Yes, tax reform is needed. But the bigger picture for this debate is the goddamn republicans, who have plundered this country and shoveled an inordinate amount of wealth to their benefactors now holding all of us hostage for the rest.
After stealing the country's wealth, they now have the goddamn nerve to try and blame it on the only real good thing that the government has ever done for it's people: share it.
No one in this country should be on the fence anymore about just who really represents them. The republicans, in an intelligent nation, would be run out with torches and picks. They are the absolute worst enemy this country has ever faced.

The Austerity Trap....and believe me if we fall into it we will all be sacrificing lots...except for the 1% that is, they will just pay their tax attorneys a bit more to find new ways to avoid paying.

Buying into the false narrative being pushed by the entire DC lie factory is going to make you wish you had payed attention for years and years to come.

I don't know what ^^^ symbolizes. The entire point of calling it an austerity trap is to deny that false narrative.

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/robert_reich_explains_the_austerity_trap_20120508/

And the false narrative is that this Big Lie will do significant harm to anything other than the egos of the politicians and the budget illusions they create.

The cuts are not going to "shrink the economy" to any measurable degree and each and every program that will be reduced can be brought up for debate to restore funding. His primary point in that 40 second explanation was that the economy must be grown prior to instituting fiscal reductions.

The Austerity Trap. I guess I didn't make my point clearly enough...the Austerity Trap will do much more damage to ordinary people than the mythical fiscal cliff ever could.

I couldn't care less about shrinking the economy. I wouldn't mind watching Wall St go broke, except that it will be the middle class and the poor who pay the price, as usual. I do care that the sequestration will raise taxes for people who are just barely hanging on now, that some people will lose their unemployment benefits etc. Perhaps you have never lived paycheck- to- paycheck but I have known plenty of people who have and many of those people were driven even further down the tubes by taking out those damned payday loans. Those short term loans frequently have long term consequences.

I don't want the president to compromise on the tax cuts, and if we don't have an agreement that raises those upper level taxes, I will continue to support him. But I am also mindful of the fact that some people are living with a lot of extra stress right now, worrying about the issues I mentioned. I find it a bit cavalier to blithely say "each and every program that will be reduced can be brought up for debate to restore funding" as if that can happen within the blink of an eye. Or that the landlord will be willing to wait until the debate is over. It would seem that even here, the poor have no voice.

I would not want to be the president right now...caught between the rock of knowing what is right for the long term and the hard place of knowing just how much the poor will suffer in the short term. The Republicans are betting that his basic humanity will win the internal debate. I don't know that their analysis is incorrect.

But, the fact is that we on the bottom are going to be screwed no matter what. There's just no (politically acceptable) way around it.

However, what is far more relevant and therefore rarely mentioned, is that the dreaded sequestration will result in, not just the often mentioned minor tax increases for all of us suckers that work for a living, but in a 5% increase in the capital gains tax and a return of the 55% inheritance tax, both of which are primary concerns of the economic royalists. In the current political climate, and even more so in the coming wave of popular dissatisfaction, more tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires will be virtually suicidal to even propose and that's why were all being whipped up into a frenzy over what is really only the next traditional budgetary battle.

The new Congress will have to deal with the fallout of the automatic cuts if nothing is done, and that is also something that they would rather avoid, but no deal is far better than a bad deal in both the short and medium terms.

and I don't disagree with it. The very first time I heard someone say "let's jump off the cliff" I thought it was a great idea. I simply find myself conflicted about the short term effects on people like yourself or those even more strapped, and I suspect the prez is as well. This is one of those rare times that I hope his, dare I say it, male ego trumps his humanity.

They were calling it the fiscal bluff...which is so many ways it is just that..a bluff!

would automatically be cut.

Then the politicians go to the people & say "OMG!!! We have to cut things by Jan 1 or things will be cut!!"


It's a problem completely of their own making, & the aim was to stampede the population into letting them push through cuts quickly without proper discussion & oversight.

It's just fraud. They could just repeal the stupid law they themselves passed.

all used calculations that assumed the W tax cuts disappeared.