{"id":3571,"date":"2005-02-18T11:03:41","date_gmt":"2005-02-18T16:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3571.html"},"modified":"2005-02-18T11:03:41","modified_gmt":"2005-02-18T16:03:41","slug":"i-wish-theyd-make-up-their-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/i-wish-theyd-make-up-their-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"I wish they’d make up their minds"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can appreciate why congressional Republicans are all worked up<\/a> over the president’s most recent trial balloon about raising payroll taxes, but they shouldn’t be too worried about the White House sticking to any preconceived ideas — they don’t appear to have any.<\/p>\n

First, an increase in payroll taxes was off the table<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We will not raise payroll taxes to solve this problem.” — Bush, Dec. 9, 2004<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then, they were on the table<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Administration aides yesterday also didn’t rule out expanding the amount of wages subject to the payroll tax. — Wall Street Journal, Feb. 3, 2005<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then, they were off the table<\/a> again.<\/p>\n

“[The president] does believe we should not increase payroll taxes.” — Scott McClellan, February 10, 2005<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then, they were on the table<\/a> again.<\/p>\n

President Bush says he has not ruled out raising taxes on those who earn more than $90,000 a year to help bolster Social Security’s finances. — AP, Wednesday<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Trial balloons, contradictory statements, bi-partisan criticism, policy positions that are all over the map. Let’s all say it together: the White House’s Social Security scheme is in disarray<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can appreciate why congressional Republicans are all worked up over the president’s most recent trial balloon about raising payroll taxes, but they shouldn’t be too worried about the White House sticking to any preconceived ideas — they don’t appear to have any. First, an increase in payroll taxes was off the table. “We will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}