Congress Extends Payroll Tax Cut! Let's Ruin The Fun With Grating Cynicism

Both the House and Senate voted to extend the payroll tax cut another 10 months today. Democrats will be screaming from the Kenyan mountaintops about this great legislative victory of theirs, this "game-changer"! So let's go through what an allegedly important Democratic legislative victory looks like in the year 2012.

• An big "temporary" tax cut.

• An big "temporary" tax cut that may help the economy for a few months now but which is probably locked in forever, since it's an extension of the previous year's "temporary" tax cut and Democrats were only able to secure it by constantly repeating the very Republican-y message, "Pass this or everyone's taxes will go up next year." Does anyone think that this "temporary" tax cut will be allowed to expire if/when the economy recovers or ever? We wonder if anyone in the Democratic party has a plan for handling this fresh new increase in long-term structural deficits that isn't "Oops, I guess we'll have to end Social Security now, who coulda known?" (If we'd just left that at "We wonder if anyone in the Democratic party has a plan" then it would have answered itself.)

• An big "temporary" tax cut "funded by reducing government contributions for new federal employees’ pension pots." Uhh...

A big ol' temporary tax cut that will never expire, that passed thanks to Democrats' Faustian embrace of annoying Republican tax cut messaging, that unimpeded will ultimately hasten the end of major welfare state programs, that is currently being offset by cutting federal employee pensions.

 Also, too, drug-testing for unemployment benefits, and fewer unemployment benefits, etc.

...Let's hope it works?