Hypocrites and flim flam artists all. A deal is a deal unless we change are mind or bribes (donations) come in from the other side.
Pigs at a trough. Greed and avarice control actions in D.C. and nothing is changing.

Sounds great at first blush, but…

Didn’t Romney run on getting rid of tax loopholes?

Isn’t “loopholes” usually D.C. speak for things like tax deductions for home mortgage interest and charitable contributions and not having to pay income tax on employer-provided health insurance?

If we’re talking only about corporate welfare, I’m all in.

If we’re talking about some electrician perhaps becoming unable to afford the monthly cost of keeping his or her home because of losing the deduction for mortgage interest I am not so sure.

I suppose that it would kill these D.C. folk to be more specific in time for us to give them feedback?

I’m guessing that D.C. lobbyists have a much better idea of exactly what Reid means by “tax loopholes” than do his constituents in Nevada.

Lobbyists for Corporations will determine what loopholes to get rid of to increase revenue so relax and trust in the invisible hand which protects us from abusive behavior of the uber wealthy Capitalists.

Gotta love it when whores like Reid come out with crap like “the American people are on our side”. Like he has no inkling of how much we despise the political class in DC. What an ass…

Interesting comment from Mark Thompson at Battleland regarding polarization as a result of gerrymandering:

Gerrymandering becomes so marbled inside the body politic – where congressional districts have become so safe for one party or the other – that compromise is toxic

Carried interest. That loophole should be eliminated. It might even tend to reduce the number of companies that get broken up.

Agreed. If these guys intended to do anything to the benefit of the 99% they would have been telling us all about it in nice, clear language by now.

“The American people are on our side. The American people don’t believe in these austere things. We believe that the rich should contribute. We believe we should fill those tax loopholes — get rid of them, I should say. And that’s where we need to go,” Reid said. “And I’ve got a pretty good fan base for that: the American people. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents

Well Harry I hate to tell you this but Barry O does believe in Austere things so go blow smoke up someone else’s butt!

Might I suggest that we reinstate “old” revenue? That comes from putting the millions of people that lost their jobs, especially good paying jobs, back to work. In the years since the crash, I’ve read more than I’ve ever wanted to know about Washington, Wall Street and their multitude of crimes as a defense to understand today’s world. But nowhere in all these years have I seen an article or report of discussions talking about the fact that we have lost millions, probably billions, of dollars of revenue from those that lost their jobs and had their lives destroyed. Where would we be if those people could finally go back to work and again start paying taxes that would create the revenue needed? Would we still be talking about manufactured crises like the “fiscal cliff”, “debt ceiling” or “sequestration cuts?”

No, we wouldn’t.

President Obama said today there’s “no doubt” additional revenue is needed to bring down the U.S. deficit, but believes lawmakers can do it “without raising taxes again.”

(1) So he’s still focusing on the deficit, not jobs, not stimulus.

(2) Additional revenue without raising taxes! Sounds like boilerplate from CEO-laden Fix the Debt:

Fix the Debt does not endorse specific tax proposals. Instead, it advocates broad principles for debt reduction, including “comprehensive and pro-growth tax reform, which broadens the base, lowers rates, raises revenues and reduces the deficit.”

Which is itself just repeating Obama’s corporate tax cut plan from last February:

The plan would lower the nation’s corporate tax rate to 28 percent. At the same time, Obama wants to boost overall revenue from corporate taxation by banning numerous deductions and loopholes that save companies tens of billions of dollars a year on their tax bills.

Why, if the seats are safe, is compromise toxic? It shoild be the other way around. The reason it isn’t is the vulnerability of Republican members of Congress to Tea-party primary challenges. But the GOP could neuter that threat if it wanted to by changing the rules. It’s not as if the Tea-party has anywhere else to go, and the seats are so safe the GOP can win without them.

At this point, does anything Reid says actually matter.

Cant he and Obama just pre-cave and say us the ordeal of Ed Shutlz popping a vein for a few news cycles.

indeed.

Obama and Harry *had* a chance for more revenues. $4 trillion more. They just insisted on that “middle class tax cut” which still went disproportionately to the rich, because that’s the way that cutting tax rates works.

A better solution would have been simply to 1) return to the Clinton rates, and then 2) propose to increase (I say double) the personal exemption/standard deduction across the board. That would offer real relief for those at the bottom and yet negligibly affect top earners.

But even without that, there was gain in allowing all tax rates to go up. You see, the effect of higher taxes is *higher wages*–employers do have to pay enough for their employees to pay their bills, so what the tax man taketh out of the employee paycheck the employer must make up. Thus high taxes even on lower-paid workers force employers to pay more, which achieves a progressive goal of distributing wealth downward.

-stewartm