Be patient, Issa says. You may win the lottery someday

IF YOU ARE serious about finding a reason to support the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, you might want to consider as good a reason as any from Rep. Darrell Issa, a fringe Republican from California. Rising to the challenge in the Fox News Echo Class, Issa said that it would be important to any of us if we happened to win a lottery. Said Issa: "One of the things that you lose in the debate is most people don't make over a quarter million dollars a year. But a great many people once in their lifetime will sort of win the lottery." Cool. Tell me when it's my turn.

Issa, who made a fortune in the auto security business, is the richest man in Congress with a piggy bank of $250 million. According the ThinkProgress, if the GOP takes over the House of Representatives, he would be chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. His early agenda would include investigations of the U.S. Post Office Department and ACORN, despite the fact that the community organizing operation has already been scrutinized inside out on a bipartisan basis. He will also be raising more questions about President's Obama's birth, reports ThinkProgress, as well as whether his parents were ever married. All of this has the the makings of still another Republican presidential candidate. Although he represents a very conservative district that includes part of San Diego, he actually was born in Cleveland (I haven't seen his birth certificate) and attended the Kent State University Stark campus for awhile. He's s rich, kooky pol but the kind of guy who will make his party proud even though very few of us will ever hold that big winning lottery ticket.

Three Republicans break ranks on Bush tax cuts

WHAT IN THE WORLD is going on here? It's not often that Republicans break ranks from their talking points oracles. But it is happening, folks, in the debate over exending the Bush tax cuts that have already siphoned more than $2.5 trillion (that's with a "tr") from the treasury with 52 pct. of the benefits going to the richest 5 pct. of our hard-working board room taxpayers.

Let's begin with Alan Greenspan, the craggy gravel-voiced former Fed chairman who told the Meet the Press audience that extending the cuts would be, well.. disastrous. Coming from a power peddler who once defended that Bush giveaway, that would border on heresy if not a common political flip flop. In short, Greenspan now insists the deficit cannot take a major hit like that.

Then there is House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, the Virginia Rrepublican just half a shadow behind John Boehner, who said he always likes the sound of tax cuts, but admitted that "Certainly you're a going to dig the hole deeper" into the deficit.

Now comes David Stockman, Reagan's budget director, who wrote in the New York Times:"If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing." So there!

On the other hand, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the senate minority leader, went into denial with second-grade arithmetic even before the other guys showed up. "There's no evidence whatsoever " he soared, " that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy."

With that lofty misstatement, maybe we can get him to give us the solution to pi.

flttroug

Bunning's one plus one: Two trillion $$$$

While Jim Bunning has his defenders in trashing an extension of unemployment benefits because they are too expensive, he was quite supportive of George Bush's tax cuts (at left, in 2001) that ripped more than $1 trillion from the federal treasury. Bunning also strongly supported Bush's $1 trillion Iraq war. My math is usually terrible, but it does appear to add up to $2 trillion - or more. (Notice how all of the budget hawks are happily wearing black suits, funereal fashion, in photo.)

Oregonians respond to the gravity of their problems

WE ALL KNOW that Republicans look at tax cuts the way that schoolboys are fascinated by the prettiest girl in their class. In Ohio, eliminating the state income tax has become the centerpiece of gubernatorial candidate John Kasich's tax-cutting projects. But in Oregon, the voters made a kind of progressive history this week by easily passing two measures that would increase taxes on upper income residents ($250,000 and up) as well as the minimum tax levels on corporations. (The current corporate minimum of $10 has been around since 1931). Like most states, Oregon has been hit hard by the recession that has resulted in 11 pct. unemployment. Sound familiar?

The first indication of raw political courage arose in the state legislature that was confronted with plugging an estimated $727 million deficit as education and other state services continued to suffer. But the legislative action was quickly challenged by tax opponents in a referendum pursued by an outfit called Oregonians against Job-Killing Taxes.

Although you will be hearing a lot of talk this year about how cutting taxes increases jobs, there is a consensus of economic studies that the Bush tax cuts will rip upwards of $2.4 trillion from the treasury through 2010 without providing a groundswell of jobs. These cuts were covered by borrowed money, which will add another $379 billion in interest.

Well, here's to oregon, whose voters may know something about the cost of a healthier society. So much for an across-the-board tax revolt!