Joe Biden says that the financial crisis was caused by the Bush tax (rate) cuts.
Does someone besides Joe Biden want to explain that one to me?
At least he didn’t blame Global Warming.
24 thoughts on “Is There Anything They Can’t Do?”
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What the heck – I’ll take a shot at it.
I’m on record (on my blog – click above) as saying that I don’t think there was much anybody could do to avoid this crisis, but I think I know what Biden was arguing. It’s something I heard from my boss (no Obama fan) this morning, to wit: “you shouldn’t be able to drive a company into bankruptcy and keep your $20 million golden parachute.”
In other words, the CEO should have some personal skin in the game, to encourage more cautious action.
In what might be considered off-topic, anybody making under $600K will NOT see their taxes go up under Obama’s plan. See http://chartjunk.karmanaut.com/taxplans/ for a graphical description.
I hope that isn’t what Biden is arguing, because it makes no sense. I don’t see what lowering the marginal income tax rates has to do with executives of bankrupt corporations getting to keep their golden parachutes.
I think something that might help explain the somewhat standard conservative position on Obama taxes to a liberal is:
Obama says that he is not going to raise your taxes right now. But he is going to increase spending, and he will have a democrat congress where nothing is too liberal – most conservatives believe that means that regardless of what he says, he is going to raise taxes.
McCain, on the other hand has a similarly unbelievable tax/financing plan. But he is promising to cut programs, and will be completely unable to spend money with Democrats in control of the House… so on the whole, a choice for McCain is a choice for lower taxes overall.
Then you get into the whole “tax the rich” thing. I know liberals think we are stupid, but we don’t believe in soaking the rich. They already have made huge contributions to society (hint, that’s why they are rich!) – we don’t feel it is right to point a gun at them and say “support us or else,” especially when they generally give money to charity anyway.
Another way of looking at it is this: In the US, we have a very dynamic class structure – we relish the fact that if you work hard and smart, you can become better than you are. If you tax the rich, you are taxing our dreams! We want to be rich! And then you go off and make this dream disappear!
I think the meat of the Biden quote is in the second half. The tax rate stuff is his stump talking point, then he switches over to the concept of skin in the game. I think he’s also trying to suggest that the McCain economic program only benefits the very rich.
I’m sure somebody will come along later and say “aha, even the Obama fans admit XYZ!” (for some value of XYZ) but it’s not the most eloquent thing to come out of Biden’s mouth. Then again, I’m not looking for perfect, just good.
It’s a reach to conclude Biden was talking purely about the tax cuts. The meat, as Chris, says was in the second half, which is pretty much true.
I wish I could have Bob Ayling’s career (for example), a man who has made millions in bonus and golden handshakes for driving companies and projects to the wall.
Nice work if you can get it.
I’d love to see a Press Conference with Palin tomorrow where she explains the current financial crisis. I mean why only Biden out there?
Heh-Heh. That sure would be a riot.
Not to worry, the McCain campaign won’t be that stupid as to actually let her out until after the election.
What a clueless pair you have in McCain-Palin. Utterly clueless. Let them win. Let talk radio run the country.
Biden (and without a doubt Obama, too) believes that people just can’t be allowed to keep too much of their own money. No, people are too stupid to spend their own money wisely. Instead, we should shut up and turn over even more money to the brillant financial managers in Washington.
Biden, Obama, and the whole host of cohorts who think that can kiss my ass.
Larry, out of curiosity, do you have a point where you think you have a enough money.
I’ll be honest and say I passed the _I have more than enough money to live well_ point about 5 years ago and even a full 5% or more increase in my marginal tax rate probably wouldn’t be all that noticeable to my household finances, except we might not be saving quite as much as we do these days.
Looking at the candidates tax plans, it seems I’d be about 3.5% better off under McCain and pretty much the same under Obama.
Realistically I’m not going to miss that 3.5% if McCain isn’t elected.
Anyway, all of this is moot. We are going to have to pay more tax whoever is elected because we, the taxpayers, seem to be about to end up owning half the nation’s financial infrastructure.
I don’t envy whoever wins.
Why wait? If you think the federal government has more right to that 3.5% than you do, and if you think they’d do better things with it than you would, you should start giving them the extra money now, rather than waiting for them to demand it from you.
I note that nobody’s mentioned the senior management of Fannie and Freddie yet. I suppose that might be a little embarrassing.
If Obama and the shithead Democrats in Congress merely let the Bush tax cuts expire, I’m going to get whacked by nearly $3000 more a year in taxes. I can’t spare that money without compromising the quality of my family’s life. I don’t have fancy cable TV, we don’t go to Hawaii for vacations, we have one year-old van for the family and a 10-year old Corolla.
I already fork out more money for Federal taxes than any other major category, including housing in one of the most expensive ZIP code in the nation (average price of a 3 BR 2 BA house nearly $800,000), health care for a family of 6, food, clothing — anything.
The nasty little Democrat secret is that the truly enormous increase in burden on the middle class in this country over the past four decades has been Federal taxes. The reason is simple: the tax structure is organized according to nominal income: you make x thousand dollars year, you’re rich/middle class/poor and pay accordingly. However, inflation being what it is, what was once “rich” is now merely middle class, and what used to be seen as the appropriate tax burden on “the rich” is now whacking people who are thoroughly middle class.
Congress doesn’t have to enact anything for this to happen, it happens automatically as long as the tax structure is figured in absolute dollar amounts and inflation goes on year by year. Congress needs to act periodically to re-adjust the tax structure — also called “tax relief” or “tax cuts” — if we are not all to eventually be classified as rich.
Realistically I’m not going to miss that 3.5% if McCain isn’t elected.
That’s true of the bulk of Obama’s most vocal and effective supporters. They’re all leisure class, so to speak. This is one reason why his populist feel your pain help the common people rhetoric seems unusually cynical and arrogant to those of us for whom a 3.5% pay cut would really hurt.
My suggestion is you write a check to the Treasury that 3.5% of your income you don’t really need, and let the rest of decide whether or not we need our 3.5%. The idea that just because you don’t need the dough nobody else does is arrogant as hell.
Why wait? If you think the federal government has more right to that 3.5% than you do, and if you think they’d do better things with it than you would, you should start giving them the extra money now, rather than waiting for them to demand it from you.
I didn’t say I didn’t want it, I said I wouldn’t really miss it. They’re not the same.
The idea that just because you don’t need the dough nobody else does is arrogant as hell.
Didn’t say that, but thanks for playing.
I specifically started by pointing out that this was a factor of my income bracket that I could afford to miss that. $3000? Sounds like the Obama tax plan would work better for you in many ways.
I’d personally be better off under McCains
I fully support tax cuts, especially where it does matter. I know that I could live on the median income in this country. Hell, I couldn’t live comfortably on 3 or 4 times that amount.
They’re all leisure class, so to speak.
Except I work a leisurely 60-70 hours a week plus other business interests I look after, I’m just realistic about what I get in return for that. That said, I’m having a slow work day today on account of being up almost all night speaking to China.
If Obama and the shithead Democrats in Congress merely let the Bush tax cuts expire, I’m going to get whacked by nearly $3000 more a year in taxes.
Well, when did you expect to pay for your share of the Iraq war? You should have figured that it would happen sometime. Indeed, when Bush first introduced his tax cuts, he used their expiration in his calculation to balance the books. And that was before he knew that there would be an Iraq war.
Many people supposed that he would throw out his own balance sheet and ask to make the tax cuts permanent. Of course that’s exactly what he did. But somewhere along the way, currency valuations, the lending market, Medicare, and war payments all developed a liberal bias. It’s now time to pay the piper.
Speaking of “golden parachutes”, are Biden or Obama planning to give back the donations that they received from the institutions?
Since entering the Senate, Obama got more each year from Freddie and Fannie than any other Congress critter. His 4 year total beats Clinton’s 8 year total and approaches equals Kerry’s 20 year total. In a couple of years, he’d have passed Dodd’s 20 year total.
Number 5 over the last 20 years was the chairman of the House subcommittee with jurisdiction.
Why yes, they’re all democrats. How did you guess?
Biden, D-MBNA wasn’t very high on this list. He kept his family fed with the credit card industry. Remember the “evil” bankruptcy reform act? His doing.
The point about predatory executives wrecking companies for short-term gain and bonuses and then jumping ship before the sh!t hits the fan is IMHO a good one. And this problem is endemic, and not confined to the USA. Short-termism is one of the biggest problems in business and in government at the moment; in government it’s probably not possible to avoid it, but I am quite sure it is possible in business.
What has to be done is to find some way of making company executives, particularly high-ranking ones, think about the long-term future of the firms they run. It would probably have to be done by some legislative means; perhaps one way would be to make it compulsory for performance bonuses to be paid in shares of the company paying them, with those shares not being saleable for (say) five years whether or not said executives were still working for that company.
What has to be done is to find some way of making company executives, particularly high-ranking ones, think about the long-term future of the firms they run.
That’s easy.
Shares.
Not options.
They have a good salary, no golden parachute.
Their reward is linked to the value of the shares they own. That’s pretty much the point. No bonus without share growth.
It would change the current cult of CEO in a lot of businesses.
Larry, out of curiosity, do you have a point where you think you have a enough money.
I’ll have enough money when I can live off my savings and investments for the rest of my life. In other words, when my retirement savings are sufficient to see my through my old age. No, I’m not there yet but I’m working on it.
If you want to pay extra taxes, feel free to go right ahead. No one is stopping you. Don’t presume that because you say you have enough, you’re qualified to judge if others should be willing to live with less. That’s arrogant in the extreme.
My wife and I both work and make a pretty good living. However, when you add up Federal Income Tax, Social Security Tax, Medicare Tax, State Income Tax, gasoline taxes, utility taxes, phone taxes, sales taxes, etc, we’re paying well over $50,000 a year in taxes. That’s not even counting the costs of corporate income and complaince taxes passed on in the price of the goods and services we buy. I rather resent people who think that given the laundry list of taxes I just listed, that somehow > $50,000 a year in taxes just isn’t enough.
Let’s turn the question around. At what point should government say that they have enough money to fulfil the legitimate functions of government? Why, when so many have to cut back when their income decreases, does government believe they’re automatically entitled to ever increasing amount of money?
So we have to raise AIG’s taxes to rescue it from bankruptcy?
The financial mess was catalyzed by the democrats themselves:
http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306370789279709
Joe Biden is being disingenuous by blaming it all on the Bush tax cuts
Didn’t say that, but thanks for playing.
No? So you’re saying you personally will volunteer to pay the government more money, because you won’t really miss it, but you have no intention of supporting the government’s effort to force everyone else to, also? That’s cool. I’m fine with that, if that’s what you really mean.
Sounds like the Obama tax plan would work better for you in many ways.
Only if you’re an idiot and a dreamer. Since I’m neither, and I’ve thought about it at length, no sale. You might bear in mind that any fool knows Obama’s tax plan doesn’t matter a whole heck of a lot, even if he had developed a reputation of being a straight shooter who never changed his mind about campaign promises (FISA, troops out of Iraq instantly, campaign debates, I can no more disown this man than I could my own grandmother, this list goes on). Obama doesn’t write legislation to set the tax code, Congress does. And the worst possible scenario I can imagine is a Democratic Congress, which is pretty much guaranteed, with a Democratic President armed with a whole armload of “improvements” he wants to make to society. We’ve heard (and paid for) that tune before, by Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and the nightmare was only killed by (ironically enough) Bill Clinton in the 1990s. When I want to take a fresh look at the exciting possibility of bringing back the 1970s, I’ll get out the disco LPs — not the tax code and spending policies, thanks.
Except I work a leisurely 60-70 hours a week plus other business interests I look after
Uh…as opposed to what? Know any wealthy people who got that way without working that much? We don’t have much in the way of landed aristocracy in this country. Maybe you need to get up to speed on the 21st century? This is not 18th century England, you know.
What defines “leisure class,” at least to the Democrats when they’re inveighing against nasty overpaid executives, or Big Oil and Big Pharma CEOs, is people who work 60-70 hours a weeek and get paid very well for it. In case you didn’t know, there are plenty of people who work that much but don’t make very much at all. It’s your rate of pay, not the total amount you earn, that defines for most people how comfortable you are. We could all be millionaires, theoretically, if we worked 168 hours a week, even at crappy wages.
Well, when did you expect to pay for your share of the Iraq war?
Jim, let’s take the New York Times report in March of 2008 that the Iraq War has so far cost $600 billion. That’s over five years, and there are roughly 150 million taxpayers in the United States, so my individual cost per year comes to $800. And that’s assuming that none of the $14,000 I already pay each year, a third of which goes to the Pentagon, covers any of the costs of going to war, which seems unlikely.
Furthermore, unless you’re an idiot, or the New York Times, you would reasonably assume that the costs of the war going forward will be less and less. Why should they be more, when troops are coming home, violence is down, and the dangerous jobs are being taken over by Iraqis? So $800/year is the maximum cost of the war.
You are confusing this war with Democrat-sponsored wars of the past for Total World Liberation, which could only be paid for with massive taxes, draconian price controls and rationing, and the redemption of war bonds for decades afterward. It’s a natural mistake to make, but this is a Republican war, which means it’s economical. I’d like to say it’s fought for concrete, limited objectives — a Republican ideal — but, alas, George Bush kinda’ went to town a bit, acted like a Wilsonian Democrat in terms of his war aims, mores the pity. Y’all idealist donks ought to like that — you sure liked it when Clinton bombed Serbia — but then as usual intellectual consistency is not your strong point.
Andy,
I think you made good comments. It was my thoughts exactly when Chris decided to complain about Golden Parachutes. Why not cut the cords of the politicians that handed out the parachutes? These aren’t Enron board members answerable to themselves; Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were created by Congress and had to report to Congress.
Try googling Freddie Mac Congress
Note the top two hits show the close connection between Congress and Freddie Mac.
Funny, the second link takes you to a 404 page not found, but alas, Google cache kept a copy. Page was last on the website 9/8/2008. Wonder why they would delete now? Anyway, I love this paragraph:
Even if a borrower did not default over the course of 30 years, a lender’s money (with government backing) would be tied up in a fixed-rate asset whose value was subject to the vagaries of interest-rate movements over prolonged periods.
To address this issue, Congress found an ingenious way to stimulate long-term investment in housing without exposing the public fisc to the risk of substantial loss: it created government-sponsored enterprises with Congressional charters, and gave them the singular job of making markets stable, liquid and affordable in all economic environments.
Daveon: Wrong. Just plain wrong. Yes, putting the bonus into shares might help a bit – but it isn’t enough. Why? Simple. I am completely sure that it would be quite possible for said high execs to enact company policies that give them bonuses – and keep the shares high, for just long enough for those shares to be sold, and after the shares are sold what do those execs care? After all, how many minutes does it take to sell shares?
Make them keep the shares for a while, and maybe they will enact policies that will keep their shares – and MUCH more importantly, those owned by others – high for at least that long.
I have no problem whatever with those who start companies – and therefore take all the risk, and own a lot of the shares – making an awful lot of money if their company does well. My problem is with corporate execs, with nothing of theirs at stake, making enormous amounts of money for actions profitable in the short term but disastrous in the long.
To contradict Gordon Gekko, greed isn’t good. It’s lethal.
Speaking of Obama and Fannie and Freddie, two of his top advisors (including the guy in charge of the VP search) are former Fannie presidents. They took home 10s of millions. Another was Jamie Gorelick, who not only took millions from Fannie but had a key role in ensuring the privacy of the folks who did 9/11.
If we’re going to “take back ill-gotten gains”, let’s start with Obama’s campaign staff.
kurt9,
Link duly blogged – see today’s post.
Carl Pham wrote:
“Congress doesn’t have to enact anything for this to happen, it happens automatically as long as the tax structure is figured in absolute dollar amounts and inflation goes on year by year. Congress needs to act periodically to re-adjust the tax structure — also called “tax relief” or “tax cuts” — if we are not all to eventually be classified as rich.”
Very good point.
Why not define the taxation classes by fixed percentage levels above and below a “representative” median income as recalculated yearly from the average of the yearly “true” medians during the last ten years?
That way Congress (or similar institutions elsewhere on the globe) can do nothing yet the system still works and is reasonably stable and predictable with small incremental changes and it takes inflation properly into account (as reflected by wage increases).
Same process for calculating minimum pay and tons of other stuff; just decide upon a fixed percentage to represent it.
Less “work” = less government (or at worst more efficient government) ^_^
(Yes I’ve argued a similar thing here before, and no it’s not about “socialist wealth redistribution” it’s about doing things at least slightly better instead of battling windmills).
P.S. sorry for being off-topic. Recently heard about the Nobel prize winner in economics saying the financial trouble might be attributed to the Iraq war, of course the speculative might was toned down to near non-existence in the reporting (big surprise). Biden has plenty of company.