But they were. And in a year in which Democrats have so much cowardice and complacency to answer for it seems as if they will also answer to enraged Americans for cutting their taxes:
In a troubling sign for Democrats as they head into the midterm elections, their signature tax cut of the past two years, which decreased income taxes by up to $400 a year for individuals and $800 for married couples, has gone largely unnoticed.
In a New York Times/CBS News Poll last month, fewer than one in 10 respondents knew that the Obama administration had lowered taxes for most Americans. Half of those polled said they thought that their taxes had stayed the same, a third thought that their taxes had gone up, and about a tenth said they did not know. As Thom Tillis, a Republican state representative, put it as the dinner wound down here, "This was the tax cut that fell in the woods — nobody heard it."
http://www.nytimes.com/...
But how could this be?? I mean to hear Republicans tell it Democrats want to cut taxes. How did Americans not notice their taxes went down?? Well, the Obama Administration tried to use a more effective way of cutting taxes contained within the Stimulus:
Actually, the tax cut was, by design, hard to notice. Faced with evidence that people were more likely to save than spend the tax rebate checks they received during the Bush administration, the Obama administration decided to take a different tack: it arranged for less tax money to be withheld from people’s paychecks.
They reasoned that people would be more likely to spend a small, recurring extra bit of money that they might not even notice, and that the quicker the money was spent, the faster it would cycle through the economy.
So America. You actually have been getting a recurring tax cut for a long time now. In fact unlike the tea-baggers who want tax cuts extended to the very rich, Administration officials are already planning to try and keep these tax cuts for everyone:
The Obama administration wants to extend the little-noticed tax cut next year. Jason Furman, the deputy director of the National Economic Council, said the administration still believes that changing the withholdings was a more effective form of stimulus than sending out rebate checks would have been.
"In retrospect, we think that judgment was right," he said. "It’s harder to predict what’s good for politics. Ultimately, the best thing for politics is going to be helping the economy."
And in retrospect he may be right. America needs to consider this. The mess left behind by the former President and the Republican controlled Congress he had for most of his term almost caused another Great Depression. We are going to be feeling the pain from their policies and the mostly Conservative policies of the last several decades for a long time to come. Nothing, or nobody was ever going to clean this up in one year.
The very worst thing we can do right now is allow our Congress to be controlled by many of the poisonous characters that dictated the very failed policies we are recovering from. Men like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner not only do not care about you, they seek to enrich people who would prey on you and deregulate them more so they can do an effective job of it. The way they see it enough Chinese slaves are not doing your jobs already, we need more and more profit for the very few to pocket with your no-risk taxpayer loans.
It is time to look at this election with clarity. I challenge anyone from anywhere to tell me just how having the modern Republican Party control anything will solve any of our problems. Letting the very people back into our government who crashed our economy and sadly diminished our standing as a beacon of justice and freedom in our world will never move our country forward but take us back into the Dark Ages.
I will say it once more. Be careful what you wish for America you may get it. The fact of the matter is that as frustrating as it is and as bad as it has gotten if we would have stayed the same course we got off of early in 2009 it would have been a disaster. As disappointed as some have been in Obama if we had President McCain right now we would be mired in a Great Depression.
As I suffer right along with them I really hope my fellow Americans have the clarity to show just a little patience with me. Two years was never enough to clean up three decades of damage.
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