The reason Boehner and Co. are doing this is not merely because they admire Winston Churchill's speech before Congress 70 years ago. It's more the climax of a nearly three-year right-wing crusade against Barack Obama, whom they believe got rid of a White House bust of Winston Churchill upon assuming office in a fit of uppity anti-colonial rage. It all goes back to this Telegraph article from February 2009 [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/4623148/Barack-Obama-sends-bust-of-Winston-Churchill-on-its-way-back-to-Britain.html ], which your creepy survivalist uncle almost certainly has bookmarked:
A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government's art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.
The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office during President Bush's tenure.
But when British officials offered to let Mr Obama to hang onto the bust for a further four years, the White House said: "Thanks, but no thanks." [...]
Churchill has less happy connotations for Mr Obama than those American politicians who celebrate his wartime leadership. It was during Churchill's second premiership that Britain suppressed Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion. Among Kenyans allegedly tortured by the colonial regime included one Hussein Onyango Obama, the President's grandfather.
A White House spokesperson, though, had a less hysterical account [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/02/20/busted-the-churchill-flap.html ], noting that "the Churchill bust was removed before Obama's inauguration as part of the usual changeover operations, adding that every president puts his own stamp on the Oval Office." But the legend of Obama angrily tossing out Sir Winston as his first act of revenge against whitey's colonial crimes has persisted, and it's finally slinked its way into a resolution on the House floor.
Now we'll have to move on to, say, the resolution demanding Obama stop putting his filthy feet on Queen Victoria's desk [ http://wonkette.com/413753/black-man-puts-his-feet-on-desk ]. Anything that reminds him that he is a guest in this office, in more ways than most.
This afternoon, after House Republicans voted [ http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/200535-house-votes-down-senate-payroll-tax-bill-calls-for-conference ] to “disagree” with the Senate compromise extending the payroll tax cut, the brinksmanship took a sudden and dramatic turn. Obama made a surprise appearance before reporters and called out John Boehner in the most direct terms yet to stop the games and pass the Senate proposal. He said:
House Republicans say they don’t dispute the need for a payroll tax cut. What they are holding out for is to wring concessions from Democrats on issues that have nothing to do with the payroll tax cut — issues where the parties fundamentally disagree. A one year deal is not the issue...
The clock is ticking. Time is running out. And if the House Republicans refuse to vote for the Senate bill, or even allow it to come up for a vote, taxes will go up in 11 days.
I saw today that one of the House Republicans referred to what they’re doing as “high stakes poker.” He’s right about the stakes. But this is not poker....This is not a game for the average family who doesn’t have 1,000 bucks to lose. It’s not a game for somebody who’s out there looking for work right now, and might lose his house if unemployment insurance doesn’t come through. It’s not a game when the millions of Americans take a hit when the entire economy grows more slowly because these proposals aren’t extended...
I’m calling on the Speaker and the House Republican leadership to bring up the Senate bill for a vote. Give the American people the assurance they need in this holiday season.
If Obama is to be believed, there will be no more negotiations. No more discussions. No move to “conference.” Either the House GOP supports the Senate compromise, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, or taxes go up on 160 million Americans. As a Dem aide told me earlier today [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/senate-gop-aide-house-gop-has-no-leverage-in-payroll-tax-cut-fight/2011/12/20/gIQAwwg86O_blog.html ], if it’s absolutely necessary, Dems are willing to allow the payroll tax cut to expire, and hammer House Republicans until they come back and pass the Senate extension. Obama implicitly seconded that just now.
After Obama’s appearance, John Boehner held a quick news conference in which he pushed back, demanding that Obama call on Senate Dems to renegotiate a compromise with House Republicans. But it’s not clear how much leverage House Republicans have left at this point. House Republicans were unwilling to even hold a straight up or down vote on the Senate proposal, suggesting they may have been worried it might pass the House against the GOP leadership’s will. Boehner claimed that a two month extension is merely “kicking the can down the road.” But this is a can that the public would rather see kicked down the road than off of it — if it is not kicked down the road, taxes will go up on millions. And a full-year extension can be negotiated after a shorter-term one is achieved.
No question, Dems could still end up retreating from their hard-edged posture and enter into talks with the House GOP. But there are signs that this time may be different. Obama’s appearance today suggests he has calculated that he has already won this fight. He’s decided that if the worst happens, and the tax cut expires, Republicans will shoulder the blame for it. And his appearance also seemed like a warning shot: At a time when Congress is suffering record low approval numbers, he’s the one with the big megaphone, and he will continue to use it in the days ahead.
It’s an image many Americans would find rather upsetting: a recently laid-off millionaire, luxuriating next to the pool eating grapes bought with food stamps while waiting for an unemployment check to roll in.
Under the Republican bill to extend a payroll tax holiday scheduled to be voted on in the House as early as Tuesday, those Americans with gross adjusted income over $1 million would no longer be eligible for food stamps or jobless pay, producing $20 million in savings to help pay for the tax cut for American workers. The idea is also embraced by many Democrats, who had a similar version of the savings in a Senate bill to extend the payroll tax cut, as did a failed Republican Senate bill.
Yet as it turns out, millionaires on food stamps are about as rare as petunias in January, even if you count a lottery winner in Michigan who managed to collect the benefit until chagrined officials in the state put an end to it.
I certainly don’t have a problem with the idea of cutting off the rich from public benefits intended to help struggling Americans who need a hand, but the issue here is the frequency with which this actually happens. There are, for example, practically zero examples of the very rich taking advantage of food stamps. There’s some evidence of millionaires getting jobless aid, but the numbers are very tiny.
Wayne Vroman, an economist at the Urban Institute, told the NYT, “It’s a water drop in a hurricane. I can see the PR appeal, but unemployment insurance collected by millionaires is not one of the major problems with the program. This is a way of trying to put an income test on the unemployment system that has never existed in the past.”
And in the larger context, it seems the list of policy initiatives launched by Republicans to address problems that don’t exist keeps growing. GOP officials are passing measures to combat voter fraud, without instances of actual voter fraud. House Republicans voted to eliminate a proposed EPA farm-dust regulation, despite the fact that the EPA has no proposed farm-dust regulation [(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=69762251 (and preceding and following)]. GOP officials recently passed a resolution to affirm “In God We Trust” as the national motto, but “In God We Trust” was already the national motto.
Now they’re tackling benefits for millionaires that hardly ever go to millionaires.
Millionaires on Food Stamps and Jobless Pay? G.O.P. Is on It
Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio predicted Monday that the House would pass legislation to renew a payroll tax cut and curtail extra jobless benefits. Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER Published: December 12, 2011
WASHINGTON — It’s an image many Americans would find rather upsetting: a recently laid-off millionaire, luxuriating next to the pool eating grapes bought with food stamps while waiting for an unemployment check to roll in.
Under the Republican bill to extend a payroll tax holiday scheduled to be voted on in the House as early as Tuesday, those Americans with gross adjusted income over $1 million would no longer be eligible for food stamps or jobless pay, producing $20 million in savings to help pay for the tax cut for American workers. The idea is also embraced by many Democrats, who had a similar version of the savings in a Senate bill to extend the payroll tax cut, as did a failed Republican Senate bill.
Yet as it turns out, millionaires on food stamps are about as rare as petunias in January, even if you count a lottery winner in Michigan who managed to collect the benefit until chagrined officials in the state put an end to it.
But the idea of ending unemployment insurance for very high earners — which would be achieved essentially through taxing benefits up to 100 percent with a phase-in beginning for those with gross adjusted income over $750,000 — demonstrates an increasing desire among members of Congress to find some way to make sure that the wealthiest Americans contribute more to reducing the deficit and paying for middle-class tax relief.
Democrats have sought a surtax on income over $1 million to pay for an extension of a tax break for the middle class, a surtax that Republicans have rejected. Employees’ share of the payroll tax, now 4.2 percent of wages, is scheduled to rise to 6.2 percent in January unless Congress takes action. The Senate is expected to come back this week with another version of its bill to extend the tax holiday. On Monday night, the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, served notice to Congressional Republicans that he would prevent final votes on a must-pass bill to finance government operations until the Democrats get what they want on the payroll tax.
While tycoons on food stamps might be hard to find, some millionaires do indeed pursue unemployment pay when they find themselves out of job.
From 2005 to 2009, millionaires collected over $74 million in unemployment benefits, according to an estimate by Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, who has paired with Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, to push to end the practice.
According to Mr. Coburn’s office [(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=69519833 and following], the Internal Revenue Service reported that 2,362 millionaires collected a total of $20,799,000 in unemployment benefits in 2009; 18 people with an adjusted gross income of $10,000,000 or more received an average of $12,333 in jobless benefits for a total of $222,000.
“Making Coloradans pay for unemployment insurance for millionaires is frankly irresponsible, especially at a time when money is tight and our debt is out of control,” Mr. Udall said in an e-mail.
Unemployment benefits are essentially an insurance program financed through the state and federal governments. States charge employers taxes dedicated to cover the first 26 weeks of unemployment benefits paid to those Americans who lose their jobs, with the federal government paying for extensions.
Currently, unemployment benefits have stretched out to 99 weeks, through a series of nine extensions that began in 2008, reflecting the high levels of extended unemployment that have dogged the country, at a cost of roughly $180 billion to the federal government. (While there are also federal taxes charged to employers, those monies tend to be used for administrative costs and not benefits.) Roughly 3.5 million people are now receiving extended benefits. Some states have already begun to reduce the number of extended weeks unemployment offered.
The Republican legislation seeks to shorten the number of weeks that will be extended to the jobless, and offer states more flexibility with how they use their own unemployment taxes, including starting programs that train people for work while they accept benefits.
“It’s a water drop in a hurricane,” said Wayne Vroman, an economist at the Urban Institute. “I can see the PR appeal, but unemployment insurance collected by millionaires is not one of the major problems with the program. This is a way of trying to put an income test on the unemployment system that has never existed in the past.”
Food stamps are another matter, as recipients must demonstrate low income levels to receive them. Household income must not exceed 130 percent of poverty; for a family of three that would be a gross monthly income of $2,008.
However, of the 53 states and territories, 40 have no asset tests, which means that in some situations it would be possible for someone with, for instance, a large house or a luxury car — or in the case of Michigan, current lottery winnings not yet delivered in full — to receive food stamps.
Department of Agriculture officials dismissed the notion of millionaire food stamp recipients. “Federal law is clear,” said Aaron Lavallee, a spokesman for the department. “The program is intended for households with income not exceeding 130 percent of poverty.”
Among the 46 million Americans who receive the assistance — roughly one in seven Americans — few seem to be millionaires. As such, the $200 million in savings from this cut would be largely achieved through the cuts to the unemployment insurance for high earners.
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