The Buffett Tax Defeated in the Senate -or- How They Learned Not To Love Eleven Hours of Tax Revenue

"Buffett Tax Baloney - So the Buffett tax ruse is finally dead.

The millionaire tax—named for financier Warren Buffett and designed to ensure that high earners pay at least 30% in federal income tax—failed to get the 60 Senate votes necessary and went down 51 to 45.

The Senate's class warfare champion, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, even acknowledged that this is not about growth or deficit reduction or raising tax revenues. Rather, it's about "tax fairness." Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney noted that the plan "would pay for government for less than 11 hours. This isn't a grand idea." But President Obama thinks it is. Mr. Obama wasted no time blasting Republicans for "spending money" on tax cuts for the "wealthy that they don't need."

Only one Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, supported the tax. Mark Pryor, a Democrat from Arkansas voted no. Democrats thought that this issue was solid political gold, and polling seemed to show that two of three Americans supported the tax hike on "millionaires and billionaires." But what this exercise has accomplished for the Democrats is an open question. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York promised after the vote to bring the issue up again and again. The party now appears to be more obsessed with socking it to the rich than with creating jobs, growing the economy, or solving the middle-class squeeze." - Stephen Moore, The Wall Street Journal, Political Diary, 04/17/2012

"The Just Do Your Job Act"....The 792 Day Budget Train Wreck

‘So, after what is believed to be an all-time record 792 days of waiting, the Senate Democrats have finally produced a federal budget plan. Or have they? There's no public document yet, but earlier this week Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota triumphantly announced: "We've reached an agreement after weeks of work."


If it's true, this would be big news. There was no Senate Democratic budget last year, and this year's budget was supposed to arrive no later than April. But here we are at the start of July and a budget is merely rumored to be arriving. Even the usually sympathetic New York Times and Washington Post were starting to poke fun at the Democrats for this dereliction of duty.

Mr. Conrad said the Democrats had a plan ready back in April that was "good to go." But he and his colleagues weren't at all ready to go because Democrats couldn't get a majority to agree on a proposal. Meanwhile, over in the House, freshman Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle introduced a bill titled "The Just Do Your Job Act," which cut off payments to the Senate Budget Committee until a budget is approved. In the two-year period without a budget, the Senate Budget Committee spent $12 million. "Even the Libyan government passed a budget," Ms. Buerkle decried.

The latest purported budget is expected to save $4 trillion over 10 years, with half of the deficit reduction coming from spending cuts and the other half from tax increases. Those tax increases are expected to include higher profits taxes on oil and gas companies; loophole closings for high-income filers; and perhaps a three-percentage-point increase in the income-tax rate on millionaires, which was in an earlier draft. The Bush-era tax rate cuts for those making more than $250,000 would be gone, too.

On spending, Democrats announced what they wouldn't cut rather than what they would. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are pretty much off the table, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California told the Hill newspaper. In other words, expect deep cuts in the military budget. Like Ms. Boxer said, Democrats "know what our priorities are." ‘

-- Stephen Moore, Wall Street Journal Political Diary 07/01/2011