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Congress bears absolutely no responsibility for the economy

Congress bears absolutely no responsibility for the economy

  • Total voters
    22
  • Poll closed .
cpwill said:
No they aren't. Those agencies operate with legal sovereign immunity with law-making authority. Besides which, no one is saying all regulatory measures must come out of the Congress - only that all regulatory measures should go before a cost analysis, and those that are of a significant enough size to seriously affect our economy should be formally a product of our system of self government. The American people have the right to self government.
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That would mean more bureaucracy
 
Congress certainly bears responsibility for the economy along with other factors....
 
cpwill said:
well that is not true. business still pay their half of payroll taxes, for example. but when speaking of corporate income, that is correct - has anyone suggested otherwise?
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The GOP bills to "help" the economy. They were all for axing the income tax rates. That was the context of the discussion, not payroll taxes.

:shrug: agreed, and the only actors here that would be effected would be those that were "losing" money or "not making money" via preferred "investments".
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What do you mean by "preferred investments?"
 
The popular will is that they all need to be fired, maybe even the judicial branch too. The people don't have confidence in thier leaders but the structure is setup to where we will just blame the executive branch because I can put a face to George Bush or Barack Obama and then blame or praise them, but it isn't so easy to put a face to the legislative branch.
 
The first to go should be republican congressman who signed Grover norquist pledge against raising taxes no matter the cost.
 
obvious Child said:
The GOP bills to "help" the economy. They were all for axing the income tax rates. That was the context of the discussion, not payroll taxes.
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that is not correct - there were plenty of items designed to aid the economy that did not involve income tax rate reductions, and several that involved nominal rate reductions in the context of complexity reduction aimed at maintaining effective rate parity (which you yourself have agreed would be to remove a massive wet blanket on growth and job creation).

What do you mean by "preferred investments?"
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:shrug: well it's just the first to leap to mind, but costs incurred to "green" ones' facilities.
 
Rials6 said:
The first to go should be republican congressman who signed Grover norquist pledge against raising taxes no matter the cost.
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while I think that effective tax increases in the context of nominal rate decreases that are paired with large reduction in complexity will probably be the final compromise result (and Norquist has indicated that he would not count such a vote against his pledge), I would rather suspect that the first people we would want to remove would be those who pursue effective rate increases even though they believe that it would harm the economy and might not bring in extra revenue; but simply for their own sakes.
 
cpwill said:
that is not correct - there were plenty of items designed to aid the economy that did not involve income tax rate reductions, and several that involved nominal rate reductions in the context of complexity reduction aimed at maintaining effective rate parity (which you yourself have agreed would be to remove a massive wet blanket on growth and job creation).
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Simplifying the tax code itself is helpful, but not in a material way that would have helped business in the recession. I'm all for a simpler tax system as a whole, but I don't see anything substantial the GOP proposed that would have helped the economy. To be entirely honest, there really only was one thing that could have significantly fixed the economy, McCain's borderline Communist mortgage plan. Housing IMO was the key drag on the recovery and still is.

:shrug: well it's just the first to leap to mind, but costs incurred to "green" ones' facilities.
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Still not following you here.
 
obvious Child said:
Simplifying the tax code itself is helpful, but not in a material way that would have helped business in the recession. I'm all for a simpler tax system as a whole, but I don't see anything substantial the GOP proposed that would have helped the economy. To be entirely honest, there really only was one thing that could have significantly fixed the economy, McCain's borderline Communist mortgage plan. Housing IMO was the key drag on the recovery and still is.
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and will remain so until it's allowed to bottom out and begin to honestly grow again. but steps to try to reinflate a bubble were ill-advised at the time, and haven't done us much good since.

but tax code simplification will represent a huge reduction in compliance costs and remove incentives to pour resources into less or non-productive venues. Taking even half of the approx $400 bn that we spend on compliance and putting that instead into production would be an immediate, material boost, even before the reduction in incentive distortion.

Still not following you here.
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So let's say that I bring home $150,000 in net profit, and then spend $150,000 "greening" my facility in order to reduce energy costs. My taxable income is $0.
 
cpwill said:
and will remain so until it's allowed to bottom out and begin to honestly grow again. but steps to try to reinflate a bubble were ill-advised at the time, and haven't done us much good since.
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That's true, but until we fix the housing sector the economy will drag. Regardless of who is in office and regardless of whatever policies we enact. The simple fact is that housing is a anchor on the spending habits of Americans.

but tax code simplification will represent a huge reduction in compliance costs and remove incentives to pour resources into less or non-productive venues. Taking even half of the approx $400 bn that we spend on compliance and putting that instead into production would be an immediate, material boost, even before the reduction in incentive distortion.
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To a degree yes. I work at a Big 4 and our fees are CrAzY. Simplification would free up hours and reduce some costs but a lot of the costs are more geared towards basic accounting. I've had clients where I spent more on fixing their books then actually doing tax related work. No amount of simplification will fix that problem. To a certain degree tax compliance is expensive because GAAP and IFRS are complicated and clients often don't do that part right. I can't even begin my tax work until I have proper GAAP/IFRS financials. I agree that it would help, but I think we're overstating the impact.

So let's say that I bring home $150,000 in net profit, and then spend $150,000 "greening" my facility in order to reduce energy costs. My taxable income is $0.
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You'd have to have a pretty shady accountant to let you expense all of those long term capital improvements. I for one wouldn't let most of that go. Especially if it's improvements to buildings.
 
Congress as a whole has more power than the President by a long shot. So yes, it's definitely deserving of more blame than any other part of the government.
 
I have said in another post that for the most part the economy is going to do what the economy is going to do and there is not much that can be done about it. I still hold to that. Under ordinary circumstances I think Congress has little effect at the day to day level. But if Congress went bonkers and tried to get us back on the gold standard or hijacked taxes or interest rates, then yes Congress would definintely affect the economy.

IS the Congress culpable? Maybe alittle but not so much as people think or want to believe its more a factor of the big rollers.
 
obvious Child said:
If you think Obama deserves to be fired on Election day for the bad economy, shouldn't we also fire Congress as well?

Which includes the entire GOP House?

The only way that only Obama should be held accountable for the economy is if Congress does not play a role in the economy.
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It's much easier to vote out one liberal president than it is to vote out all the liberal congress members.
 
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