House GOP Hold Tax Cut Hostage to Keystone XL Pipeline, Based on Discredited Job Nbrs

[boutons_deux]

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/09/386469/romm/2011/11/06/362106/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/jobs_chart_independent.png

The Speaker of the House John Boehner has just announced that he plans to hold payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits hostage to a bill that would rubber stamp approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. This legislation, proposed by Rep. Lee Terry (Neb.), is nothing like the bill the House voted on in the summer.

Rather than requiring an expedited decision by the Administration, Terry’s new bill would require automatic approval of Keystone XL in thirty days, giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) authority to permit (but not decline) a Presidential permit. In the process, it also exempts TransCanada from having to abide by the same laws that domestic pipelines do – laws intended to protect the nation’s land and water.

Speaker Boehner’s reason for pushing such a bad bill is his belief that the American people will mistake Keystone XL for a national jobs package. It isn’t. The House leadership is echoing discredited and widely exaggerated job numbers for the project. The State Department found that the pipeline would only create between 5,000 to 6,000 temporary construction jobs and only 20 permanent jobs (pg. 3.10-79, 80). Even the pipeline’s sponsor TransCanada has admitted that the pipeline would create no more than a few hundred permanent jobs. The 13.3 million Americans who are out of work will not thank Speaker Boehner when they realize that rather than seriously working on their behalf to advance national job creation, he used their distress to try to get a pipeline that is for the benefit of Big Oil.


http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/09/386469/house-gop-jobs-bill-hostage-to-keystone-xl-pipeline-job-numbers/#comment-360798

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The other BIG REPUG LIE is that paying for SS cut extension with tax on millionaires would screw small business owners as job creators.

NPR tried to find such small business job creators who 1) were millionaires 2) said the tax would stop them from creating jobs. NPR found nobody like that.

anybody know any such small business millionaires?

[Wild Cobra]

So are you for or against the Keystone Pipeline?

[boutons_deux]

I'm against.

No jobs to speak of, huge risk to USA people, water, lands, and the refined products out of Port Arthur enterprise zone will be exported to Central/South America. USA risk, oilco gain.

[boutons_deux]

Republicans And Business Groups Unable To Find One ‘Job Creator’ Who Opposes A Tax On Millionaires

Yesterday, Republicans again shot down an extension of a payroll tax break for middle-class families due to their objection to a 1.9 percent tax increase on the top 0.2 percent of income earners. Naturally, Republicans are recycling their spurious claim that taxing America’s millionaires will somehow hit small businesses and stifle job creation. “It’s just intuitive that, you know, if you’re somebody who’s in business and you get hit with a tax increase, it’s going to be that much harder, I think, to make investments that are going to lead to job creation,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD).

Hoping for more than Thune’s intuition, NPR put out a request to Republican offices and the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax to find business owners who’d be affected. Unsurprisingly, Republican leadership and the business groups came up empty:

We wanted to talk to business owners who would be affected. So, NPR requested help from numerous Republican congressional offices, including House and Senate leadership. They were unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.

So we went to the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax. Again, three days after putting in a request, none of them was able to find someone for us to talk to. A group called the Tax Relief Coalition said the problem was finding someone willing to talk about their personal taxes on national radio.

There’s good reason why Republicans came up empty. Just 2 percent of people with any business income, large or small, would be affected by this tax increase.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/09/385989/republicans-job-creators-taxes/

[CosmicCowboy]

It's a win win win win.

Keystone pipeline
Extension of unemployment benefits
Extension of SS witholding cuts
Medicare doc fix

All wrapped up in a bow.

Democrats and Republicans will vote for it.

[Wild Cobra]

Republicans And Business Groups Unable To Find One ‘Job Creator’ Who Opposes A Tax On Millionaires

LOL...

You can's find what you don't look for.

[coyotes_geek]

I distinctly remember boutons saying he's against the payroll tax cut. Now he has a problem with republicans obstructing it? :lmao :lmao :lmao

lol boutons

[boutons_deux]

I'm against the SS tax cut.

I'm against Repug extortion and XL pipeline

GFY

[TeyshaBlue]

Lol boutons
lol thinkprogress

[Wild Cobra]

I distinctly remember boutons saying he's against the payroll tax cut. Now he has a problem with republicans obstructing it? :lmao :lmao :lmao

lol boutons
I think he was against it because before, it was a tax credit for the two years prior to shave off $400 of all wage earners. This way, anyone making up to $6,451.61 didn't pay any SS. When they changed it to changing the SS insurance premium from 6.2% to 4.2%, a person had to make $20,000 before they see that $400 in savings. I extrapolate from that, that he makes less than $20,000.

[boutons_deux]

I was NEVER for the SS tax cut, linking SS to the current economic conditions. Huge Obama mistake.

The SS beneficiaries still need their checks no matter what the economy is doing.

[SnakeBoy]

It's a win win win win.

Keystone pipeline
Extension of unemployment benefits
Extension of SS witholding cuts
Medicare doc fix

All wrapped up in a bow.

Democrats and Republicans will vote for it.

Those two aren't wins, imo. And your forgetting Obama doesn't want anything to pass. It would be contrary to his "do nothing congress" campaign strategy.

[JohnnyMarzetti]

The GOP is clueless and will go to any lengths to block the payroll tax holiday extention. What is sad is that republicans go along with the clear diss of the middle class.

[CosmicCowboy]

The GOP is clueless and will go to any lengths to block the payroll tax holiday extention. What is sad is that republicans go along with the clear diss of the middle class.

They just proposed a bill to extend them.

Are you THAT stupid?

Democrats will vote for that bill.

It will BLOW through the house and the it's up to Obama and Reed to say that their resistance to North American energy independence trumps the payroll tax extension. The Senate Dems will abandon Reed and it will come down to Obama having to veto and he will fold like a cheap lawn chair.

It's surprisingly brilliant for Boehner.

[CosmicCowboy]

Those two aren't wins, imo. And your forgetting Obama doesn't want anything to pass. It would be contrary to his "do nothing congress" campaign strategy.

Thats the bait and the rats will eat the cheese.

[Th'Pusher]

They just proposed a bill to extend them.

Are you THAT stupid?

Democrats will vote for that bill.

It will BLOW through the house and the it's up to Obama and Reed to say that their resistance to North American energy independence trumps the payroll tax extension. The Senate Dems will abandon Reed and it will come down to Obama having to veto and he will fold like a cheap lawn chair.

It's surprisingly brilliant for Boehner.

You don't actually believe building the keystone xl pipeline will bring America any closer to energy independence, do you?

[spursncowboys]

It's a win win win win.

Keystone pipeline
Extension of unemployment benefits
Extension of SS witholding cuts
Medicare doc fix

All wrapped up in a bow.

Democrats and Republicans will vote for it.

Everyone was already ok with the Keystone pipeline, even BHO. That is until he realized it was a political win to cower away from making a decision until after the election.

[CosmicCowboy]

You don't actually believe building the keystone xl pipeline will bring America any closer to energy independence, do you?

:lmao

Lets see...oil from Libya or Iraq, or even Saudi Arabia?

OR oil from Canada...

even hard core progressives should see the logic THERE

[Wild Cobra]

:lmao

Lets see...oil from Libya or Iraq, or even Saudi Arabia?

OR oil from Canada...

even hard core progressives should see the logic THERE
I don't know how important this is. Why wouldn't railcars be a good way to bring oil from Canada?

[CosmicCowboy]

I don't know how important this is. Why wouldn't railcars be a good way to bring oil from Canada?

Is this really a serious question?

[CosmicCowboy]

You realize that the US is already spiderwebbed with hundreds of major pipelines and tens of thousands of minor pipelines including pipelines that already cross the same area as the proposed Keystone pipeline, right? Obama's resistance is purely political to pander to his environmental wacko base before the election.

http://www.theodora.com/pipelines/united_states_pipelines_map.jpg

[Th'Pusher]

:lmao

Lets see...oil from Libya or Iraq, or even Saudi Arabia?

OR oil from Canada...

even hard core progressives should see the logic THERE

Too bad most of the oil from the tar sands is going to be exported and TransCanada’s refused to agree to a condition requiring the oil to be used in the United States.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VucRPHJtvGU

[boutons_deux]

The XL oil is going to a free enterprise (untaxed) zone in S/E TX for export to Central/South America.

[JoeChalupa]

If this makes it to Obama's desk he'll sign it. Yeah, his base will be upset but to cut the payroll tax cut extention and create jobs it is a no brainer, IMHO.

[CosmicCowboy]

It's going to an existing refinery there. It is not cast in stone where the refined products goes after that. Obviously export is an option but not a mandate.

[Th'Pusher]

It's going to an existing refinery there. It is not cast in stone where the refined products goes after that. Obviously export is an option but not a mandate.

They want to get it to Port Arthur because it is within a Foreign Trade Zone where they can export tax free. Trans Canada has already admitted most of the oil will be exported. Valero laid out their export strategy to their investors.

[CosmicCowboy]

They want to get it to Port Arthur because it is within a Foreign Trade Zone where they can export tax free. Trans Canada has already admitted most of the oil will be exported. Valero laid out their export strategy to their investors.

Uh....are you aware that Transcanada is just the transport company and not the owner of the oil?

Are you aware that the recipients of the purchased oil on the gulf coast are for the most part american companies?

Are you aware that since WWII, exporting refined petroleum products has been a huge business?

Would you agree that if the middle east blew up and Iran closed the straits of Hormuz that it would be damned nice to have access to that Canadian oil?

If you don't like tar sands oil, then fine...but trying to attack it by attacking the pipeline is a bitch move...they will just get it to the world market some other way...and then the US won't EVER have easy access to it...

Trying to make the pipeline company "promise" that all products produced by the oil transported in the pipeline would be sold in the US was just a bitch move and brazen bloviation.

[boutons_deux]

JC, create what jobs?

[Das Texan]

building a pipeline to link the oil fields of canada with the refiners in the states is beyond smart.

its a bitch and a pain in the ass to secure the right of ways, so if these people think the shovels are hitting the ground in 2012, they are delusional.

the total jobs is probably on the higher end, though they are probably just factoring in jobs for the actual building of the pipelines and not the securing of the right of way access, either through right of way agreements or eminent domain proceedings in the courts. The actual building of this thing is going to be easy compared to getting all of that secured.