The president’s tax compromise was approved in the U.S. Senate earlier today — not a surprise, really, but still a terrible policy decision on the part of all involved.
Should the House of Representatives follow suit, as it is expected to do, then we will continue to funnel money to the rich when what we should be doing is creating jobs for everyone else. And it going to have longterm budgetary and political consequences.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey deserves kudos for his no-vote, as do 12 other Democrats, five Republicans and Bernie Sanders.
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Hank Kalet 
Kudos to Lautenberg but raspberries to Menendez and Al Franken who voted for the Leave No Billionaire Behind tax plan. The GOP-Obama plutocratic-tax plan is disgusting and a sell out to the rich. Worst of all is the payroll tax holiday, reducing the payroll tax by 2 percentage points, thus depriving the Social Security trust fund of $120 billion. And get this sports fans, they are going to BORROW money from the general fund to bolster the SS trust funds' lost revenues. Borrowing money when we have huge deficits?!? This violates how SS was meant to be financed, namely by its own separate funding from the wage tax. SS does not contribute to the deficit because of its separate funding stream. This one year tax holiday changes how SS operates. There is a very strong possibility that the tax holiday could become permanent. Republicans are already talking openly about portraying the return of the wage tax to its regular level as a tax increase in a year's time when electoral campaigns will be revving up. They will scream \”Tax increase!!\” and use it to bludgeon the Democrats in the next election cycle so Obama the Spineless can cave in again. Is Obama spineless or is he just doing the bidding of his billionaire buddies who hate SS. The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare has called this tax holiday as the beginning of the end of SS. This has been a decades long dream of the GOP to make SS dependent on the general fund as a way to defund it and make SS compete with other programs.My question is, why does Obama hate SS so much? First he creates the Cat Food Commission which went after SS and Medicare and now he makes this deal with the GOP to plant an IED in the SS program.Maybe I will vote Green in 2012 since Obama is to the right of Eisenhower who strengthened SS.I am very disappointed in Al Franken for voting yes on the tax plan to gut SS and enrich the rich. When he was on Air America he was a staunch defender of SS. He often related the story of his wife's family and how SS helped them so much. When his wife was a child, her father died and so the family qualified for SS survivors' benefits. So there was a young widowed mother with young children to provide for who had just lost the breadwinner of the family. SS survivors' benefits made all the difference between total destitution and survival.