Hangovers are the worst. It's easier than pie to go out and paint the town red. It's not so easy to confront the pounding headache and the empty wallet that greets you in the light of day, that "next morning."
Well America, the GW spending party is over. The pay-the-piper party is long overdue.
And when it comes to the Fiscal Cliff "funeral dirge" were all fretting over -- well there's good news and there's bad news.
First the bad news ... the Piper is the IRS ... Merry Xmas!
The "fiscal cliff": What to expect if there's no deal
CBS; AP -- Dec 27, 2012
[...]
Taxes
If lawmakers fail to work out any sort of deal, there will be severe long-term consequences for the economy: According to the Tax Policy Center, going off the "cliff" would affect 88 percent of U.S. taxpayers, with their taxes rising by an average of $3,500 a year; taxes would jump $2,400 on average for families with incomes of $50,000 to $75,000. Because consumers would get less of their paychecks to spend, businesses and jobs would suffer.
[...]
And the good news ... the "8% payback pain"
gets spread out over the next 10 years!
Spending Cuts
If the nation goes over the fiscal cliff, budget cuts of 8 percent or 9 percent would hit most of the federal government, touching all sorts of things from agriculture to law enforcement and the military to weather forecasting. A few areas, such as Social Security benefits, Veterans Affairs and some programs for the poor, are exempt.
The spending cuts, meanwhile, are phased in gradually. It's not as though $1.2 trillion would suddenly disappear from the economy at the end of the year: The cuts, while undeniably significant, are set to be phased in over a decade. In addition, there are budgetary maneuvers that can be taken to at least somewhat soften the blow of both the tax hikes and spending cuts. [...]
The silver lining in the "official end" of the W-era-spending-binge, is that the Military Machine has to go on a
spending diet TOO, just like the rest of the government.
The second silver lining in the face-the-music sequester -- is that social programs, including Vet programs, are mostly exempt.
SOOO why in the world aren't Unemployment Insurance Programs exempt?
It's not like they -- the unemployed -- have "incomes of $50,000 to $75,000" range, just waiting for the IRS to call and tap.
Rather the Unemployed barely have enough to make ends meet -- they should not be part of this hang-over cure. Especially when they are really more like the dance floor carpet, in the economic scheme of things.
Haven't they been stepped on enough already?
Can't Lockheed and Boeing and Northrop kick in a obsolete weapon system or two, to cover the Unemployed's meager bar tab?
THEY are the heavy hitters, on the USA Party scene, afterall. The ones to which we all genuflect. Nod Nod. wink wink.
It's not like we have any precedent for throwing the "structurally" employed -- to the outsourcing wolves ... not recently anyways.
But times have changed apparently ... what's 3 million people without-a-net worth anyways, especially when we can give the congressional-hostage-takers another 30-Billion-dollar memento, of our appreciation timidity.
It's just the cost of doing Business in center-right America, in 2013.
CBO: Extending unemployment benefits could save 300,000 jobs next year
by Brad Plumer, washingtonpost.com -- Nov 28, 2012
[...]
For example, some 2 million Americans are set to lose their unemployment benefits in December, once a federal program to help the jobless expires. Another 1 million Americans could see their benefits disappear by April.
So does it make sense to extend this program, given that U.S. unemployment is still high at 7.9 percent? As it happens, the Congressional Budget Office just released a new report on this subject. CBO’s conclusion: It would cost $30 billion to extend the program for another year. But doing so could save 300,000 jobs by the end of 2013, compared with what would happen under current law.
[...]
In this country, we used to train the unemployed --
not ignore them.
In this country, we used to offer jobs to those in need -- not pretend like there was No Work to be done. Thanks Tea Party! (and Tea Party enablers.)
Congress Should Extend Emergency Unemployment Benefits Now
by Sarah Ayres, americanprogress.org -- Dec 17, 2012
[...]
Under the most recent extension, the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012, emergency unemployment benefits will expire at the end of 2012. Failing to extend these benefits would be unprecedented in the history of emergency unemployment compensation -- Congress has never allowed emergency unemployment benefits to expire when the unemployment rate was above 7.2 percent. The unemployment rate today is 7.7 percent.
If Congress does not extend emergency unemployment compensation before the end of the year, 2 million people will lose their benefits immediately and another 1 million Americans will lose their benefits early in 2013. As a result, according to an analysis by the National Employment Law Project, only one in four unemployed workers would be protected by unemployment insurance in 2013.
[...]
Unemployment insurance is a vital lifeline to Americans who are out of work due to no fault of their own. It allows them to pay the bills and put food on the table while they search for work, and, in doing so, keeps millions of adults and children out of poverty every year.
[...]
Instead of pushing unemployed Americans off the cliff, Congress should immediately pass legislation that fully extends emergency unemployment benefits through 2013.
[...]
In this country, we used to help those in need --
not use them as pawns in some high-stakes game of fiscal chicken. Blindfolded, with the yahoos shouting,
Jump! Jump!
In this country, we use to pay our bills on time, and save for a rainy day. Not trash our credit rating, for fear of leveraging our innate accumulated strength.
Of course, in this country, we never used to have a Tea Party, who's long on tear-it-down rhetoric, but soooo short on common sense.
Have another drink Tea Party yahoos -- you've earned it!
... You're sticking around after the party right to help clean up? No?
What's that? you only know how to make a mess -- it's someone's else's job to clean them up; it's someone's else's job to pay the bar tabs, too?
It's someone's else's job to help those in need, in the land of plenty?
The Tea Party yahoos are too busy throwing crates in the gears of government, too busy obstructing what inevitably needs to be done ... And that American Jobs Act? Haah! -- it's just not on their fogged-up radar screens. Useless charity, is all they see, when they bother to look around ... at the mess their Party's made.
That and all those poor saps, they've staged at the edge of the Austerity Cliff of their own design -- some 3 million of them -- just waiting for the word ...
Jump! Jump! The hostage-takers will be right by to give them a little shove. Right after they finish retching on the rug. Again.