Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households

Let's be clear here. The deal means the bush era tax cuts remain for most people (a 3 percentage point reduction for most brackets), while we lose a temporary payroll tax for 2%: <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-28/breaking-down-the-cliff-the-bush-tax-cuts.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-28/breaking-down-the-c...</a><p>If I understand correctly, that means taxes should still be about 1% lower than they were during Clinton.<p>I love how every time a <i>temporary</i> tax cut expires, we call it a "tax hike." I don't see how we can ever fix the debt if no one is willing to pay more taxes and no one is willing to lose benefits.

I'll probably be unpopular, but it should be 100% of households.<p>We are in denial that we can have all of the benefits we want and not raise taxes. The choices we have is:<p>A) Cutting Medicare B) Cutting Social Security C) Cutting National Defense D) Raising Taxes<p>Everything else is noise. Choose some combination of A-D.<p>My choice is a 35% cut in C and D to cover the rest.

The article makes it sound like the bill explicitly raises taxes on 77% of households. This would be false. The bill simply does not extend the <i>temporary</i> tax holiday that was signed into law at the end of 2010. The payroll tax rate goes back to the rate we've had since 1990.

An interesting read related to Medicare issues. It says that on average, <i>"Medicare couple pays $109,000 into the program and gets $343,000 in benefits out"</i><p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/opinion/brooks-another-fiscal-flop.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/opinion/brooks-another-fis...</a>

For reference, here is the 2013 US federal budget [1]. Make sure to sort the spending table by the Total column.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budget#Total_revenues_and_spending" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budg...</a>

Endlessly frustrating that there is such vindictive zeal on the right for pushing the faces of the poor into the dirt.