WyBlog

[O]n Tuesday, House and Senate leaders opted to put the whole government back on a stop-gap continuing resolution until next spring.

With the blessing of President Barack Obama, the preelection deal calls for a six-month resolution to be approved in September, avoiding any threat of a government shutdown and respecting the $1.047 trillion top line set for spending in the debt accord reached in August 2011.

Mark your calendars: Jan. 1, 2013, could be one of the biggest tax disaster days in recent memory.

That's the day when current tax rates are slated to expire. That's also when the employee payroll tax rate, now 4.2 percent, is scheduled to go back up to 6.2 percent. More estates will face higher taxes in 2013. And don't forget about the 70-plus temporary tax breaks known as extenders that haven't yet been renewed for 2012 or 2013.

Tax rates will rise for all, not just the top tier of taxpayers. The 10 percent rate will disappear, meaning that everyone will see at least some of their income taxed at 15 percent.

Income ranges for the tax rate brackets also will change, meaning the marriage tax will return for more couples.

If there is any GOP control, it shall have been a result of the Tea Parties. And if I have any feel at all for the pulse of the Tea Parties through blogging, &c, the Tea Parties are going to slice like a hammer on the GOP if the Ruling Class, beltway shenanigans continue. All the weight of the derision currently poured on #OccupyResoluteDesk and the rest in the blogs, on Twitter, at protests, and so forth is going to get trained on the GOP if there is not a total come-to-Beavis moment for the GOP. The GOP shall have played a populist fiddle to be returned to power. Said fiddle shall make a most 'unexpected' suppository if the people don't see, as a going-in position:

It took a century to dig this hole, and there is no reasonable way out within a Congress; a Presidential term; a decade. But you guys are on notice that if we're not at least on a different course, pronto, you're toast.