Republican Reverse Robin Hood

(9AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

  It’s a rare event to see honesty for a major politician. So when it happens you should take note. Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) clearly listed his priorities yesterday, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

 WALLACE: We’re running out of time, so how are you going to pay $678 billion just on the tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 a year?

KYL: You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely congress has the authority and it would be right, if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending. And that’s what republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.

 That’s pretty clear. We don’t have to cut spending to offset $678 Billion in tax cuts for the wealthy, but we do need to offset $33 Billion in unemployment benefits to the desperately poor…and not by raising taxes on the rich. The spending offsets would need to come from other services for the working class.

 Kyl has intentionally and specifically blocked unemployment benefits unless he gets his way over the expiring estate taxes measure.

  Americans disagree with Kyl and the Republicans in the Senate by a 2-to-1 margin. That’s not even close!

  You would think that the GOP would be scared from poll results like that, but you would be wrong. The Party of No is winning its battle for voters.

 Yet Republicans are not paying any price for this. While the poll shows the GOP is not trusted on the economy, Republicans have edged ahead in the generic ballot matchup, 47-46. Anti-incumbent sentiment is soaring — only one-fourth say they’re inclined to re-elected their Representative — which will also help Republicans. And a majority, 51 percent, support GOP control of Congress so it can act as a “check” on Obama’s policies.

  This clearly demonstrates that people have not connected GOP obstructionism with one of its most visible results: The prevention of the extended of unemployment benefits that a sizable majority says it wants.

  Bottom line: The GOP tactics are working brilliantly in political terms. Dems are bearing the brunt of the blame for government dysfunction. I’m not sure it could be clearer than this.

 It’s amazing, don’cha think? The more the Republicans stick it to the working class American, the more votes they get from the same people they stick it to.

  You might think there would be a stage when this attitude would stop working. Once again, you would be wrong.

     Last night on CNBC, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore took this one step further, saying that he can’t “see the sense” of allowing cuts for the rich to expire, and then advocating that taxes be raised on the poorest Americans in order to finance tax cuts for the rich and corporations:

   “I just don’t see the sense of this. In fact, if I could have my ‘druthers, I’d raise the ten percent tax rate to fifteen percent and lower the [top] rates…Let’s bring the [corporate] rate down.”

How’s that for an amazing concept! We are in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, a downturn caused by Wall Street, and they want to raise taxes on the poor in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

  I have to admit that I am in awe of this policy of a return to feudalism. There’s nothing like announcing in public a policy of wanting the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor. It takes balls the size of watermelons.