Yesterday, GOP negotiators did their impression of Popeye, the Sailor Man, when, in the midst of trying to broker a major deficit-reduction deal, they declared in unison:

I’ve had all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!

The Republicans then proceeded to walk out on Democrats at the negotiating table, leaving it up to President Barack Hussein Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to resolve the toughest issues.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Sen. Jon Kyl (D-AZ), both left the bi-partisan talks yesterday, saying that the Democrats’ demand that the budget deal include tax increases was to blame.

According to Sen. Kyl,  it’s going to take those in the highest levels of power to break the impasse between the two political parties.

The goal of the talks, led by Vice-President Joe Biden, was to strike a budget deal which the Democrats hoped would ease the way for Congress to raise the government’s $14.29 trillion debt limit.

According to Treasury Department officials,without the ability to borrow additional money, the government is going to run out of cash to pay its bills by Aug. 2. They also have said that defaulting on any U.S. obligations could trigger another financial crisis and recession.

Biden’s group has canceled its scheduled meeting for today.

Now, it’s up to the Big Dogs.

Rep. Cantor told the Wall Street Journal:

We’ve reached the point where the dynamic needs to change.  It is up to the president to come in and talk to the speaker. We’ve reached the end of this phase.

The Obama White house and their Congressional minions have, publicly anyway, expressed optimism that talks between the three leaders can reach a satisfactory agreement.

According to Rep. Cantor, the Biden-led group had come up with more than $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next ten years.   A Democratic official close to the talks said the total was only about $1.2 trillion (of course).

Vice-President Biden remarked that:

As all of us at the table said at the outset, the goal of these talks was to report our findings back to our respective leaders. The next phase is in the hands of those leaders, who need to determine the scope of an agreement that can tackle the problem and attract bipartisan support. For now the talks are in abeyance as we await that guidance.

The Democrats seem to gotten the notion, from someone, possibly Karl Marx, that the answer to fixing Obama’s rotten economy is to raise taxes.  Therefore. they are adamant about getting rid of the tax cuts put in place by President George W. Bush.

How would getting rid of the Bush tax cuts affect average Americans?  Eric Fox, posting on forbes.com, breaks it down for us:

The two major tax-cutting bills from the Bush era were the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (EGTRRA) of 2001, and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003.

These two laws cut taxes across the board for earned income, long-term capital gains and dividends. The legislation also expanded the child tax credit and made dozens of other changes and adjustments to the tax code, involving exemptions, deductions and the marriage penalty.

EGTRRA created six tax rate brackets–10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33% and 35%, based on income levels. If no extension is passed and signed into law, then the pre-2001 tax rates will go back into effect starting in tax year 2011. The 10% bracket would disappear, and those taxpayers would move up to the 15% bracket, which would apply to all incomes below $34,550. The other tax rates would increase to 28%, 31%, 36% and 39.6% for the highest earners making more than $379,650.

One major provision that will expire at the end of 2010 is the child tax credit, which EGTRRA doubled from $500 to $1,000 per child. Unless Congress votes to extend the child tax credit, the maximum amount will revert back to $500 for tax year 2011, and the number of families eligible for that amount will be much less as tougher eligibility standards that existed prior to EGTRRA will go back into effect.

The maximum tax rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends were also reduced to 15%, with lower income filers facing a 0% tax rate. The sunset provisions would move the capital gains rate back to a maximum of 20%, and qualified dividends would resume being taxed at the regular tax rate of the filer, or as high as 39.6%.

…President Obama has asked Congress to extend and make permanent the 10%, 15% and 25% tax rates. The 28% bracket would be recalculated to include individuals with income less than $200,000 and married filers with income less than $250,000. The “rich” would be out of luck under the proposal, with the 33% and 35% brackets expiring at the end of 2010, and the former 36% and 39.6% tax rates going back into effect.

Obama is also seeking to make permanent the long-term capital gain rates of 0% and 15%, but tax capital gains at a rate of 20% for those taxpayers that fall into the 36% and 39.6% brackets. None of this has been decided yet, and passage is not certain due to the politics of Washington in general–and during an election year in particular.

President Obama and the Democrats seem to be looking for a panacea to their problem of keeping unfulfilled promisethat they made to their base of all the things that they would do for them, and give to them, once Obama ascended to the throne, with a vibrant economy being one of those promises.

Unfortunately, the Obama Administration does not want to accept the fact that the business of America is business, and raising Americans’ tax burden is only going to continue to dig a economic hole that our great-grandchildren will still be trying to dig out of.