Sure, But what about your paycheck?

In an op/ed by Mitch McConnell for Yahoo News, the Senate Republican Leader said that “Earlier this week, I helped negotiate an imperfect solution aimed at avoiding the so-called “fiscal cliff.” If I had my way taxes would not have gone up on anyone, but the unavoidable fact was this if we had sat back and done nothing taxes would have gone up dramatically on every single American, and I simply couldn’t allow that to happen.”

It seems to me all of the back and forth between both sides are only looking after their own agenda and not what is best for the Country and for us peasants.  This last minute deal included provisions to cover the pet projects that are most important to each rival party; each of them not happy with what they got and blaming each other for this mess.  Now a new Congress goes to work today and will have to work to fix what the leaving Congress has messed up. …but it will be business as usual you can be assured.

It would seem that the politicians in Washington cannot even get the most important and needed legislation done honestly and correctly, the Sandy Relief Bill.  With nearly 100 days passed and people in New York and New Jersey still reeling from the damage caused by the storm.  …but I’ll explore this problem in more detail next week.

Back to this so-called last minute fix.  I can’t wrap my head around the fact that some of our representatives want to raise taxes and do nothing to address our country’s out of control spending, borrowing, ever-growing deficit and lack of budget.  And in the near future, the president will ask to increase the debt ceiling, again.

Warren Buffett, in a 2011 interview with CNBC, offed one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling: “I could end the deficit in 5 minutes,” he told CNBC. “You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.  The problem is that it would take Congress to pass this law and they are not going to do anything to put their job in jeopardy.  Your job doesn’t really matter, theirs however, very important.

Another wonderful piece of this great rescue legislation is going to affect your paycheck.  The left got some of what they wanted; a deal that raises income and investment taxes on the wealthiest Americans.  But there’s one tax increase that most American workers are not going to be able to escape, the payroll tax for Social Security. On the last day of 2012 the tax reverted to its normal rate of 6.2% — up from the 4.2%.

So if your household income is say $50k a year, your take-home pay will be cut by $1000. A year or around 20 bucks a week.  If you are making $30k, the higher tax means you’re going to lose $600 a year.  How’s that going to feel? At first glance it might not seem like a lot, but it doesn’t matter, it’s just like getting a pay cut…  If you make $14 an hour now, your real hourly rate is going to be around $13.70.

All we hear from the talking heads on TV, the politicians and the President, is how the middle class needs all of the help and will be spared any tax increases.  Well, this hits the middle class right in the gut.

I’m about fed up with it all.  Washington Politicians kept pounding it down our throats about what a perilous state our federal budget is in and how dangerous the “fiscal cliff” is for the middle-class if they don’t reach a deal.  Well, neither side is happy with the deal, the final deal hit the middle class anyway and it’s a mere Band-Aid on an even bigger wound.  But they were still able to pack into this uber important budget deal, handouts to special interest groups.  Take a look at the crap that got stuffed into this deal, this is the abridged list:

• $430 million for Hollywood
• $331 million for railroads
• $222 million for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
• $70 million for NASCAR
• $59 million for algae growers
• $4 million for electric motorcycle makers

I don’t know about you but I am constantly feeling like these politicians are more concerned with keeping their jobs, getting reelected and kowtowing to special interest, than they are in fixing the economy and properly representing the citizens that elected them.

So our paychecks are getting reduced yet someone somewhere is getting $59 million to grow algae.

What has happened to our Country?