we’re so broke that we’re going to have to jettison the poor and helpless who depend on the state’s safety net. Massive cuts have been proposed to transportation, education, and  health and human services – in a state where these sectors were already poorly funded.

The justification for this tax cut is, as always, the claim that low taxes create jobs – despite the fact that there is little or no evidence to support this claim. As noted above, Missouri’s corporate taxes are already very low in comparison to dozens of far more prosperous states, and this generosity to the corporate sector has done little or nothing to spur job growth. That inconvenient fact has not, of course, stopped the see-no-facts, hear-no-facts, speak-no-facts Missouri GOPers from repeatedly dragging out the discredited tax-cuts-equals-jobs mantra to justify tax breaks for the well-connected. Sadly, though, saying it’s so doesn’t make it so.

Often the job creation mantra involves invocations of “small business” which can usually be relied upon to stimulate reverence and silence critics. However, that can’t be the issue this time since in 2009, the legislature, with the support of Governor Nixon, passed a jobs bill, that, by rasing the asset cap from $1 million to $10 million, “eliminated the franchise tax for more than 16,500 Missouri small businesses, or 82 percent of all businesses that owed or paid this tax … .”

Some also claim that franchise taxes comprise “double taxation.” However, as noted above, they are usually applied in combination with or as an alternative to income taxes. Some argue that used singly or in combination with income taxes, franchise fees more fairly represent the complex issues involved in valuing corporations.

Which leaves us where we started. At a time when the legislature and the Governor are enacting massive cuts in services to the taxpayers, they are giving breaks to the wealthiest corporate segments of the state for no discernible reason other than either blind ideology or self-interest. Why are our elected state officials more worried about corporate welfare than fulfilling their obligation to keep the playing ground between powerful interests and ordinary citizens level?

The dubya Obama budget busting windfall tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires passed the U.S. House of Representatives in a “bipartisan” vote last night. Evidently most House Democrats and the administration didn’t realize, again, that the republicans are going to make them own this mess in perpetuity.

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 647

H R 4853      RECORDED VOTE      17-Dec-2010      12:00 AM

QUESTION:  On Motion to Concur in the Senate Amdt to the House Amdt to the Senate Amdt

BILL TITLE: Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2010, Part III

—- AYES    277 — [139 Democratic, 138 Republican]

Akin

Blunt

Carnahan

Clay

Emerson

Graves (MO)

Luetkemeyer

Skelton

—- NOES    148 — [112 Democratic, 36 Republican]

Cleaver

Given their past rhetoric and actions and a vote total like this you think the republicans weren’t doing fist pumps and high fives in the cloak room over what they pulled off on the Democrats? Just asking.

Missouri State Representative Stephen Webber (D-23) via Facebook:

So we have the house (for now) the senate and the president, and our compromise is 801 billion in tax cuts and 57 billon in UI?…..and some how Americans dont respect Democrats because they think we are weak….where did they get that idea?

Funny, that was my impression, too.

Update:

John Burnett (D) via Twitter:

OK. Got it. Tax cuts for billionaires unemployment for paupers. This is called compromise. Oh. Gratuitously lower estate taxes? Yep. 25 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone

No, of course it hasn’t.

But with the two votes today in the Senate concerning the continuation of dubya’s (now Obama’a) windfall tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires I don’t particular care to hear Claire McCaskill’s (D) future lectures to us on the evils of the deficit.

First up was the vote to suspend the rules to consider Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I) amendment to restrict the tax cut to the first $250,000.00 for everyone.

Senate Sends Tax Bill to House

….The amendment would have struck an estate tax proposal to exempt all but the richest estates. Sanders suggested returning to estate tax rates in effect in 2009 for two years. H [sic] would have exempted the first $3.5 million of an estate from taxation and imposrf [sic] a 45 percent estate tax rate on the value of estates above $3.5 million.

The Sanders amendment would have replaced the payroll tax holiday with a one year extension of the Make Work Pay Credit — a proposal that will provide more tax relief to those who need it most while not threatening the solvency of the Social Security trust fund.

Sanders’ amendment also would have provided a $250 payment to some 58 million senior citizens, veterans and persons with disabilities.  Unless Congress acts, senior citizens will be going without a cost of living increase for a second year in a row at a time when the prices they pay for prescription drug and health care are soaring….

The vote:

Question:  On the Motion (Motion to Suspend Rule XXII Re: Sanders Amdt. 4809 )

Vote Number: 275 Vote Date: December 15, 2010, 12:42 PM

Required For Majority: 2/3 Vote Result: Motion Rejected

Measure Number: H.R. 4853 (Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2010, Part III )

Measure Title: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to extend the funding and expenditure authority of the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, to amend title 49, United States Code, to extend authorizations for the airport improvement program, and for other purposes.

Vote Counts: YEAs 43

NAYs 57

Bond (R-MO), Nay  

McCaskill (D-MO), Nay  

Well, isn’t that special?

And the final vote on the deal, perpetuating dubya’s tax cut windfall for the top 2%:

Question:  On the Motion (Motion to Concur in the House Amdt. to the Senate Amdt. with Amdt. No. 4753 to H.R. 4853 )

Vote Number: 276 Vote Date: December 15, 2010, 01:02 PM

Required For Majority: 1/2 Vote Result: Motion Agreed to

Measure Number: H.R. 4853 (Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2010, Part III )

Measure Title: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to extend the funding and expenditure authority of the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, to amend title 49, United States Code, to extend authorizations for the airport improvement program, and for other purposes.

Vote Counts: YEAs 81

NAYs 19

Bond (R-MO), Yea  

McCaskill (D-MO), Yea

Gee, do you think Jim Talent’s (r) votes would have been any different?

Do us a favor. Spare us those lectures on the deficit. Otherwise, you’re just telling us it’s raining.  

Last night Rachel Maddow nailed the key to Claire McCaskill’s 2006 victory over Jim Talent: the minimum wage. The GOP’s business constituency hates it, everyone else loves it.  It  didn’t hurt that a minimum wage initiative was on the Missouri ballot then either:

To their credit, the DSCC does get that this is a potent issue. I just saw an ad last night that they produced for Carnahan that hits Roy Blunt for his past opposition to the minimum wage – a past record that he is eager, by the way, to keep quiet:

I take the ad as indicating that Robin Carnahan gets it too, although she certainly isn’t running hard with it.

Another issue that strikes me as having all the positive mojo of the minimum wage is wiping out the BushCo tax giveaways for the wealthy – but wait – Carnahan already blew that. To be fair, she’s not alone in this lack of judgment, since the entire Democratic Congress crapped out on ending the tax breaks for the wealthy when they had a chance to use a vote on the issue to make a statement before the midterms. Remember operant conditioning? The GOP has been far too successful in training the Democrats to fold their tails between their legs and run whenever they hear the dreaded “T” word.

The real import of what Maddow is saying, though, lies in what both these issues have in common. They represent a core Democratic principle: fairness. When Democratic politicians fail to stand up for this principle, they deny their intrinsic identity, what it means to be a Democrat – and you can be sure that a self-hating Democrat isn’t likely to inspire much love from voters.

A recent ad put out by Roy Blunt smugly invites us to read his job creation plan which he summarizes as lower taxes, less red tape, and more American energy. So I took the time to look at the specifics and found, sad to say, nothing more than the expected plate of stale bread and cold potatoes.

It is something of an understatement to say that Blunt’s plan doesn’t deviate from current and past GOP orthodoxy. Speaking of John Boehner’s “two-step” job creation plan, Ezra Klein remarks

So on the one hand, a measure that will make a small dent in the deficit. On the other hand, a measure that will lead to a huge  increase in the deficit. There’s no theory of the economy in which this really makes sense.

This criticism applies equally to the Blunt plan if one adds that there is also no way in which it makes sense to claim that it will actually create jobs. To give Blunt credit, he does offer somewhat more detail than Mr. Boehner – six steps (missteps?) instead of two, which I’ll write about in greater detail in individual posts over the next couple of weeks – there are, after all, lots of little side embellishments – like destroying net neutrality –  not to mention questionable assertions, that deserve to be pointed out and considered in greater detail.

The short version is that Blunt proposes to extend the Bush tax cuts and cut corporate taxes even more; cancel the unexpended stimulus funds; re-deregulate, gutting financial reform legislation and deep-sixing the new consumer protection agency; repeal the Affordable Care Act and “replace” it with a few giveaways to the insurance industry (which he calls “sensible” health care reform); pare down welfare spending, cut entitlements (Social security? Medicare? Blunt quite carefully doesn’t spell it out); and enact measures like subsidizing nuclear power and making sure that coal producers get theirs. All that’s left to do is to tie the package up with a pretty ribbon and hand it over to the corporate biggies who have paid Blunt’s campaign bills lo these many years.

Did I already say this is all old news?. Like maybe a recipe for a rerun of the Bush years?  Surely you remember those  eight years of anemic job growth, culminating in economic disaster and massive job loss?  Roy Blunt was, of course, one of the chief enablers of similar measures then, which is why it is almost inexplicable that anyone is taking him seriously when he asks us to give him a do-over using the same tools from the same tarnished economic tool-box. (If you doubt the effect of the Bush policies on the American middle class, just take a look at this chart comparing how different economic segments of the population have fared under recent Democratic and Republican administrations.)

President Obama made the same point far more eloquently when he described the GOP economic philosophy that is exemplified in Blunt’s putative economic blueprint in a speech yesterday in Cleveland:

… There were no new ideas.  There was just the same philosophy we already tried for the last decade – the same philosophy that led to this mess in the first place:  cut more taxes for millionaires and cut more rules for corporations.  Instead of coming together like past generations did to build a better country for our children and grandchildren, their argument is that we should let insurance companies go back to denying care to folks who are sick, and let credit card companies go back to raising rates without any reason.  Instead of setting our sights higher, they’re asking us to settle for a status quo of stagnant growth, eroding competitiveness, and a shrinking middle class.

There you have it – Blunt in a nutshell.

Image from the GoldGuys Blog via Wikimedia Commons.

This chart  tells it all.

Lower taxes do not create jobs or promote prosperity for the general population.

I’m distributing the handout below to anyone who will read it.  If the Democratic candidates are too polite to tell the voters what’s really going on behing the tea party razzle dazzle, I will.

If you earn less than $250,000 a year and vote

Republican, you are cutting your own throat.

And here’s why:

The Republican Party is the political arm of corporate America.

The Democratic Party is trying to regain some of the security and benefits that middle class Americans enjoyed between 1950 and 1980.

But the Republicans don’t want us to narrow that gap between the rich and the poor because they want ALL the goodies for their corporate friends, military contractors and lobbyists.   There are many charts in recent newspapers and online showing how the gap between rich and poor in this country has widened remarkably in the last two decades.  In fact, that gap is as great now as back in the Roaring Twenties when a Republican administration “roared” us right into the stock market crash and the Great Depression. Thanks to the Democrats under Franklin Roosevelt, the country recovered and things were pretty good for workers through the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.  Then came “Reaganomics” which even George Bush Sr. called “voodoo economics.”   “Trickle down” is the assumption that, if the rich have lots of extra cash, they’ll use it to create jobs.  Don’t believe it.  One filthy rich CEO recently bought a castle in Germany with some of his extra money.         No kidding. (“60 Minutes”)

You can believe the lies and nonsense being thrown in your face 24/7, or you can use the brains God gave you and do some homework.

FACT #1 –  Tax cuts for the super rich DO NOT create jobs by themselves.   After passing the biggest tax cut in history, the G W Bush administration created about 3 million jobs during eight years, a fraction of the 23 million created under the Clinton administration. The Wall Street Journal (a conservative paper owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch) did a study of job growth and concluded that Bush had the “worst track record” of all presidents. (Jan. 9, 2009)

FACT # 2:  When Congress passed the biggest tax cut in history in 2001, they put a 10 year limit on it because they knew that loss of revenue would wreak havoc on the federal budget.  So those tax cuts are scheduled to expire this coming January. Republicans want to continue those tax cuts at the same time they are screaming like crazy about the federal deficit.  Democrats want to continue the tax cuts ONLY for those making less than $250,000.  That’s where you come in.  Your taxes will NOT go up in January if you make less than $250,000 a year.  So don’t believe Roy Blunt’s  “job killing tax increase” propaganda in his TV ads.

FACT #3:  Corporations sitting on piles of cash are NOT creating new jobs or hiring back their laid off employees. (Newsweek, Aug. 2, p. 26) The grim truth is that they are waiting until after the November 2nd  election because they don’t want President Obama and the Democrats to get credit for improving the employment numbers.  They want Republicans to win seats in Congress because the Republicans will roll back the programs the Democrats have passed that help working and middle class Americans.  (The Affordable Health Care Act, consumer protection from out-of-control credit card interest rates, work safety laws, etc.)  They not only will roll back these new protections, they also want to “privatize” Social Security and Medicare. Bankers and investment brokers are just itching to get their hands on that money so they can gamble with it for their own profit.  JUST SAY NO WAY !!

FACT #4:  Don’t believe the “failed stimulus” lie either.  Ask the guys working on all the road construction around you where the money came from to pay them.  Ask your neighbors who have been able to fix their plumbing and furnace problems because of grants from the stimulus funds.  Ask your city and county managers where the money came from for those new street lights, sewage treatment facility and salary for the police officers that were going to be laid off.  They are thankful for the income and spend it directly in our communities.  

Fact # 5:  The so-called grassroots anti-Obama campaign is actually being funded by billionaires who just can’t stand having to treat their employees like human beings and who want to stamp their name on buildings like monuments to themselves.  They ship jobs overseas, hide their profits from the IRS by setting up fake offices in other countries, and are killing us by dumping toxic crap in our water.  BP is just the symbol of the many companies destroying the environment for profit.  Google the Koch brothers (Charles & David,) Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council.    Over the last few decades, a handful of incredibly wealthy people have been funding think tanks that do nothing all day but think up ways to convince you that it’s not the government’s job to make it easier for you to get an education, job training or health care. Read Jane Mayer’s article in the August 30 issue of New Yorker magazine.

To sum:  you can let them distract you with nonsense that has nothing to do with helping you support your family.  OR you can look behind the smokescreen and refuse to be hypnotized into voting against your own best interest.

America is strong when its middle class is strong.  We can rebuild the middle class if we ask candidates which side they are on – Wall Street or Main Street.  

Roy Blunt’s so-called jobs plan makes it clear that he’s going to go to the wall to defend the Bush tax giveaways for his rich friends – even though he hasn’t got the chutzpah to do it upfront, but instead tries to use the discredited claim that it will create jobs. As for Robin Carnahan, we all know that she’s opted for strategic camouflage, trying to blend into Missouri’s Republican woodwork when it comes to this question.

Arguments against the tax giveaways seem to fall just short of cutting through the GOP flim-flam in spite of the fact that it is clear that extending tax cuts for the wealthy will not only fail to create jobs, but will feed the dreaded deficit. You do remember the deficit, don’t you – the club that Republicans and a few neutered Democrats have been using to beat back initiatives, like the currently languishing small business aid package, that might actually create jobs?

Given this environment, a little perspective on the costs of extending tax cuts for the richest 2% of the population might be apropos. According to Kathy Ruffing and Paul N. Van de Water in their summary of the 2010 Report of the Social Security Trustees:

The 75-year Social Security shortfall is about the same size as the cost, over that period, of extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans (those with incomes above $250,000 a year). Members of Congress cannot simultaneously claim that the tax cuts for people at the top are affordable while the Social Security shortfall constitutes a dire fiscal threat.

If you like visual props, this graph demonstrates the relationship:

Shouldn’t somebody ask our senatorial candidates whether the 315,000 families with a minimum yearly income of a million dollars are more deserving than millions of Americans who can look forward to a secure old age thanks to Social Security?

As much as I would like to see both Blunt and Carnahan cornered and made to answer just that question, with no retreat into stale, dishonest talking points allowed, I’m not  taking odds that such a thing will ever happen. Consequently we’ll just have to guess where they would stand, and when we do so, we should remember these facts:

–When it comes down to floor votes, Blunt has always been firm that the top 2% of Americans, the richest of the rich, shouldn’t be expected to pay their way like the rest of us do. That’s why he get’s a 0% ranking from Citizens for Tax Justice.

–Carnahan … well, she has indicated that maybe she doesn’t think the Bush tax giveaways for the wealthy should be made permanent – and, hey, we’re Democrats after all. In Missouri it seems we have to take what little we can get.

Addendum:Some thoughts from Ezra Klein on the intra-pundit controversy generated by the CBPP  contention that the tax giveaways equal the projected social security shortfall.

*2nd paragraph edited slightly for clarity.