Inside Obama's Twitter Blitz On the Payroll Tax

Hugh Pickens writes "Brandon Rittiman reports that White House officials launched a Twitter campaign Tuesday to put pressure on Congress to reach a deal extending the payroll-tax cut. Using the Twitter hashtag #40dollars, the White House successfully got thousands of people to respond and explain what a $40 cut to each paycheck would mean to them personally. By Wednesday morning, the #40dollars hashtag started 'trending,' which is what happens when Twitter's algorithms see a topic suddenly surge. It's not easy to create that kind of surge, but the White House has 2.5 million Twitter followers to call upon. Macon Phillips, the President's Director of Digital Strategy, says his team has managed to get a few Twitter topics to rise to the level of 'trending' before — most notably when they began tweeting about the death of Osama bin Laden. 'What's very important about a social-media campaign like this is that regular people are making the point about how this would affect them. It's not us here in Washington trying to argue on their behalf.' says Phillips. 'The #40dollars campaign puts a face on that amount to demonstrate the payroll tax cut's real-world impact on middle-class families.'"

Comments

*yawn*

[Anonymous Coward]

The disagreement was never over the payroll tax holiday. The disagreement was over how to pay for it. The President's initial proposal was to pay for it with the millionaire's surtax, which he knew that Republicans opposed before he proposed it.

For Democrats who are pretending to not understand, this would be the equivalent of the Republicans proposing to pay for it by slashing Obama Care, and then accusing the President of being against the payroll tax holiday when he came out against the legislation.

For some reason, the media has used this as a huge opportunity to bash Republicans. Want to know why Republicans don't want to extend the tax holiday for two months? They don't want to go through the same media circus again in two months.

The bias of our media is pathetic. The stupidity of our population is tragic. The fate of our people is obvious. Next year we elect the last President of the United States. We face serious problems in the next five years, and the media has successfully kept anyone remotely competent out of the race.

This is going to be hilarious.

Re:*yawn*

[burning-toast]

And pay a disproportionally large amount of tax. First they fall into the highest tax bracket of 35% then pay AMT on top of that, plus capital gains on anything else.

You can be certain that no millionaire pays the full %35 on income tax. They would have to be completely ignorant and stupid about how to handle money.

I work in the financial industry surrounded by people IN that income bracket. What they do is transfer funds or take their income directly into non-liquid (non-cash) capital like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real-estate, stock ownership whatever. Then they roll their cash over, and over, and over again by transferring it between these assets when they are performing well. This increases the total assets they own without it showing up on their "income" sheet. They bankroll money generating schemes and occasionally start small businesses (mostly geared around how to make themselves more money), but rarely do they start something like a public service industry or a manufacturing firm fresh. They would more likely buy an existing company, layoff 1/2 of the staff, reduce worker pay, "increase productivity", offshore any software development, etc. and then sell their stakes in the company (frequently in exchange for other non-cash assets). This is exactly how Romney has made his money and is exactly where he holds his cash (assets within other companies). He is living off of the dividends payed to him for this sort of work to this day. He no longer "works" for those companies, but he does draw a paycheck. I can assure you he has never done any of the work OF the companies he was employed by either. It's always been in a "how to maximize profits by gutting the existing setup and doing something different" sort of a position.

When they need some liquid assets (cash) they will take it out and pay a 15% capital gains tax or they will run it through another tax shelter (like off-shore accounts). I have known some to pay each other directly in non-liquid assets (trade a ton of stock in something for real-estate, no one made "income" that way).

Most do not create jobs, instead they use their personal income to steam-roll gathering more personal wealth. They buy holdings, stakes, yachts, real estate, and other assets.

Unless you are part of the 1% you cannot adequately defend the 1% as you apparently do NOT have any idea how simplistic your life becomes when you stop living on your paycheck and instead live on your dividends from your existing assets (which are further increasing in value on their own over time). This is exactly why many of the top earners have said, point blank, "Go ahead and tax me more, I can take it!", because you know what happens? They pay their additional on the taxable direct income (which frequently is a fraction of their total assets gained / year) and it still doesn't matter to them because most of their big assets and holdings are tied up in real property, stocks, bonds, etc.

Just let me ask you how many jobs it creates if you buy 100,000 shares of stock in a company outside of it's IPO. How many does it create when you sell them?

Simple answer: none, other than hiring a stock broker. But you CAN live on the dividends of those shares (depending on the company) and you can make a killing if you keep moving your stock holdings around in the market.

The extremely wealthy really don't tend to invest in human capital that much, it's not reliable enough ROI.

- Toast

Re:But

[ninetyninebottles]

The Republicans (and apparently the President) wanted the tax holiday extended all year. The Democrats talked them down to two months.

You should really pay more attention. The Democrats presented a plan to extend the payroll cut for a year and keep medicare payouts at the same level. The Republicans presented a plan to extend the payroll cut for a year while at the same time guaranteeing the oil companies can build a pipeline from Alaska to the Gulf through protected wildlife refuges. Both groups compromised on extending it for two months (with some republicans trying to stall it) in order that they might argue more about which additional things should be added. Mostly, the Democrats have been trying to pass the cuts while the Republicans are refusing until they get the oil company benefits they promised lobbyists.

Claims that it is the Democrats that are preventing the passage of these tax cuts on a longer time frame is either disingenuous or reflects a twisted perception of reality. Stop watching Fox "News".

Re:But

[porges]

In case it really has to be said yet again: the poor often have no federal income tax liability, but if they are working poor, they still have to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, which are deducted from one's paycheck, which is why they're called payroll taxes. These taxes are deducible from gross income, but you don't get the taxes themselves back on April 15th. And it was these taxes that the current tax cut is about.