Ah, the payroll tax cut debate.

A lot of mud is slinging on both sides, so the Czar thought he would clear things up for you, dear readers, on what is really going on. Warning: sausage making is featured.

Presently, there is a temporary cut in place that affects your paycheck. This is the payroll tax cut; your employer is given a bit of a reduction in how much he or she takes out of your paycheck, which is then passed on to you. This was a simple attempt to put more money in your pocket during the recession—assuming you are one of the people who still have a job.

Anyway, the money that this tax would ordinarily generate is locked into funding the social security trust fund, to make money available for retirees. With the tax in place, it greatly reduces how much money is going into social security right now, and ultimately its extension will cause a loss, meaning the government has to find the money somewhere or else our debt goes up even more.

Knowing this could happen in advance, the legislation behind the tax cut was always given an expiration date of December 31, 2011.

But one of the President’s budget committees recommended the tax cut continue for another year—it reall is a bad time to reduce everyone’s paychecks. The President actually listened, and suggested we extend the cut another year.

The House Republicans agreed, for the most part, and passed a bill to do just that. The Senate Democrats, however, revised the bill to extend the tax cut for only two months, and also tacked on riders for another $200+ billion in spending. And two hard boiled eggs.

Naturally, the House Republicans said absolutely not: the intent of the tax cut is to put money in Americans’s pockets; the additional and totally unrelated riders wind up taking more out of people’s pockets. And so it was rejected.

The Democrats are now spinning it that the tax cut is expiring, and that the House Republicans rejected the bill. All true, but the whole story is not being told. When House Republicans offered to meet with the President and the Senate (who abruptly took off for the holidays), they were refused.

Very ingenious: the Democrats are actually the ones blocking the tax cut (by refusing to meet with the House) because it reduces money for Democratic spending sprees; the Republicans, genuinely acting in the tax payers’s interests, are being portrayed as the guys who want your taxes to go up.

What a world.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.