More on the Republican budget plan analysis: Obama’s plan vs the GOP plan

More on that Republican budget plan analysis from Think Progress:

Here’s the breakdown of how much each income group would receive in tax cuts under the respective plans. The GOP plan would give millionaires an additional $50,000 annually, while taxing the lowest-income Americans $150 more than Obama’s plan:

Under the GOP plan, nearly one-third of the total benefit goes to the richest 1 percent, while just 11 percent of the benefit of Obama’s plan does:

Of course, both of these plans entail spending huge amounts of money to extend tax cuts that didn’t deliver on their economic promise. But under the GOP plan, an even larger percentage of that money would be dumped straight into the hands of those at the top of the income scale.

Paul Ryan’s budget: the middle class should pay more tax and the wealthiest should pay less

What could the Republicans want to distract the public’s attention from with this Eric Holder / contempt business? How about this:

Brian Buetler explains a new analysis of Paul Ryan’s budget (which was endorsed by Mitt Romney), by Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee, with the help of data from the Tax Policy Center:

Republicans want the broad middle class to pay more taxes than they currently do, and the upper class to pay significantly less.

[...] Republicans want to dramatically lower the top tax rate and eliminate brackets so there are only two — one at 25 percent, one at 10 percent. That would put a huge amount of cash in the pockets of high income earners. For middle class earners, it’d be a much more modest sum. To make the plan revenue neutral, Ryan claims Republicans would close myriad loopholes that disproportionately benefit the upper-middle and upper classes — he just won’t say which ones.

The rub is that Ryan’s tax cuts are expensive and to pay for ithem he’d likely have to clawback the biggest middle-class tax benefits — like the mortgage interest deduction, and the tax exclusion on employer health benefits — such that the net effect for people making less than $200,000 would be a higher annual tax burden. The plan redistributes wealth upwards.

The Washington PostMiddle class would face higher taxes under Republican planThe report, prepared by Senate Democrats and reviewed by nonpartisan tax experts, marks the first attempt to quantify the trade-offs inherent in the GOP tax package, which would replace the current tax structure with two brackets — 25 percent and 10 percent — and cut the top rate from 35 percent.Those changes would benefit virtually every taxpayer, but they also would reduce federal tax collections by about $4.5 trillion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. To avoid increasing the national debt by that amount, GOP leaders such as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.) have pledged to get rid of all the special-interest loopholes and tax shelters that litter the code.

Austerity

liberalsarecool:

If insisting on keeping taxes low on the wealthy while cutting social programs is your reflexive position, you should really think about what kind of person you are and what type of society you envision.

Do you love America as much as Joe the Plumber?

I doubt it. Unless you believe that gun control laws caused the Holocaust and shooting tomatoes with a rifle is the best way to demonstrate your patriotism and your ability to represent Ohio in Congress. Watch:


The New York Observer spoke to Mr. Wurzelbacher’s campaign spokesman, Phil Christofanelli, who said “there’s nothing offensive” about this video and suggested gun control may have also helped cause slavery in the United States.

Ron Paul got his

Think Progress: Texas Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), a libertarian hero, last year said that allowing Social Security to exist is akin to permitting slavery. But during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, Paul admitted to the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein that he collects Social Security checks anyway:

STEIN: A bit of a personal question then, are you on Social Security? Do you get Social Security checks?

PAUL: I do.

STEIN: Well, I mean, is there — you just told younger generations that they should ween themselves off this social contract.

PAUL: That is true.

STEIN: But you haven’t done it yourself…Don’t you think you chould have set a good example for the future generations. You’re not the wealthiest man in congress, I know that, but you have enough means to take care of yourself in retirement…Couldn’t you have set an example?

PAUL: No. I think the programs are so designed, just as I use the post office too, I use government highways, I do that too, I use the banks, the federal reserve system, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t work to remove this in the same way on Social Security.

It’s ‘the system,’ man. So while Paul got his, he’s working to cancel yours.