Keep the Bush Tax Cuts for a Couple of Years, But Reshuffle the Dollars
It seems increasingly likely that Congress will extend most, if not all, of the Bush tax cuts for at least a year or two. As the economy shows growing signs of softening, lawmakers are less and less likely to take steps that will be seen as “raising taxes.” But there is a way Congress could maintain the magnitude of the Bush tax cuts while moving around some dollars to enhance their short-term economic benefit. The goal of this shift would be to focus tax cuts on those most likely to spend the money.
Here’s the problem: The Treasury Department figures that temporarily extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts would reduce federal revenues by roughly $200 billion in Fiscal 2011 and $260 billion in 2012. For technical reasons, those numbers may be off a bit, but you get the drift. Of that, about $75 billion would go to top-bracket taxpayers ($35 billion in 2011 and $40 billion in 2012). We know that higher income households are more likely to bank the cash than spend it. As a result, tax cuts for these high-earners will do relatively little to boost the economy in the short run.
So why not take that $75 billion and give it to those who are more likely to spend it—people with low- and moderate incomes. It would be simple to do. Congress could, for example, expand the Earned Income Credit. Or it could continue a scaled-back version of President Obama’s Making Work Pay (MWP) tax credit that is also due to expire at the end of the year.
My colleague Elaine Maag wrote recently about the benefits of extending a modified version of the MWP credit. But Elaine got me thinking: Instead of continuing the credit in addition to the Bush tax cuts, why not use it to replace some of the least stimulative provisions of the 2001 and 2003 tax laws. Btw, Making Work Pay also benefits some small businesses, including many self-employed people: Keep in mind the average amount of business income reported on individual tax returns is only about $40,000, far below the MWP threshhold.
Extending Making Work Pay would cost about $60 billion-a-year. But by trimming it, and focusing its benefits on low- and moderate income households, Congress could fit these tax cuts into a two-year $75 billion bucket and still provide a modest boost to the economy.
There is a potential political benefit to moving these dollars around as well. Republicans could say they extended all of the Bush tax cuts (at least in magnitude, if not in specifics). And Democrats could take credit for retargeting those upper-bracket dollars.
Economists generally agree that Washington is in a serious fiscal jam. It needs to boost an economy that may again be running out of steam. But given long-term deficit challenges, it also must conserve precious federal dollars. In this environment, it is imperative that policymakers get the biggest bang for the every stimulus buck.
So instead of squabbling over whether or not to continue $75 billion in tax cuts, Congress should simply retarget the dollars to those most likely to spend them.
Do You Owe More Than $100,000 In Tax?
Often, before your tax problem is assigned to a revenue officer for collection “in the field”, tax collection is handled by a branch of the Internal Revenue Service called “ACS” (Automatic Collection Service). This is where the computer generated notices come from. ACS has developed this check sheet to help expedite the resolution on accounts in the Large Dollar Unit of ACS. The check sheet is for those accounts with a balance due of $100,000 or more.
To expedite the resolution on accounts in the Large Dollar Unit, please have the following information available when contacting ACS.
• Valid Power of Attorney (Form 2848) covering all tax periods
• Explain in detail why the taxpayer is not able to full pay or borrow to full pay
• Completed Collection Information Statement (Form 433- A, B or F)
• Number of individual’s living in the house hold
• Value of 401K/Retirement
• Copies of delinquent tax returns and /or ASFR returns
• Rental income
• Spouse’s income and source with name/address/phone number
• Three months of current bank statements (all accounts)
• Investment income
• Year make of vehicles, value, equity, balance owed, and monthly payments
• Employer’s information including work number
• Secured loan(s) – amount of loan and remaining balance(s)
• Life insurance policies, (whole or term), any borrowing ability? And/or value of policy
• Profit and Loss statements for self-employed taxpayers
• Three months of current pay stubs for both the taxpayer and the taxpayer’s wife
• Out-of-pocket medical expenses
• Commission statement
• Value of all property and/or available equity
• Substantiation of Court ordered payments
• Substantiation of payments being made
• Pension income and/or Social Security income
For additional help, call a tax attorney. Call Mitchell A. Port at (310) 559-5259.
Uncompassionate Economics: Blaming Unemployment Compensation for Our Job Woes
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning, Robert Barro lays blame for the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate squarely on President Obama’s doorstep. The outspoken Harvard economist asserts that unemployment would stand at 6.8 percent—well below today’s 9.5 percent—if only the president and Congress hadn’t extended unemployment compensation to 99 weeks.
Barro does acknowledge the need for compassion in tough times:
“In a recession, it is more likely that individual unemployment reflects weak economic conditions, rather than individual decisions to choose leisure over work. Therefore, it is reasonable during a recession to adopt a more generous unemployment-insurance program.”
Yet, he goes on to say, unemployed workers would find jobs more quickly and companies would boost hiring faster if we sharply constrained the maximum duration of jobless benefits and held down the taxes that pay for them. Barro cites as evidence what happened to long-term unemployment in 1982. Then the unemployment rate peaked at 10.8 percent, higher that in our current Great Recession. Congress extended the maximum duration of unemployment compensation that year to 39 weeks—60 weeks less than the current limit. The mean length of jobless spells hit 21.2 weeks and 24.5 percent of workers had had gone jobless for more than 26 weeks, compared to 35.2 weeks and 46.2 percent this past June. Today’s historically high numbers result entirely from the 99-week limit, says Barro. Cut that back to 39 weeks and the jobless would find work, dropping the overall unemployment rate by nearly a third to 6.8 percent.
That conclusion might follow if the two situations fit economists’ simplifying assumption of ceteris paribus—“all else the same.” But the two recessions, though both horrible, differ significantly. Both were worldwide but there was no financial market meltdown in 1982: firms could borrow, albeit at extraordinarily high interest rates. High mortgage rates, approaching 20 percent, caused house sales to fall by roughly half in 1982, but foreclosures didn’t soar as they have this time around. And firms weren’t sitting on piles of cash, unwilling to invest until the economy strengthens.
Research by Rob Valletta and Katherine Kuan at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco suggests that the effect of extended benefits would be much smaller than Barro’s estimate, probably less than half a percentage point. They found only small differences between how quickly job losers (who qualify for unemployment benefits) and job quitters (who don’t) find new jobs, suggesting that duration of benefits has only a small effect on today’s high unemployment rate.
Sure, people may take a little longer to find a job when they have benefits to support them. But those benefits are meager, averaging less than $300 a week. That benefit may lead low-wage and secondary workers to wait longer to take a job but not primary and more skilled workers. The problem is that jobs just aren’t available—the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports only one job opening for every five unemployed workers. That’s more than double the next highest ratio since the BLS started collecting data on job openings but that was only in 2000 so we can’t compare the value with 1982. Regardless of how today’s ratio stacks up against the past, cutting benefits off earlier won’t change that ratio or create new jobs. But it would leave unemployed workers with less cash, leading them to cut spending and weakening our already anemic economic recovery.
Given the continued weakness of the economy and the dearth of available work, now’s the time to emphasize compassion and defer hard-hearted economic efficiency.
Obama’s Tax Reform Panel: A Missed Opportunity
You buy what you think will be a state-of-the-art GPS device to give you driving directions. The gizmo was designed by a committee of the nation’s smartest highway engineers. But instead of telling you to turn right now, the e-voice says something like this: “You could turn right now. It would be better than going straight, which is a really bad choice but, on the other hand, the road might be a little bumpier and besides, you could also get where you want to go by turning left three blocks from here. So I’m not actually recommending what to do.”
That’s the feeling I got reading the long-delayed Report on Tax Reform Options from the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB in Washington-ese). The paper, approved by the panel this afternoon, is filled with lots of useful information about our flawed tax system but leads nowhere. There are no recommendations. No revenue estimates. And no ownership by President Obama, even though he picked the panel’s members and staffed it with White House aides.
As a result, this report is a huge missed opportunity. Obama might have used this exercise to jump-start a debate over fundamental tax reform. Instead, the report does nothing to fill the policy vacuum that is being filled by an argument over what to do about the decade-old Bush tax cuts.
Imagine if Obama used this group to start the process of doing what President Reagan did, develop a broad-based reform plan. Or even if he had allowed the panel to design full-blown alternative tax structures—a step George W. Bush took in 2005 (although, it must be noted that Bush ultimately ignored the suggestions of his own commission).
This panel might have had some clout. Former Fed chairman Paul Volcker headed the group, which included economic heavyweights such as Marty Feldstein and Laura Tyson, as well as business executives such as John Doerr and Jeff Immelt. But Obama hamstrung them from the beginning by prohibiting the committee from considering any changes that would raise taxes on those making less than $250,000-a-year. He also limited its charge to simplification, compliance, and corporate taxes—the first two, at least, relatively low-hanging fruit.
There is nothing wrong with the report’s focus: These are important issues, though obviously not the whole story. But per White House instructions, the committee makes no recommendations at all, instead merely describing general options for change and outlining both the benefits and disadvantages to each.
As if that was not enough, the report comes with not one but two disclaimers:
First: “It is important to emphasize at the outset that the PERAB is an outside advisory panel and is not part of the Obama Administration. Our report is meant to provide helpful advice to the Administration as it considers options for tax reform in the future.”
And if you didn’t get it, there is also this: “The report does not represent Administration policy.”
Thus, the study was thrown under the bus.
While there is almost nothing in this paper that has not been hashed over by prior studies, including the Bush commission, the PERAB report does a nice job describing what is wrong with the current tax code. And it includes some valuable hints, at least, about possible future policy choices. But, in the end, it does little to advance a debate the nation desperately needs to have.
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Comments on Social Security Reform
We’ve gotten some interesting comments on our recent post about Social Security reform. In the post, we note that many reform options would slow the growth of benefits from one age cohort to the next, but not cut lifetime benefits relative to what people receive today. We didn’t focus on the specific issue of raising the retirement age, but used that option as an example of how benefits could continue to grow over time, but at a slower rate than what is currently being promised.
Regardless of the reform option in question, we certainly agree with those commenters who urged that we consider how reform might affect different groups in the population. We have long advocated proposals such as a minimum benefit level to maintain and increase progressivity—and offset the impact of other changes such as any increase in retirement age.
As a technical matter, however, it should be noted that adjusting the retirement age for life expectancy does not disproportionately affect lower-income groups, mainly because it does not affect disability insurance, and the disabled come disproportionately from lower-income groups. However, one should be debating the effects of the package as a whole on different groups—not one aspect of reform at a time.
The bottom line, though is that benefit reforms–whether increasing the retirement age, indexing benefit growth differently, or a variety of other schemes– can be designed so that on average lifetime benefits continue to increase over time, though at a slower rate. That still leaves open the issue of how to distribute any particular level of benefits.
Stand and Deliver: Do Lawmakers Want to Cut the Deficit or Not?
We will soon learn whether all the political talk about controlling the federal deficit is serious or just noise. The next several months will provide an acid test for those pols who are bloviating about out-of control government. My advice: Pay no attention whatever to what they say, just watch how they vote.
Here are three issues to watch:
Pentagon Spending. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who unlike most cabinet secretaries seems serious about reducing waste in his own department, would shift $100 billion in overhead over the next five years (from a cumulative budget of more than $3 trillion). Be clear, even Gates is not proposing to cut overall Pentagon spending. But he recognizes that in what is likely to become an era of constrained federal spending, the Defense Deptartment needs to use its funds more wisely. So he’d make the military a bit less top heavy, fire some contractors, and eliminate a few useless weapons systems. His most controversial proposal: Eliminate the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., which despite its grand name commands no forces at all.
Gates’ proposal, which any business person would recognize as eminently sensible, has so far succeeded only in bringing Virginia’s Democrats and Republicans together—to howl in outrage. They will try to kill it at the first opportunity–maybe this year, maybe in 2011. Even self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives such as Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA) are lining up to bury the idea.
Before the Defense Secretary rolled out his scheme, Cantor wrote this:
“The time has come for Congress to finally show political courage. American families have been forced to face tough financial realities and make difficult but necessary decisions. Why should their government act any differently?”
Hint: “Because it preserves political pork for my home state” is not a good answer.
Medicare: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act contains plenty of new health spending. But it also includes a provision that holds the promise of slowing Medicare growth. According to the new law, if Medicare exceeds certain spending targets, an independent board will recommend ways to reduce furture costs. This board hardly has a free hand. It is barred from proposing changes that would ration care, raise taxes, limit eligibility or benefits, or increase cost-sharing. In other words, about all it can propose is cutting payments to providers. Still, it is something.
Sadly, even these small steps are too much for top Senate Republicans who introduced the “Health Care Bureaucrats Elimination Act” that would abolish the Board. Once again, self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives such as John Cornyn (R-TX), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and even Tom Coburn (R-OK) are out to kill a modest effort to control government spending. Their bill may never get a vote. But it should. I’d love to see the roll call.
The Bush tax cuts: TaxVox has had plenty to say about this one already. But the argument we’ll hear this fall is pretty simple: Do we want to permanently extend all the Bush tax cuts and increase the deficit by $3.7 trillion over the next decade, do we want to do so for all but the highest earners and increase the deficit by merely $3 trillion, or do we want to extend some or all of the Bush tax cuts for just a year or two and raise the deficit by a few hundred billion dollars? Hardly anyone on Capitol Hill would let them expire.
Watch these votes, and learn who is really a fiscal conservative and who is not.
Save the Making Work Pay Tax Credit but Narrow It
While Washington seems obsessed with the fate of the Bush tax cuts, it has paid little attention to a soon-to-expire Obama tax cut: the Making Work Pay credit (MWP). Like the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, this credit, which was enacted as part of the 2009 stimulus, is also scheduled to expire at the end of this year. President Obama has proposed extending it through 2011. But Congress has been largely silent about what it plans to do, in part because extending the credit for another year would reduce federal revenues by more than $60 billion The fully-refundable MWP provides workers with a credit of 6.2 percent of earnings, up to $400 ($800 for married couples). The credit phases out at a rate of 2 percent of income over $75,000 ($150,000 if married). The credit was originally proposed as a worker subsidy based on individual earnings. As enacted, MWP follows the lead of almost every other provision in the tax code and is based on joint earnings in the case of couples. This year, the credit will deliver almost $60 billion. When Congress was debating the stimulus bill, MWP scored TPC’s top grade. That wasn’t because everyone here at TPC was excited to see Obama make good on his promise to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans. The credit scored high because it did two things that TPC analysts felt were essential to economic stimulus: it raised take-home pay quickly via a change in the withholding tables (subject to some controversy) and it did so for people who would spend it. Of course, our enthusiasm for the policy was dampened by the fact that the credit went to many higher income families who would save much or all of it, rather than spend it and boost our then struggling economy. Congress will soon have to get serious about dealing with the expiring tax provisions, and MWP demands a close look. Although I’ve previously advocated for an individual worker credit, MWP doesn’t fit the bill. It does, however, provide the only substantial work incentive for families without children that covers a reasonable range of earnings. (Childless families can also qualify for an EITC worth up to $457, but that credit applies to only a very narrow income range.) In the spirit of supporting work incentives while also recognizing our current fiscal situation, perhaps Congress should consider extending MWP only for low-income families. This might be just what the doctor ordered.
Probate Attorney’s Fees In California
In California, an attorney handling your probate case gets paid a statutory fee as well as a possible extraordinary fee. California statutory probate fees have been discussed elsewhere in this blog. In this particular blog post, I will discuss extraordinary fees.
The Los Angeles Superior Court has issued guidelines on attorney compensation. Here is what it says about extraordinary fees:
CALIFORNIA PROBATE CODE sections 10801, 10811 – Allowance of additional compensation for “extraordinary services . . . in an amount the court determines is just and reasonable.”
8.1.1 Sales or mortgages of real or personal property
8.1.2 Contested or litigated claims against the estate
8.1.3 The defense of a will contested after its admission to probate. In a post-probate contest, the estate may be required to pay the cost of defense even if the defense is NOT successful, i.e., Section 10801 expenses and Section 10811 expenses can be awarded against and made payable from the estate so long as the representative’s defense was in GOOD FAITH.
8.1.4 The successful defense of a will contested before its admission to probate Although expenses in preprobate contests require a “successful defense”, the term is construed broadly. It matters not whether the “success” was by judgment after trial OR BY PRETRIAL SETTLEMENT, or whether the representative fails to “win” on all issues. So long as the defense BENEFITTED the estate — in the sense of preserving decedent’s desires and intentions as expressed in the will — it is “successful”. Compensation payable by estate where contest settled by dismissal with prejudice; immaterial that estate did not prevail on challenge to contestant’s standing.
8.1.5 Preparation of estate, inheritance, income, sales or other tax returns or the adjustment, litigation, or payment of any of said taxes
8.1.6 Litigation involving estate property
8.1.7 Carrying on of the decedent’s business pursuant to COURT ORDER. If not pursuant to Court order, there is no “guarantee” that extraordinary compensation will be approved; the result will likely turn on the circumstances involved and whether continuing the business was profitable to the estate.
8.1.8 “Other litigation or special services that are necessary for the executor or administrator to prosecute, defend or perform.”
8.2 Probate Code section 8547 – Allowance of compensation to an attorney out of estate funds for extraordinary services to a special administrator
8.3 Probate Code section 10953 – Allowance of compensation for the extraordinary service of filing an accounting for the administration of a deceased, incompetent or absconding representative by his attorney, or the attorney of record for the estate, when such an accounting is required
8.4 Probate Code section 11003 – Recovery of compensation and expenses for “bad faith” contest or opposition to contest
8.4.1 If the court determines that a contest to the representative’s account was brought “WITHOUT REASONABLE CAUSE AND IN BAD FAITH”, the court may award against the contestant the compensation, and costs of the personal representative, as well as other expenses and costs of litigation, including attorney compensation, incurred to defend the account. The amount so awarded is a charge against the contestant’s interest in the estate, and the contestant is personally liable for any amount remaining unsatisfied. (Emphasis added)
8.4.2 Conversely, upon determining that the REPRESENTATIVE’S OPPOSITION to a contest was “WITHOUT REASONABLE CAUSE AND IN BAD FAITH”, the court may award the CONTESTANT the costs and other expenses, including attorney compensation, incurred to contest the account. The award is a charge against the compensation or other interest of the personal representative in the estate, and the representative is personally liable and on the bond (if any) for any amount that remains unsatisfied.
8.5 Probate Code section 11624 – Costs of preliminary distribution paid by distributee or estate in proportions determined by Court.
8.6 Paralegal Services. The above sections (except sections 11003 and 11624) provide that extraordinary compensation for probate counsel may also include compensation for extraordinary services performed by the attorney’s PARALEGAL under the direction and supervision of the attorney. The application for such compensation must set forth the “hours spent and services performed by the paralegal.”
8.6.1 It is doubtful that the Legislature intended to equate “legal secretary” work with work performed by a “paralegal” (the Legislature expressly chose the term “paralegal” rather than “legal secretary.”) Thus, to justify payment for paralegal services, counsel should set forth IN DETAIL, the paralegal’s EXPERIENCE AND CREDENTIALS.
8.6.2 The amount requested for the extraordinary services of the attorney and paralegal COMBINED must not exceed the amount that would be appropriate if the attorney had provided the services WITHOUT paralegal assistance.
Will Social Security Reform Cut Benefits?
Will Social Security reform cut benefits? That’s highly unlikely. It’s more likely that reform will simply cut the rate of growth in benefits.
Social Security reformers have often thought about reform in terms of the annual benefits they want to give people. The complication with this approach is that it ignores the enormous increase in the number of years that benefits have been paid as people retire much earlier and live longer than they did when Social Security was first created.
That’s why it helps to focus on lifetime benefits—how much will be paid over a normal lifespan—rather than just looking at the annual benefit. That way, reformers can get a better sense of how much they want total benefits to rise and, for a given cost, the tradeoff involved as more years of retirement support reduce the level of annual benefits payable.
Fortunately, CBO’s July 2010 report on Social Security Reform Options helps put a focus on lifetime benefits by showing how much they would grow with no reform and under various reforms that adjust benefits.
Consider scheduled benefits, or how much the current benefit formula projects would go to future generations. This assumes that current tax rates will generate enough income to cover those benefits, which they will not.
CBO projects that scheduled lifetime benefits will grow substantially since the current system increases benefits automatically for future cohorts as real wages grow and people live longer. In today’s dollars, CBO calculates that a single person born in 1960 (assumed to retire at age 65 in 2025) who earns close to median wages over their lifetime is scheduled to receive approximately $250,000 in lifetime Social Security benefits, while a similar earner born in 2000, expected to retire in 2065, would receive around $420,000.
On the other hand, if Social Security only pays out what the current tax rate can fund, lifetime benefits still grow, but only to $320,000. That simple calculation tells us that, regardless of the level of tax increase that Social Security reform might entail, it is extremely unlikely that real lifetime benefits will ever fall below their current levels. (There still could be a transition issue in the near-term because of rapid impact of baby boom retirement, but the basic conclusion holds.).
Now consider some of the benefit cut options in the CBO report. For instance, CBO projects that raising the full retirement age to 70 would cover approximately half of the current imbalance in the system. The person retiring in 2025 would receive approximately $242,000 in lifetime benefits, and the person retiring in 2065 would receive $357,000—well above the $320,000 benefit payable to that cohort under the current system.
The basic point is simple: Social Security reform, almost no matter how designed, is likely to provide higher levels of lifetime benefits for future cohorts of retirees compared to today’s retirees—just not as much as is scheduled under today’s unsustainable system.
Misrepresenting the Bush Tax Cuts, or the Return of Death Panels
The story goes that when Lyndon Johnson was losing his first congressional election he put out the word that his opponent was having sex with barnyard animals. An aide innocently warned Johnson that this wasn’t true. “Make the SOB deny it,” LBJ was said to have replied.
If you go to the Website of House Ways & Means Republicans, you will see this:
Meanwhile, Fox Business is running a graphic that includes another one of these ominous digital clocks, this time counting down to what it calls “the largest tax hike ever.”
All this drama is about the coming expiration of the Bush tax cuts, of course. But what else do these two allegations have in common? They are both utterly untrue.
To start, not a single important Democrat favors letting all the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year, as the Ways & Means Republicans allege. Ever since his campaign for president, Barack Obama has vowed not to raise taxes for anyone making $200,000 or less—a pledge I wish he had never made, but one he has nonetheless kept. His 2011 budget explicitly calls for extending nearly all of those tax cuts (except for the highest-earning 3 percent of taxpayers). Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT), Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-NV), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Ways & Means Committee chairman Sandy Levin (D-MI) all favor continuing the tax cuts, at least for the middle-class. Relative to current law, this would cut taxes by $3 trillion over 10 years. So to say that “on January 1, 2011, Democrats will drop a $3.8 trillion tax increase on American small businesses and families” is–not to put too fine a point on it–a lie.
The there is the matter of whether allowing all the Bush tax cuts to expire, would, in fact, be “the largest tax hike ever.”
By any fair measure, that’s not true either. To be sure, it would be a very big tax increase, raising revenues by about 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product. But the biggest ever? Not by a long shot. Back in 2006, Jerry Tempalski at the Treasury Department measured the relative size of all major tax bills just since 1940 (which fits pretty well into the definition of “ever.”).
This is what he found: The Revenue Act of 1941 raised taxes by an average annual rate of 2.2 percent of GDP, more than the impact of letting all the Bush tax cuts expire. The Revenue Act of 1942 was even bigger. It raised taxes by a whopping 5 percent of GDP. Remember, we used to pay for our wars in the old days, instead of leaving the bill to our grandchildren. And, in case you were wondering, the three major tax increase bills signed by President Reagan– TEFRA of 1982, the Social Security Amendments of 1983, and the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984–raised taxes by a combined 1.6 percent of GDP, not much less than what we are yelling about today.
Now, there is nothing new about this “biggest tax cut ever” canard. Republicans said it about President Clinton’s 1993 tax increase (which actually raised taxes by 0.63 percent of GDP). They trotted it out again in their campaign against Obama’s health bill. Myron Ebell at Human Events probably wins the breathless rhetoric award, however. He called last year’s House energy bill the “the biggest tax increase in world history.” Whew.
This isn’t to say Democrats won’t stoop to their own overheated hyperbole. Just listen to what some on the left say about efforts to reform Social Security. But there ought to be limits to this stuff, even in Washington. Words still mean something and just as Republicans went far over the line last year with their accusations about death panels in the health bill, they are doing it again this year with taxes. They should be ashamed.