Daily Archives: September 10, 2012

Pres. Obama more than happy to work with GOP if they agree to higher tax on the wealthy

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Cut spending and bring in new revenue. It’s called balance, Republicans. It’s called doing two things at once to bring about a reduction in the deficit faster. From The Ticket:

President Barack Obama said in an interview partly broadcast Sunday that he would be “more than happy to work with the Republicans” to trim the swelling national debt — as long as they drop their opposition to raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. “You can’t reduce the deficit unless you take a balanced approach that says, ‘We’ve got to make government leaner and more efficient,’” the president told CBS’s Scott Pelley. “But we’ve also got to ask people –like me or Gov. Romney, who have done better than anybody else over the course of the last decade, and whose taxes are just about lower than they’ve been in the last 50 years – to do a little bit more.” Obama said he would be willing to make “some adjustments to Medicare and Medicaid that would strengthen the programs.” “The way to do that is to keep health care costs low. It’s not to ‘voucherize’ programs so that suddenly seniors are the ones who are finding their expenses much higher.”

I’m glad one political party in this country doesn’t pretend that giving the wealthy more tax cuts somehow (magically) reduces debt. Letting the wealthy have more tax cuts gives them more available income they can offshore into foreign bank accounts and gives America less money to pay off its debt. Why does this even need to be said? Because yesterday Romney said “I am not reducing taxes on high-income taxpayers:“

Romney’s plan, in reality, would provide the very richest Americans a $264,000 tax break. It also maintains current tax rates on investments that are otherwise set to expire at the end of the year, and it eliminates the estate tax, paid by only the richest one-quarter of one percent of Americans.

Does that work out to a tax reduction for the rich in your mind? It does for everyone who’s based in reality.

Romney is apparently arguing that he will raise enough revenue through the elimination of tax loopholes that benefit the rich to totally offset the tax cut he provides them, though an analysis from the Tax Policy Center found that to be a mathematical impossibility.

Like his tax returns, which loopholes Romney plans to eliminate remain a closely guarded secret until after the election.

Lyin’ Paul Ryan: I didn’t vote for the defense cuts I voted for

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I think Paul Ryan is trying to convince us that even though he voted for The Budget Control Act (which included sequestration cuts), he didn’t vote for the parts he didn’t like about the Budget Control Act, like the sequestration cuts. Here’s what he said after he voted “YEA” on this bill:

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan issued the following statement after the Budget Control Act of 2011 passed the House of Representatives: “The Budget Control Act represents a victory for those committed to controlling government spending and growing our economy. I applaud Speaker Boehner’s leadership in stopping tax increases on job creators, rejecting President Obama’s demands for a blank check to keep borrowing, and advancing real spending cuts and controls. The agreement – while far from perfect – underscores the extent to which the new House majority has successfully changed Washington’s culture of spending. No longer can Washington endlessly spend money it does not have. While the immediate debt ceiling issue has been responsibly resolved, a spending-driven debt crisis remains a threat. To lift this crushing burden of debt and help spur job creation, policymakers must advance serious structural reforms to the largest driver of our debt: government spending on health care, including the President’s costly, partisan health-care overhaul. The Budget Control Act marks a positive step forward in getting government spending control, but much hard work remains.”

Watch him try to convince Norah O’Donnell that voting for a bill but being against parts of the bill you voted for is like not voting for the bill:


…
O’Donnell isn’t buying it. Neither should we.

Think Progress: “The Budget Control Act, as passed, included both the roughly $600 billion in “sequestration” cuts that will happen if there’s no compromise on the budget by December as well as the $487 billion of military-supported cuts that will take place regardless. The fact that Ryan may have wished that the bill didn’t contain said defense cuts does not absolve him of the fact that he and 201 other Republicans voted for the bill as-passed.

“Moreover, Ryan’s statement after voting for the bill contained not a single word of criticism about the defense cuts. As O’Donnell correctly noted, Ryan said the bill “represents a victory for those committed to controlling government spending and growing our economy” and that “The agreement – while far from perfect – underscores the extent to which the new House majority has successfully changed Washington’s culture of spending.” It’s at best misleading, and at worst an outright lie, for Ryan to assert that voting for the Budget Control Act did not mean voting for defense cuts.”

Let’s do the anti-government politicians a favor: vote them out of government office

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via: jaynawallace

Obviously government works great for those politicians who want the rest of us to believe it shouldn’t work for average people — or they wouldn’t work so hard to be there.

Vote in people who don’t want to simply help themselves and their wealthy benefactors. Vote out the rest.

Romney and Ryan’s super-awesome budget plan will remain a secret until after the election

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From ABC’s This Week transcript (h/t: politicususa):

STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you make the math work without eliminating the big deductions that middle-class families rely on?

RYAN: Well, first of all, that — those claims have been pretty discredited. There have been five different studies –

STEPHANOPOULOS: How have they been discredited?

RYAN: — that show — that this — that this plan works. So the analysis you’re citing wasn’t even an analysis of the Romney plan.

But here’s the point I am trying to make here, George. We think the secret to economic growth is lower tax rates for families and successful small businesses by plugging loopholes.

Now the question is, not necessarily what loopholes go, but who gets them. High-income earners use most of the loopholes. That means they can shelter their income from taxation. But if you take those loopholes, those tax shelters away from high-income earners, more of their income is subject to taxation. And that allows us to lower tax rates on everybody — small businesses, families, economic growth.

Here’s where the president wants to take the country. He wants to add a job-killing small-business tax increase on top of the current code, add even more loopholes and deductions to the code, more Washington picking winners and losers. That will crush jobs. You have to remember, George, that most of our small businesses, they pay their taxes as individuals. Most of our jobs come from these successful small businesses. So we’ve shown — look, the Princeton study, the Harvard analysis, they have shown that you can lower tax rates, broaden the tax base, and, yes, there is still room left for broad-based policies that the middle class enjoy so that nobody has a tax increase. We just stop picking winners and losers in the tax code.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But, Congressman, as you know –

RYAN: When Reagan did this, it worked –

STEPHANOPOULOS: — many say it’s difficult –

RYAN: Go ahead, George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: — to accept your word if you’re not going to specify which tax loopholes you’re willing to close. Don’t voters have a right to know which loopholes you’re going to go after?

RYAN: So Mitt Romney and I, based on our experience, think the best way to do this is to show the framework, show the outlines of these plans, and then to work with Congress to do this. That’s how you get things done. The other thing, George, is–

STEPHANOPOULOS: Isn’t that a secret plan?

RYAN: — we don’t want to — no, no. No, no. What we don’t want is a secret plan. What we don’t want to do is cut some backroom deal like ObamaCare, and then hatch (ph) it (ph) to the country.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But why not specify the –

RYAN: We want to do this –

STEPHANOPOULOS: — loopholes now?

RYAN: — out in the open –

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why not say right now –

RYAN: — because we want to do this –

(CROSSTALK)

RYAN: — we want to have this — George, because we want to have this debate in the public. We want to have this debate with Congress. And we want to do this with the consent of the elected representatives of the people, and figure out what loopholes should stay or go and who should or should not get them.

And our priorities are high-income earners should not get these kinds of loopholes. And we should have broad-based policies that go to middle-class taxpayers, to make sure we can advance things that we care about, like charities. But that is a debate we shouldn’t cut in a back room, shouldn’t hatch a secret plan like ObamaCare. We should do it out in the public view where the public can participate.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s exactly what I’m suggesting, having it in public before the election so voters can have that information before they make up their minds.

RYAN: We think the best way to get — look, I’ve been in Congress a number of years. I’ve been on the Ways and Means Committee for 12 years. And we think the best way to do this is to get this framework in place, and then negotiate, work with Democrats, work with people across the aisle, have these kinds of hearings, have this conversation to get this objective.

There are really only two ways to look at this refusal to specify which loopholes they plan to do away with:

1) they really have no plan, no idea what they’re going to do — they might as well say they want to ride a unicorn over Rainbow Bridge to Ice Cream Sundae Land and if you vote for them, you can go too. Or,

2) Lyin’ Paul Ryan is asking that you trust him and Etch-a-Sketch. Just trust that they’ll be looking out for YOUR best interests if they’re elected. And pay no attention to the fact that their budget doesn’t add up with any arithmetic in the known universe — or that those tax cuts for the rich (which Romney says are not tax cuts for the rich) will have to be paid for somehow.

For the record, yesterday in an interview with Mitt Romney, David Gregory got no information from Romney either, on the Secret-Awesome Romney Plan or the loopholes he plans to shut down.

Here’s the truth of the matter:


image: thepoliticalfreakshow

President Obama DNC2012: will you reward companies that create jobs here at home, or overseas?

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“After a decade of decline, this country created over half a million manufacturing jobs in the last two and a half years.  And now you have a choice:  we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America.  We can help big factories and small businesses double their exports, and if we choose this path, we can create a million new manufacturing jobs in the next four years.  You can make that happen.  You can choose that future.”

— President Obama, DNC2012

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Think Progress: 

Did you know that you’re actually paying to ship American jobs overseas? [...Just two months ago, Senate Republicans] voted almost unanimously to protect these outrageous giveaways to corporations that ship American jobs overseas. The Bring Jobs Home Act got a 56-vote majority, but Republicans used a filibuster to kill it. The bill would have:

    • Abolished tax breaks for companies that ship American jobs overseas
    • Created new tax incentives that reward companies for that bring jobs home to America

[...W]hy would Republicans do this? Two words: Grover Norquist. Almost every single Senate Republican has promised this Washington lobbyist that they will never, ever raise taxes or end a single giveaway to special interests. And not only has Mitt Romney signed this same pledge to a lobbyist, he wants to give companies even more incentives to create jobs in other countries instead of here in America. [This] vote shows you just how far Republicans will go to protect tax giveaways to the wealthy and special interests. It also shows why we need to fix our tax code so it helps build an economy that works for everyone, not just the privileged few and their lobbyists.

Vote in a President and a Congress who vote for the American people instead of politicians who vote for the global elite and their multinational interests. 

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Important considerations about the Bureau of Labor Jobs Report

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Daily Kos: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday morning that, seasonally adjusted, the economy created 103,000 new private jobs in August, and shed 7,000 government jobs for a net gain of 96,000. The consensus of experts surveyed ahead of time by Bloomberg was that there would be a net gain of 125,000. The official unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent, mostly because of a shrinking work force.

Bob Cesca: 96,000 nonfarm jobs in the month of August is the highest amount since August 2006.

August 2003: – 45,000
August 2004: +122,000
August 2005: +193,000
August 2006: +183,000
August 2007: – 18,000
August 2008: – 274,000
August 2009: – 231,000
August 2010: – 51,000 (worsened by Census layoffs)
August 2011: + 85,000
August 2012: + 96,000

Is it good enough? No, but you already know that. It is better than your average gotcha headline will lead you to believe, however.

Also keep in mind that when there were great job numbers during the Bush years, that was thanks to PUBLIC SECTOR hiring — government jobs. From Salon:

But the real eye-opener comes when we compare Obama’s numbers to George W. Bush’s. In Bush’s first term, the economy shed 913,000 private sector jobs! 913,000! The only thing that saved Bush’s first term from being a complete economic disaster, in terms of employment, was robust public sector growth: The economy added 900,000 government jobs. One wonders: Without the massive growth in the public sector during Bush’s first term, would he have been reelected?

[...] Of course, Obama isn’t running against Bush, so that’s moot. But as this presidential campaign heats up, it might be worth periodically reminding ourselves: Bush led the U.S. economy out of a weak recession with strong public sector growth. Obama is leading the U.S. economy out of a near-death experience while a steadily shrinking government swells the unemployment rolls. Which magic trick do you think is harder?

In other words, if the Republicans in Congress today worked for America under the Obama Administration the same way they worked for America during Bush’s Administration, we’d be in much better shape. Obviously government workers aren’t the enemy when there’s a Republican in the White House. And if your top priority is to make Obama a one-term president, you make the country’s employment situation worse by blocking government hiring on every level (city, state, federal) while demonizing government workers.

Ezra Klein: Since Obama was elected, the public sector has lost about 600,000 jobs. If you put those jobs back, the unemployment rate would be 7.8 percent. But what if we did more than that? At this point in George W. Bush’s administration, public-sector employment had grown by 3.7 percent. That would be equal to a bit over 800,000 jobs today. If you add those hypothetical jobs, the unemployment rate falls to 7.3 percent.

By the way, President Obama introduced The American Jobs Act a year ago, which is also exactly when the Republicans began blocking it.