Once again the country is being held hostage by congress. Most Americans will get a lump of coal in their Christmas stocking. Postponing decisions or votes keeps us in a constant state of confusion (remember the VA funding fee fiasco from November). The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which was due to expire on December 16th, was temporarly extended through May 2012 last week. Failure to extend this program would have made it impossible to fund loans in a flood zone. This was due to be extended for five years, but it will be revisited next spring.
The payroll tax debate is a total farce. Instead of debating the cost and benefits of this tax cut, and ways to fund it, the bills are loaded down with other garbage that have no relationship to the issue. Most members of congress don't think they should ever raise taxes on their big doners but they have no problem increasing fees for the average American. Tax increases BAD, fee increases GOOD. Any benefit to the average American has to be accompanied by an even bigger benefit to corporate doners.
Even if the payroll tax extension is passed, the decrease will come at a big cost, both socially and economically. They want to increase fees for mortgages sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (an average of $20.00 per month for a $250,000 loan) to help pay for this cut.
They want to give their doners another year of business tax credits for the purchase of new machinery while they want to cut unemployment benefits from 99 weeks to 79 weeks.
They want to block any effort to restrict emmisions from industrial boilers while they reduce the availability of free television. Included in this bill is the right to sell off television band width, which will reduce the amount of available channels (turn free TV to pay TV).
They want the Keystone Excel Pipeline to be permitted which will generate millions of dollars for their doners while they freeze Federal employee wages and require them to pay more for their health care and pensions.
They want to require applicants for assistance to be drug tested. In my opinion, we should require mandatory drug testing for all members of congress (they must be high on something to continue promoting this level of stupidity).
Guest Author Randy Kelly is a Mortgage Banker and Finance Author with Peoples Mortgage. You can reach him online anytime by clicking here.
The IRS just released a bulletin regarding the extension of the payroll tax cut. More information can be found on the IRS web site listed below;
Payroll Tax Cut Temporarily Extended into 2012
IR-2011-124, Dec. 23, 2011
Follow this link to read IRS News Bulletin --> http://1.usa.gov/tbXOKL
Posted by: VanEd | December 23, 2011 at 01:13 PM