T1B

The more wealthy ($150K or so) American families got their wish on the Alt. Min. Tax elimination late last night. Some 14 million families.

Meanwhile, all types of amendments to help low and working poor americans get a little help paying the massive gouging and increases in all types of energy bills; from mostly oil companies, was shot down. (60 votes needed to clear later action in later sessions) :roll:

Bush, Again; gets to keep those gravy trains rolling, while regular working stiffs, who we all know are feeling the increased pinch in the wallets JUST to keep afloat when faced with the rising costs of owning and maintaining a home, get next to nothing.

Hey, but Sec. Snow says Americans are allready reaping the benefits from all of these great tax cuts. (Read the link. It's a great quote)

CNN & AP wrote:WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate passed a $60 billion bill early Friday that would extend expiring tax cuts and prevent roughly 14 million families from paying higher taxes through the alternative minimum tax.

More on AMT -- http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5386&sequence=0

It drew a presidential veto threat for raising taxes on oil companies.

Much of the bill, passed 64-33 after midnight, preserves tax cuts approved in previous years that are set to expire unless lawmakers keep them alive. "I call this bill the 'Tax Increase Prevention Act,"' said Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania.

Senate GOP leaders pledged that when the bill returns to the Senate for final approval, it will also extend the life of reduced tax rates for capital gains and dividends, scheduled to end when the calendar flips to 2009.

[Get ready, here's the most fucked quote of the week ---]

"Millions of Americans have benefited from these important tax policies either directly through lower taxes or indirectly through new and better jobs and greater economic security for families," said Treasury Secretary John Snow.

Democrats roundly oppose extending tax cuts for investment income. Senate leaders dropped an extension from their bill because a key moderate Republican balked at its inclusion.

The bill would stop a tax increase on about 14 million families (read: Rich families] in line to pay the alternative minimum tax next year. Originally a levy to prevent the wealthy from avoiding taxation, inflation causes the alternative minimum tax to reach into the pockets of more families every year. Lawmakers regularly enact walls to hold it back. ~ [But, according to Greenspan, Inflation is well within check! Hmmmmmm......]

Senate Republicans beat back Democratic attempts to use the bill to pinch oil and energy companies that have been reporting record profits while consumers pay high gasoline prices, efforts that reflected sensitivity on Capitol Hill to high gasoline prices and fears of skyrocketing home heating costs this winter.

The largest oil companies, nevertheless, would be hit with about $4.3 billion in taxes through a change in accounting methods. That provision drew a veto threat from the White House and upset some Western Republicans, who deemed it an unfair and political attack on the energy industry. ~[AWWWWWWWW --- So what!? They'll just raise their prices again! Who'll stop them?! Not Bush!

The Senate defeated a Democratic effort to impose a TEMPORARY windfall profits tax, 50 percent on the sale of oil over $40 a barrel, on profits not reinvested in increasing domestic oil and gas supplies. The money would have been returned to energy consumers through an income tax rebate. A 64-35 procedural vote defeated the effort.

"The major integrated oil companies have all of the gain. Who has all the pain?" asked Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota, who then answered his own question: "All the American people who are trying to pay for the price of a tankful of gas or trying to figure out how they are going to heat their home in the winter."

The Senate also defeated an amendment to impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies and use the money to fund a low-income heating assistance program.

Senators rejected other proposals that would have eliminated a tax incentive for major oil and gas companies that allows them a credit for exploration and development costs. An amendment to ban price-gouging during national energy emergencies declared by the president won the support of 57 senators but fell short of 60 votes needed to overcome a procedural hurdle.

You all DO realize that those (Rich) Families who'd have had to pay the AMT, probably don't pay much if any taxes anyway, don't you? The AMT was set in place, because lots of households (read RICH) were avaioding ANY taxes whatsoever! In 2000 tax year, LESS than 1% of all itenizers had to pay AMT. But what has been happening recently, is those in that top 1-2% have been getting major windfalls from Bush and GOP congress for YEARS now, and the fact that more of THEM are doing much better, makes it necessary for the GOP to make sure THEY don't pay some of it back, as THEY climb the wage and income ladders!
The ladder that you and I know, the REGULAR stiffs AREN'T even putting a foot on!

The Bush campaign on screwing the little guy keeps these people happy once again!

Meanwhile, YOU and I get to see OUR living expenses go sky high. And when our Dem leaders try and get the senate to hold the Oil companies a little more accountable, and help out during these hard energy times, what happens!? Well; you read above what happens.

Hey, and they haven't even gotten to those Mortgage Interest and Property Tax issues that halp so many Millions upon Millions of working poorer Americans make ends meet every spring. (See -- Catch up with mounting unpaid bills from energy and healthcare costs over the cold months)

These are the people you all elect.

Nov. '06 is less than a YEAR away, people. You have the opportunity.
Don't fuck it up. :wink:

History clearly dictates that the Re-Public-Con Party have become the party of the rich for the rich.
Anyone who now votes P_Ugh and expects them to not be greeds best buddy, is being poli-naive and whimsical.

Sorry; but dat's da fact Jack.

And if you read my post in my other thread, 'UNION YES!', I typed about how the $20/hr. Union job in theory sounds like a lot of money. Well, remember, the AMT is for families TAXABLE income levels of around $150K.

A working stiff who wants to keep his Delphi job of $20 beans an hour, only makes a GROSS amount of about $41,000 per year!

This fucking Bills AMT reduction favors fuckheads making FOUR TIMES that amount!!!

But the corporate asswipes posting in HERE cry foul about UNIONS wages!!!!?

Once again, do you all need ANY more convincing about this fucking Pres and the GOP in general!?

And if any of you have 20 min. The following is a MUST read. The video portion of this speech was on Link TV last night. An amazing orator. And equally amazingly as on target with what's wrong with the current regime, than any speaker I've ever listened to. This guy should run for office.

http://www.inequality.org/moyerstranscript.pdf

Bill Moyers is a bigger commie than MartyRed & Dr. Phibes combined.

I'll give you 3 guesses as to whether Millionaire Moyers is refusing the tax breaks he gets and any answer other than no won't count against you

"Over the past three years, they’ve pushed through $2 trillion dollars in tax
cuts – almost all tilted towards the wealthiest people in the country.
Cuts in taxes on the largest incomes.
Cuts in taxes on investment income.
And cuts in taxes on huge inheritances.
More than half of the benefits are going to the wealthiest one percent.
You could call it trickle-down economics, except that the only thing that trickled
down was a sea of red ink in our state and local governments, forcing them to cut
services for and raise taxes on middle class working America.
Now the Congressional Budget Office forecasts deficits totaling $2.75
trillion over the next ten years.
These deficits have been part of their strategy. Some of you will
remember that Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan tried to warn us twenty years
ago, when he predicted that President Ronald Reagan’s real strategy was to
force the government to cut domestic social programs by fostering federal deficits of historic dimensions. Reagan’s own budget director, David Stockman, admitted
as such. Now the leading rightwing political strategist, Grover Norquist, says the
goal is to “starve the beast” – with trillions of dollars in deficits resulting from
trillions of dollars in tax cuts, until the United States Government is so anemic
and anorexic it can be drowned in the bathtub.
There’s no question about it: The corporate conservatives and their allies
in the political and religious right are achieving a vast transformation of American
life that only they understand because they are its advocates, its architects, and
its beneficiaries. In creating the greatest economic inequality in the advanced
world, they have saddled our nation, our states, and our cities and counties with
structural deficits that will last until our children’s children are ready for
retirement, and they are systematically stripping government of all its functions
except rewarding the rich and waging war.
And they are proud of what they have done to our economy and our
society. If instead of practicing journalism I was writing for Saturday Night Live, I
couldn’t have made up the things that this crew have been saying. The
president’s chief economic adviser says shipping technical and professional jobs
overseas is good for the economy. The president’s Council of Economic Advisers
report that hamburger chefs in fast food restaurants can be considered
manufacturing workers. The president’s Federal Reserve Chairman says that the
tax cuts may force cutbacks in social security – but hey, we should make the tax
cuts permanent anyway. The president’s Labor Secretary says it doesn’t matter if
job growth has stalled because “the stock market is the ultimate arbiter.”
You just can’t make this stuff up. You have to hear it to believe it. This
may be the first class war in history where the victims will die laughing.
But what they are doing to middle class and working Americans – and to
the workings of American democracy – is no laughing matter. Go on line and
read the transcripts of Enron traders in the energy crisis four years ago,
discussing how they were manipulating the California power market in telephone
calls in which they gloat about ripping off “those poor grandmothers.” Read how
they talk about political contributions to politicians like “Kenny Boy” Lay’s best
friend George W. Bush. Go on line and read how Citigroup has been fined $70
Million for abuses in loans to low-income, high risk borrowers – the largest
penalty ever imposed by the Federal Reserve. A few clicks later, you can find
the story of how a subsidiary of the corporate computer giant NEC has been
fined over $20 million after pleading guilty to corruption in a federal plan to bring
Internet access to poor schools and libraries. And this, the story says, is just one
piece of a nationwide scheme to rip off the government and the poor.
Let’s face the reality: If ripping off the public trust; if distributing tax breaks
to the wealthy at the expense of the poor; if driving the country into deficits
deliberately to starve social benefits; if requiring states to balance their budgets
on the backs of the poor; if squeezing the wages of workers until the labor force
resembles a nation of serfs – if this isn’t class war, what is?
It’s un-American. It’s unpatriotic. And it’s wrong."

Mr Moyers has unequivocally laid no doubt about how and to Whom this recent Bush sherade is aimed at. He hits the nail SQUARELY where it belongs.

Bush and the wealthy, have drained the LIFE out of the government, by forcing HUGE deficits, and then squeezing it into huge 50 Billions worth of spending cuts. JUST as everyone told you all back in the summer of 2000, before you elected this bastard. The tax "proposals" set forth by Bush's campaign were widely laughed at as insane. And we were warned of exactly what is about to happen.

Thanks FLA! And thanks Ohio!!

~crickets~

Cuda wrote:Bill Moyers is a bigger commie than MartyRed & Dr. Phibes combined.

I'll give you 3 guesses as to whether Millionaire Moyers is refusing the tax breaks he gets and any answer other than no won't count against you

That guy has more cash outlay into charities, and other endowments, than you'll ever see in your lifetime. I could care less what he gets in tax breaks, you dimwit. At least he takes action, in the name of the common good. He's DOING something. What are YOU doing? besides sitting on your ass typing. Why should his tax status preclude the efforts he has done against the strategic dismantling of the poorer workers? That'd be like me saying Bush only enacted the tax breaks for he and his family. When we all know he did it for the millions of ultra rich, also!

See? How does your stupidity stand up now?

mvscal wrote:

MSUFAN wrote:"Over the past three years, they’ve pushed through $2 trillion dollars in tax
cuts – almost all tilted DISPROPORTIONATELY towards the wealthiest people in the country.

Right.

"Almost all tilted" towards the people who actually pay almost all the taxes.

There, Bill; ftfy.

You people are really not serious, are you?

My God, how idiotic it is to interact with some of the asstards in here.

What part of "the poor don't pay income taxes" don't you understand, fuckbucket?