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.'"

But

[0123456]

I thought tax cuts are evil and stuff?

Re:*yawn*

[sandytaru]

The thing is, it's only Republican legislaters that are so darn against the millionaire's surtax. The majority of Americans are okay with it, and a great deal of millionaires are also okay with it. The only people fighting it tooth and nail are those who kissed the ring of Grover Norquist, and those whose districts are held hostage by the Tea Party. Oh, and delisional Tea Partiers who are retired or unemployed yet somehow believe they'll be making a million bucks a year ANY DAY NOW.

i especially like how

[circletimessquare]

in their obstinance to defy anything obama tries to do, no matter how good or bad for the american people, the republican leadership is willing to oppose a tax CUT

because the tax cut is not for rich people?

republican robots: if you define yourself as "i'm everything that guy is not" and that guy is actually decent, where does that leave your political future?

#650billionformilitaryisstupid

[Dan667]

should be the next tag the white house pushes. The US cannot afford spending $650 billion on a military we don't need.

Re:i especially like how

[Attila Dimedici]

You mean that passing a year long extension rather than a two month extension is what you call opposing a tax cut?

Re:*yawn*

[AJH16]

Yeah, as much as I hate how biased Fox news is, CNN surprised me with something I happened to catch when I was in the grocery store and happened to see it on. They were talking to one of the Republican presidential hopefuls about what his view on the whole thing was and he was answering quite well I thought (in terms of explaining his view) that he didn't want to gut the money from elsewhere and that he thought that there needed to be some way to fund the tax cut and was being pretty clear that while he didn't like the idea of allowing it to expire he wasn't seeing an alternative that he thought would work, but the anchor would not let go of trying to ask him if he was in favor of raising taxes even though he was already being pretty direct at stating his view. The CNN anchor was clearly trying to corner him in to having to say something unpopular as opposed to having a dialog and talking about the issues it would cause. It was politics not news and appeared very clearly biased to me.

On Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was this even posted to /.??? If I wanted to read this I would go to CNN. Really???

Well, this one is.

[cje]

I hate to say it, because it's horribly unpopular from a political perspective, but this payroll tax "holiday" is just disastrous policy. Depending on what numbers and what year you're looking at, anywhere from 81 to 89 percent of the entire U.S. budget goes to two things: defense and entitlements. And of those entitlements, the biggest long-term liabilities and problems that we have are Social Security and Medicare.

When you hear these Presidential candidates talk about how they would fix the budget deficits by getting rid of things like the EPA, the IRS, the Departments of Commerce / Energy / Education, etc., then you know should know that they are not making any sort of good-faith effort at solving the problem, and that they cannot be taken seriously. The dirty little secret is that you could cut out 100% of the discretionary non-defense spending (i.e., everything except for the military and entitlements) and you would have barely made a dent in the problem as a whole.

The whole purpose of the payroll/FICA tax is to provide funds for Social Security and Medicate. Again, these are the two biggest problems that the U.S. has from a budget perspective -- biggest by leaps and bounds. So not only does this policy make the deficit problem worse, it makes it worse in the worst possible way. Politicians can claim that these tax cuts are "paid for", but everybody knows that these types of Washington claims are usually just shell games for political purposes.

For what it's worth, I like the fact that the payroll tax holiday disproportionally benefits those towards the lower end of the income scale. But there has to be a better way to do this, especially at this critical time in history when the Boomers are retiring and we're going to need these trust funds more than at any time in our history.

Re:But

[Kenja]

The republicans are only for the tax cuts the democrats are against. So its not so much that they are pro-tax cut but that they are anti-democrat.

Re:*yawn*

[Anonymous Coward]

Are there really people out there that decide whether to hire or fire based on their personal income tax?

If a business is set up to make money to begin with, seems like it'd make more sense to base hiring and layoff decisions around meeting demand. And it would logically follow that policies that increase demand will benefit "job creators" more, unless their taxes are so severe (like, say, 100%+) that meeting increased demand costs them money.

People who make all their income from investments might not like it very much, but by the same token, how many of them hire and fire or base their investment decisions on their personal tax rate?

Re:$40 figure is bullshit

[Rockoon]

Source [state.ct.us]

Weekly payment of wages. Exemptions. (Sec. 31-71b). (a) Each employer, by himself, his agent or representative, shall pay weekly all moneys due each employee on a regular pay day, designated in advance by the employer, in cash, by negotiable checks or, upon an employee's written request, by credit to such employee's account in any bank which has agreed with the employer to accept such wage deposits. (b) The end of the pay period for which payment is made on a regular pay day shall be not more than eight days before such regular pay day, provided, if such regular pay day falls on a nonwork day, payment shall be made on the preceding work day. (c) This section shall not be construed to prohibit a local or regional board of education and a recognized or certified exclusive bargaining representative of its certified or noncertified employees from including within their collective bargaining agreement a schedule for the payment of wages to certified employees or noncertified employees that differs from the requirements of subsections (a) and (b) of this section. (d) Nothing in this section shall be construed to apply to employees swapping workdays or shifts as permitted under a collective bargaining agreement.

I get it. Anonymous Cowards are liberals that know that they dont know what they are talking about.

Re:Social Media: Removing Money from Politics

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Especially when it's being used by politicians to manipulate people who don't actually have a broader understandimg of the issues at hand. Yep, great to see.

Re:But

[jmac_the_man]

Well, Mr. Ingenuous, the pipeline thing would require an up-or-down ruling on the Keystone Pipeline. (Obama's EPA is holding it up because it makes environmentalists mad despite being a good idea.) The Republican bill doesn't even require them to approve it. Calling that provision a subsidy (e.g., the owners of the pipeline getting some kind of monetary payment from the government) isn't ingenuous at all.

Re:*yawn*

[Paul Pierce]

The problem with the millionaire's surtax is your talking about a band-aid at best. The rich already pay the vast amount of taxes in this country. According to CNN 48% of people don't even pay federal taxes anymore. Even ignoring that - history shows the government will take in ~18% of GDP at the end of the day; no matter what they tax who. Think about how important that is - even if they tax the rich 85% - they'll still get the same amount at the end of the day. There are lots of reasons for that magic number - but some of it comes down to how much of their own money people want to keep at the end of the day. The more they are taxed the more they will hide, or they will make less. Would you work for 30 cents on the dollar - perhaps - but as hard as you'd work for 80?

The government really does have a spending problem only. Revenue is quite static; however the big trouble they got themselves into is their deficit spending. GDP is C + I + G +-exports basically. G (government spending) is a huge part of GDP, but government overspending is roughly 12% of our GDP. Think about that - 'fake demand' is really all it is.

If the government spends what they take in next year (which they should) our GDP will shrink 12% automatically. No one wants that - because that cycle gets worse - revenue goes down the year after and now they have to spend even less, etc...

Option 2 is what the President, most dems, and many repubs want - 'kick the can'. Now some are smart enough to know that only makes the inevitable worse. Some probably really do believe we can borrow more and more - even though to even stay at our current state we have to borrow 'exponentially' more every year. Run that through your head - to sustain our current economic situation (which isn't that good) we have to borrow at record rates - to the point where in 10 years we'll have to borrow as much as our entire country produces in one year - just to keep where we are.

Bottom line - we take the hit now and ride through it - or we ride it out until it collapses entirely.

Re:*yawn*

[Mitreya]

Oh, and delisional Tea Partiers who are retired or unemployed yet somehow believe they'll be making a million bucks a year ANY DAY NOW.

I think you forgot to mention one more detail that is important. The tax is marginal - you are taxed on income above 1 million! That is, anyone making 1 million a year will be unaffected by it and anyone making 1,000,100 will pay $2.5 (or $3.5, dollars, I forget) extra taxes. You have to make well over (i.e. several) a million to care.

Re:But

[jmac_the_man]

guaranteeing

Lie: The Republican proposal guaranteed a RULING up or down within 90 days, but did not guarantee approval.

the oil companies can build a pipeline from Alaska

Lie: The Northern end of the pipeline is in Canada.

to the Gulf

Half-lie: The pipeline goes to endpoints in Illinois, Oklahoma, and the eastern coast of Texas. Though the eastern coast of Texas borders the Gulf of Mexico, the pipeline is obviously not dumping oil directly into the Gulf. But thanks for trying to tie a land pipeline to oceanic oil spills.

through protected wildlife refuges

Lie: TransCanada already rerouted the pipeline around the refuges in question.

Amazing lie density. I'm impressed.

Re:But

[butalearner]

Actually they are "for" the tax cut as long as they can tack on entirely unrelated riders like forcing Obama to make a decision on the oil pipeline. That's the reason they didn't extend it for a year in the first place. What is hilarious to me is that Republican Presidential candidates like to point out Obama's "failed policies" when their colleagues have bastardized them at every turn.

Re:Well, this one is.

[roman_mir]

You should vote Ron Paul then, because nobody else will cut militarism and bring all troops home from across the globe and would reform the SS and Medicare to keep taking care of people who are on those programs now, the elderly and the children, while giving people option to opt out (at first just the people under age of 25, but eventually to let anybody opt out as these programs will be shut down.) And SS and Medicare will be shut down, whether Ron Paul is elected or not, it's just with Ron Paul the way to shut them down will be gradual, allowing the current recipients to keep getting their support (but probably means testing in order to cut costs). If it's not Ron Paul, then the way these programs will be shut down is going to be by the dollar crashing and the loss of purchasing power will mean that the nominal numbers on the coming checks will buy nothing.