Obama and the GOP: united against the working poor

[Enrique]

via Greg Sargent:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2011/02/the_morning_plum_187.html

http://tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/UBEN-8E3J74?OpenDocument

Who says bipartisanship is dead?

On Capitol Hill, the Democrats and Republicans may no longer play cards and drink together, but that does not seem to stop them from working together to shift tax burdens down the income ladder even when it violates their promises on the campaign trail.

Grover Norquist calls bipartisanship the political equivalent of date rape. But there is one group that President Obama, many congressional Democrats, and all congressional Republicans ganged up on in December -- the working poor.

The tax compromise passed in December has been hailed everywhere as a payroll tax cut combined with an extension of the Bush tax cuts, despite the fact that it raised taxes on a third of Americans.

The killing of Obama's Making Work Pay tax credit, which the White House called the biggest middle-income tax cut ever, and the replacement of it with the Republicans' payroll tax cut raised taxes on single workers whose wages come to $20,000 or less and married couples with less than $40,000 in wages.

That's 51 million taxpayers, the Tax Policy Center estimated. (See Table T10-277.)

(...)

[ProSense]

1. The irony of this article:

"The killing of Obama's Making Work Pay tax credit, which the White House called the biggest middle-income tax cut ever"

First, how is he united against the poor when he created the Making Work Pay credit for two years?

Does the author believe that the GOP will unite with Obama to support his proposals?

[hfojvt]

2. maybe because he didn't fight to keep it

who was the moron who decided to have the making work pay credit expire at the same time as the Bush tax cuts?

Why didn't somebody think of proposing a bill to extend the making work pay credit, so Democrats could have campaigned in 2010 by attacking Republicans for voting against it?

[ProSense]

3. It was a part of the

much maligned stimulus.

[hfojvt]

4. I know that

and the stimulus was not maligned by me
http://www.koch2congress.com/6.html

[rhett o rick]

5. He continued the GEORGE W BUSH tax cuts but not the Making Work Pay tax break.

Cant get much more simple than that. He is cutting severely 200 social programs and raising the defense budget. What a hell of a place to start compromising with the GOP. They gotta love him.

[ipaint]

6. Just one more hit on the working poor so the comfy classes can live their cushy lifestyles

sans sacrifice.

"When someone works for less pay than she can live on — when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently — then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The 'working poor,' as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else."
— Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America)