Cole: Join with Obama on quick deal

[SunSeeker]

Source: Politico

Republican Rep. Tom Cole urged colleagues in a private session Tuesday to vote to extend the Bush tax rates for all but the highest earners before the end of the year — and to battle over the rest later.

The Oklahoma Republican said in an interview with POLITICO that he believes such a vote would not violate Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge and that he’s not alone within Republican circles.

...

“I think we ought to take the 98 percent deal right now,” he said of freezing income tax rates for all but the top 2 percent of earners. “It doesn’t mean I agree with raising the top 2. I don’t.”

Instead, he told POLITICO, Republicans should fight the president over tax rates for the top earners after everyone else is taken care of. That would rob the president of the argument that Republicans are holding up tax cuts for all but the top earners, Cole said.





Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/84306.html?hp=l1

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Yes, take the 98% deal. Declare victory and go home. Otherwise, you'll have to take the same deal, but with egg all over your face, in January.

[vadermike]

1. haha

They are starting to crack !!!! Lets get this done asap!!! I love it ... Dems are finally going to kick ass.. I love it!!! poor Grover ..LOL!!!!

[TexasTowelie]

2. And I can't wait until next year when the Republican House tries to pass a bill to extend the tax

breaks to the top 2%. They will look like jackasses (no insult into to asses, burros or donkeys) for my sheer enjoyment.

I doubt Reid would even let that bill get introduced in the Senate.

[MrSlayer]

3. No quick deals.

They had their chance to do a lot of things and refused. Now we should make the most of the leverage we have. Now is not the time for haste, this is ball squeezing time. Let's see if anyone in this party has the required fortitude to make what needs to happen, happen.

[davidpdx]

7. I agree, we need to use the advantage while we have it

I think kicking them in the balls would be good. Let's start with McCain and then move to Little Lindsey.

[BumRushDaShow]

8. The "quick deal" is the Senate-passed bill extending the tax breaks for the 98%

raising them for the top 2% back to levels under Clinton, and patching the AMT. All the House has to do is pass it and it is done. They can later discuss closing those loopholes for the top 2% in 2013.

[MrSlayer]

12. We need everything to go back to the Clinton rates first.

Not just the top rate which few of the 1% pay but capital gains and the corporate minimum need to go up and come back respectively as well.

Fuck that Senate deal, things have changed.

[DFW]

4. Just because it makes sense doesn't mean Republicans will go for it

They can either go with extending the cuts for the 98% or watch Obama let the whole deal expire, and be a hero to the 98% for re-introducing cuts for the 98% as new Obama legislation. Instead of Obamacare, they can call it Obamacuts, and this time, Frank Luntz won't be as quick to urge Foxcasters to start using the term. Just because one Oklahoma Republican has figured that out doesn't mean the rest of them have (or even want to).

[ReRe]

5. It's a pretty red balloon....

...just like David Plouffe's pretty blue balloon a couple days ago.

Ya think?

[BlueCaliDem]

6. Ah . . . the cracks are showing. Must be the huge cuts in Defense that's forcing some Repubs to see

the light.

Slowly but surely, the GOP is coming to understand that President Obama holds all the aces in hand.

[okwmember]

9. What I find amazing

is they still couch this in the language of not breaking Grover's pledge.

[Turbineguy]

10. This man is obviously a traitor

to his party and Grover Norquist. We should have early elections so that he can be primaried right away.

[cosmicone]

11. I want to see Groveller Norquist

taken by a burly men in white coats driving a psych van to his padded room for a solitary consolation.