Politics Plus

In a short take yesterday, I reported Kyl’s indefensible hypocrisy regarding unemployment insurance vs tax cuts for the rich.  He is not alone.

For weeks, Senate Republicans have filibustered an extension of unemployment benefits on the grounds that Democrats aren’t willing to cut spending or raise taxes to pay for them. At the same time, the Bush tax cuts are set to expire, and Republicans want them to be renewed. For two days, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl has raised eyebrows by insisting that emergency aid to unemployed people — what he called a "necessary evil" — be paid for through either tax hikes or spending cuts, while the tax cuts (which mostly benefit wealthy people) not be offset in any way. Yesterday claimed that this view is shared by "most of the people in my party."

He was correct.

"That’s been the majority Republican view for some time," Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told TPMDC this afternoon after the weekly GOP press conference. "That there’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject."

The CBO and other budget experts strongly disagree. And Democrats want to preserve the Bush tax cuts for people making less than $200,000-$250,000 a year — but only for them. Allowing them to expire for wealthier people would raise hundreds of billions of dollars over 10 years, which could allow them to offset the spending Republicans currently decry.

However, the GOP’s top budget guy, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), disagrees. He said Kyl’s prescription — offset spending with tax increases or program cuts, but treat tax cuts differently — is exactly right. "It makes a lot of sense, because, you know, when you’re raising taxes you’re taking money out of peoples’ pockets," said Gregg when asked by TPMDC. "When you’re spending money, you’re spending money that is — it’s not the same thing because it’s growing the government. So I tend to think that tax cuts should not have to be offset."

The expert view is that giving unemployed people money to spend stimulates the economy much more than does preserving tax cuts for the rich. But this view is not shared by the chairman of the Republican Senate re-election committee.

"I think the urgency of deficit neutral extension of unemployment insurance has increased because of the size of the deficit and the size of the debt," Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), another member of the GOP leadership team, told TPMDC yesterday. "I’m aware in the past some extensions have not been paid for, but if there’s one thing that I’m hearing from my constituents it’s that deficit spending has to stop, and I think this is a good place to do it."

Extending tax cuts to wealthy Americans is a different story.

"The problem is, you know, when you raise taxes, which is what that will be if no action is taken, taxes will go up on dividends and on capital gains on a whole lot of people who aren’t rich. And the problem with that in a recession is it further contracts capital formation and investment which means it has a negative impact on jobs. I really can’t think — if you really set out to try to come up with ways to discourage people from investing and creating new jobs and growing their business, I can’t think of a more comprehensive agenda for doing that than what we’ve seen over the last year and a half."… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <TPM>

This GOP position is not only irrational, but also, deceptive.  Cutting taxes for the rich has not raised revenue.  Cornyn’s is the worst lie of all.   Repealing the Bush/GOP tax cuts, as proposed, will have no effect on people making less than $250,000.  It will raise the income tax for those people from 35% to 39%.  In a nutshell, the GOP is saying that a $30 billion is too big a burden to help workers.  Many of them lost their jobs, because the GOP used taxpayer money to help corporations move those jobs overseas, and most of the rest of them lost their jobs, because the GOP trashed the economy.  At the same time they are saying that continuing a revenue drain of hundreds of billions of dollars is not too big a burden to benefit the rich!!  Here is my analysis in one word:

BULLSHIT!!

Do you remember the great Acorn scandal?  It turns out that there actually was some criminal activity going on.

A former ACORN employee in San Diego who lost his job after being filmed giving advice to "ACORN pimp" James O’Keefe is suing the amateur videographer and his partner, Hannah Giles, San Diego CityBeat’s Dave Maass reported Friday.

Juan Carlos Vera was one of a number of ACORN employees who in the summer of 2009 was secretly filmed giving advice to O’Keefe and Giles, who told media they were posing as a pimp and prostitute with plans to bring underage prostitutes to the US from Latin America.

In a lawsuit (PDF) filed in a California court this week, Vera argues O’Keefe and Giles broke the law when they taped their conversation inside the ACORN office. California is one of about a dozen states where conversations can only be recorded if all parties to it agree. Vera is seeking $75,000, plus unspecified "special damages."

California Attorney General Jerry Brown cleared Vera of wrongdoing in a report earlier this year. Brown found that, though Vera appeared sympathetic to the "pimp and prostitute" during the taped meeting, he immediately notified the police of the conversation. Brown’s investigation also found that the O’Keefe videos were "significantly edited."

The shocking prospect of ACORN employees aiding in human trafficking prompted Congress to de-fund the group last year, a move that was later ruled unconstitutional. And a report from the Government Accountability Office, released earlier this year, found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of ACORN, which received some $40 million in federal funding from 2005 to 2009.

In February, Hannah Giles admitted that the flamboyant pimp and prostitutes costumes in which she and O’Keefe were seen in some of the videos were never worn inside ACORN offices, contrary to most news reports. "In truth, O’Keefe represented himself to low-level ACORN workers as the college law school boyfriend of Giles, desperately trying to save her from the house of an abusive pimp who she believed would kill her," Brad Blog reported.

Vera’s lawsuit is not the first one to be launched by an ACORN employee over the O’Keefe videos. In January, Pennsylvania ACORN worker Katherine Conway-Russell sued the duo, claiming that they had misrepresented her in the videos.

"Unlike the videos [O’Keefe] has been showing on the Internet, we refused to help him and called the police and filed this report," Conway-Russell said in an ACORN-produced video.

The growing body of evidence suggesting ACORN’s wrongdoing is overblown comes too late for the organization, which announced in March it would be disbanding, due to image and financial problems… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Raw Story>

Rachel Maddow provides some excellent background here.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Let’s no forget that O’Keefe is a long term GOP activist with strong ties to the party leadership.  This was not an act of a lone wing nut.  It was an orchestrated Republican scam that successfully targeted ACORN to reduce voting by minorities, the poor and the disenfranchised.  The Republican Party is devoid of honor.