Here are a few excerpts from the December edition of the Harper’s Index (not yet online):
• Median age of voters in the 2016 U.S. president election: 53
• In mayoral elections: 57
• Ratio of white millennials who view the Republican Party favorably to those who view the Democratic Party favorably: 1:1
• Rank of the United States in 2014 among countries in which expats most want to live: 5
• In 2017: 43
• Estimated portion of part-time college faculty in the United States who receive public assistance: ¼
• Estimated percentage of Americans for whose entire lives the United States has been at war: 21
• Estimated average percentage change last year in the traffic to news websites that announced a shift to video: -60
• Portion of EPA Superfund sites whose cleanup costs are borne entirely by taxpayers: 3/10
• Year in which wild bison were last observed in Germany before a sighting in September of this year: 1755
• Estimated hours after the sighting that the bison was killed by a local hunter: 5
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2010—As Obama, Reid, and Pelosi meet on tax cut plan, GOP attacks with a whimper:
Here's how John Boehner's spokesman is responding to the Democratic plan to vote on extending middle-income tax cuts:
Michael Steel, a spokesman for John Boehner, emails a response to the news that House Dems are planning to hold a vote just on extending the middle class tax cuts:
"The last thing our economy needs right now is a massive tax hike on families and small businesses -- and that's what this plan would mean."
So their big comeback is that cutting taxes on every American is actually a massive tax hike. I certainly wouldn't have expected them to say anything less, but really, this is pretty much a ho-hum response. It doesn't necessarily prove that Republicans are about to blink, but it also isn't a line in the sand sort of response -- Steel didn't say there's no way in hell Republicans would vote for middle-class tax cuts unless upper-income cuts were passed as well.
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