"The Shroud of the Dark Side has fallen"

I've stated in the past about how Steven Pearlstein's column has become a must-read for me because of its pragmatic, fact-based perspective. A couple of key passages from today's column that are right on the money (pun intended):

"Republicans like to pretend that their real concern is for job creation, citing the fact that about half of all business profits now flow through partnerships and small corporations that are taxed at personal rates. ... Very few of those businesses earn more than $250,000 in profit, and those that do tend to be very successful hedge funds and law firms that are flush with cash and unlikely to be dissuaded from hiring extra employees or make new investments because of a 4 percentage-point change in the marginal tax. Because most hiring and investment can be done with pre-tax dollars, ... the tax rate is largely irrelevant to those decisions."

"...if Republicans were truly interested in reducing the deficit while stimulating private-sector job creation, they would have jumped to embrace the idea floated last week by Sen. Mark Warner, the centrist Democrat from Virginia: let high-end tax rates return to where they were during the Clinton years and use the $65 billion in additional income over the next two years for tax breaks for businesses that increase investments or hire new employees. After that, the extra revenue would go toward deficit reduction."

{Emphasis mine in both passages}

Pearlstein concludes by saying that no Republicans have taken up Mark Warner on his compromise proposal. So much for the much bally-hooed bipartisanship.

"The Shroud of the Dark Side has fallen. Begun, the Clone War has..."