I've broken out the blood pressure cuff and the Atavan and I'm watching the very liberal MSNBC. At around 7 a.m., Scarborough, Buchanan and even Mika screaming about how the recovery bill "gives tax breaks to people who don't pay taxes."
They're talking about the following, as described in the Washington Post:
The package expands the Earned Income Tax Credit temporarily to raise the pay of the working poor. There also is money to allow low-income workers to qualify for a tax credit of up to $1,000 per child, a break currently denied them. These are good tax policy and good stimulus.
Oh noes! Putting money into the hands of the people who are getting slammed the most in this thing? FAIL! NO! The working poor pay sales taxes and payroll taxes and this eases the burden. Scarborough's analysis of this: "You have the federal government writing checks to people for doing nothing. For doing absolutely nothing. This is as close to unprecedented of a total all out socialist bill as I've ever seen." Well, at least since the banks blackmailed us into giving them free cash with no strings, but okay.
7:45 and they're still going off. Jim Cramer appears and the whole thing is devolving into an "Obama is totally f-cking up everything" segment where the only voice of dissent, amazingly and faintly enough, was Mark Goddamn Halperin. Mika's talking about how this is just like the Bush administration using fear to coerce everyone into supporting the invasion of Iraq and the Patriot Act. Just staggering. The logic of this argument, of course, seems to suggest that the economic collapse isn't as imminent or urgent as is being described.
Finally, Podesta appears and mentions the very real fact that Reagan created the Earned Income Tax Credit. Buchanan and Scarborough crumble. And now Cramer says, "It's true that these people will spend [their tax cut]." So what's the flippin' problem, guys?!
Your liberal cable news network. Why are they in the tank for Obama!?
Adding... You know what hilarious? How Republicans like Pat Buchanan can so quickly turn their backs on blue collar Americans. For two years, all we heard was how Barack Obama wasn't "one of us" -- how he couldn't grasp the needs of working Americans. And now, when many working Americans would get a tax cut, Buchanan came right out and said that Congress should give the $80 billion (his number) to corporate tax cuts.