President Obama Reluctantly Embraces President Obama’s Idea
[Townhall.com]
- Kevin Glass
Managing Editor, Townhall.com
April 05, 2013
President Obama’s budget proposal is due out next week. We’ve already got a relatively good idea of what he’s going to propose – more spending, more taxes, maybe some hints of deficit reduction. It also looks like President Obama will propose a statistical adjustment to Social Security’s adjustment formula – moving to the chained consumer price index (C-CPI) – that the Obama Administration has long portrayed as an important entitlement reform.
What is a C-CPI reform, exactly? It would peg Social Security cost-of-living adjustments to a different – and, economists say, more accurate – form of inflation. The practical effects of this are that there would be modest benefit cuts and modest tax increases over what’s currently projected for Social Security. Over a ten-year period, the CBO projects, there would be a $127 billion spending cut to Social Security and a $123 billion dollar tax hike. Liberals dislike the C-CPI reform due to the spending cuts and conservatives dislike it because of the tax hikes.
A “senior administration official” told the Huffington Post that President Obama’s plan is “not the President’s ideal deficit-reduction plan” and characterizes the C-CPI proposal as a “key Republican request… not the President’s preferred approach.”
This is a dishonest framing at best. As the Washington Post reports, it has consistently been the Obama Administration pushing for a C-CPI reform to Social Security. This is from a WaPo report on December’s fiscal cliff negotiations [emphasis mine]:
Liberal Democrats, too, were on edge about Obama’s offer on the inflation measure, known as the chained consumer price index, or chained CPI. Obama tentatively embraced the change in budget negotiations with Boehner in the summer of 2011.
George Will: Obamacare’s death star?
[HumanEvents.com]
By: George Will
1/19/2013 08:00 PM
WASHINGTON — A willow, not an oak. So said conservatives of Chief Justice John Roberts when he rescued the Affordable Care Act — aka Obamacare — from being found unconstitutional. But the manner in which he did this may have made the ACA unworkable, thereby putting it on a path to ultimate extinction.
This plausible judgment comes from professor Thomas A. Lambert of the University of Missouri Law School, writing in Regulation quarterly, a publication of the libertarian Cato Institute. The crucial decision, he says, was four liberal justices joining Roberts’ opinion declaring that the ACA’s penalty for not complying with the mandate to purchase health insurance is actually a tax on not purchasing it. With this reasoning, the court severely limited the ability of the new health care regime to cope with its own predictable consequences.
Boehner warns Obama: If you veto our Plan B bill, the automatic tax hikes on January 1 are all on you
[HotAir.com]
posted at 5:13 pm on December 19, 2012 by Allahpundit
This is a leverage ploy, right? The House passes Plan B, Reid kills it in the Senate, and then Boehner gets to say, “We did what Democrats wanted by taxing millionaires and they still prefer to go over the cliff.” But … what if it doesn’t even pass the House? Then Democrats get to turn around and say that the GOP caucus won’t even agree to tax the rich when it’s their own Speaker asking them to do so. As of last night, per National Journal, GOP vote counters weren’t sure that Boehner had the votes. Grover Norquist did him a favor this morning by declaring that Plan B doesn’t violate Republicans’ no-tax pledge, and this’ll help too:
White House: Obama ‘Will Not Sign’ a Deal Unless It Increases Taxes
[CNSNews.com]
President Barack Obama (AP Photo)(CNSNews.com) – White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today that no matter what else happens President Barack Obama–who is the only modern president other than Franklin Roosevelt to serve in four years when federal spending topped 24 percent of GDP–will not sign a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff that will arrive at the end of this year unless that deal increases taxes.
“So the President made clear that he is not wedded to every detail of his plan,” said Carney. “The President has also made categorically and abundantly clear that he will not sign an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for top earners. It’s bad economic policy and we cannot afford it. He will not sign that.”
According to official calculations made by the White House Office of Management and Budget that go back to 1930, Barack Obama and Franklin Roosevelt are the only two presidents who have served in four fiscal years when federal spending exceeded 24 percent of GDP. Roosevelt did so in 1942, 1943, 1944, and 1945 (when he died in office). Obama did so in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Exclusive – Sarah Palin: Did Joe McGinniss Condemn an Innocent Man?
[Breitbart.com]
by Sarah Palin 17 Sep 2012, 7:29 AM PDT
I don’t normally read “true crime” books, and I’ve certainly never written a review of one, but Errol Morris’ new book, “A Wilderness of Error,” isn’t typical of the genre. It’s much more interesting and I think important. It’s a book about the failings of a legal system administered by very fallible human beings, and it’s a book about how we buy into false media narratives that tidy up uncomfortably complex stories and give us permission to call off any further search for truth – and, yes, Morris argues with refreshing clarity that objective truth is real and worthy of being sought after despite the pretentious nonsense preached in faculty lounges about all truth being relative. In fact, he argues passionately that the search for truth is what journalism and justice is all about.
Morris describes how false narratives can become a sort of prison. He opens by reminding us of the story of “The Count of Monte Cristo” – the novel about an innocent man who escapes from the seemingly inescapable island prison he was sent to. Morris writes that today we have an even worse prison than that fictional one – only ours is “built out of newsprint and media. A prison of beliefs. You can escape from prison, but how do you escape from a convincing story? After enough repetitions, the facts come to serve the story and not the other way around. Like kudzu, suddenly the story is everywhere and impenetrable.”
Norquist: A Vote for Obama is a Vote for $500 B Tax Increase
[Newsmax.com]
Monday, 23 Jul 2012 07:37 PM
Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist fired back against criticism that his anti-tax pledge is getting in the way of a tax compromise by Congress, arguing in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV that his pledge makes possible real tax reform and that contained in any compromise is a hidden tax increase.
Norquist’s group organizes the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which asks all candidates for federal and state office to commit themselves in writing to oppose all tax increases. The pledge, which Norquist says he dreamed up when he was 12 years old, was endorsed by Ronald Reagan upon its inception in 1986, and has been signed by more than 1,100 state office holders as well as 238 current House members and 41 current Senators.
Norquist has come under fire from the first President George Bush and others about the rigidity of the pledge and Senate Democrats believe they have come up with a plan to get around the anti-tax pledge by letting all tax cuts lapse Jan. 1 and then reinstating most of them days later, an idea which Norquist has said “doesn’t pass the laugh test.”
The plan shows efforts by lawmakers to include new federal revenues in an attempt to avoid the “fiscal cliff” in January. All Bush-era tax cuts expire at that time and automatic spending cuts to the military kick in.
Norquist told Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview that the pledge “stops a tax increase, so if somebody tells you the pledge is getting in the way of getting something done what they mean is it’s getting in the way of a tax increase.”
Obama’s Middle Class Tax Hikes
[RedState.com]
Posted by: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)
Tuesday, July 10th at 12:00PM EDT
While Obama is prosecuting a flaccid war overseas and apologizing for our troops when they defend against Taliban attacks, he is fighting a no-holds-barred class war at home. Once again, Obama has announced that he will orchestrate the largest tax hike in American history on those earning more than $200,000. After all, taxing the rich is a great way to raise revenue; it worked so well in Maryland. Oh, wait.
But fear not, he will renew the Bush tax cuts on those earning under $200,000, while repackaging them as his own tax cuts.
There’s one problem with Obama’s assertion that he hasn’t raised taxes on the middle class. YOU LIE! Government regulations and interventions that Obama supports will raise the cost of living on the middle class for the most vital goods and services. Those higher costs will trump any savings they actualize as a result of the tax cut extension. Oh, and there’s one other problem. He’s forgetting about the massive tax increase on all those who don’t purchase government-approved health insurance.
In that vein, let’s review some of the hidden [or not so hidden] tax increases on the “middle class” that Obama has orchestrated:
These Are The Countries With The Highest Income Tax Rates
[TheBlaze.com]
- Posted on May 10, 2012 at 2:28pm by
Becket Adams
Unsustainable debt, monetary inflation, uneasy markets, quantitative easing — the health of the global economy is on everyone’s mind.
Why? Because when coupled with massive amounts of public debt, weak economies usually lead to one thing: tax increases.
And it’s happening right now.
Just look at the eurozone where, desperate to address increasing deficits, several countries in the 17-nation union have increased personal income tax rates.
“Spain, for example, raised its personal tax rate by 2 percentage points to 45 percent last year and France’s newly elected Socialist Party is also proposing hiking taxes on the rich,” CNBC reports.
“Hike,” however, may be too kind a word. France’s newly-elected Socialist François Hollande wants to impose a 75 percent income tax on citizens earning more than $1.3 million. That’s a bit more than a “hike.” That’s an “ultra increase.”
Obama Can’t Run On His Record….So Why Not Run Behind Reagan
[FloppingAces.net]
By: Curt
April 12, 2012
“”If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from….You make a big election about small things,” ” – Barack Obama 08/28/08
Obama uttered these words just a few short years ago. It was supposedly a charge against politics as usual. Now, he is following the politics as usual playbook to a tee. And as he continues on his “anything but my record” tour he had the gall to say Ronald Reagan would be FOR the Buffet Rule:
President Obama continued his push Wednesday to build support for the Buffett rule by suggesting that Ronald Reagan would’ve backed the plan to set a minimum 30 percent income tax for the wealthiest Americans.“If it will help convince folks in Congress to make the right choice, we could call it the Reagan rule instead of the Buffett rule,” Obama said in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
“I’m not the first president to call for this idea that everyone has to do their fair share,” he said, quoting one speech in which Reagan said it was “crazy” for the rich to be able to use loopholes to get out of paying taxes. “He thought that in America the wealthiest should pay their fair share and he said so.”
This new talking point was spearheaded by ThinkProgress which put up a video of a speech Reagan gave in 1985 in which he remarked about an executive paying a lower tax rate than his secretary.
Coming Soon: The Commercials that Obama Fears
[American Thinker]
March 14, 2012
By Ed Lasky
President Obama knows that every public statement he makes is recorded and lives forever on the internet. That is cause for serious worry. The best campaign ad to run against Obama is one that uses his own words — and those of the officials he has empowered — against him. When it comes to high gasoline prices, this is a target-rich environment.
Two new polls show that Americans’ opinion of Barack Obama has taken a dive. The Washington Post headline “Gas Prices sink Obama’s ratings on economy” zeroes in on the impact of high gas prices on his political prospects. A New York Times/CBS poll released the same day shows a similar dramatic decline and states that Obama is heading into the general election on “treacherous political ground” and also chalks up at least part of the decline to much higher prices at the pump over the last few months.
High gas prices are a particular vulnerability of Obama’s since they affect so many people so many times a week — especially in those battleground states where people are forced to drive long distances. Each of those signs is free advertising for the Republicans. They can’t be explained away by Barack Obama’s friends in the media.
Full 28-minute movie attacking Romney’s Bain work debuts at Gingrich Super PAC site
[HotAir.com]
posted at 3:40 pm on January 11, 2012 by Allahpundit
So help me, news of this broke on Twitter within 10 minutes of this piece appearing at Politico. Second look at total campaign confusion?
Newt Gingrich signaled Wednesday that he believes his criticism of Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital is a mistake — and that he’s created an impression that he was echoing Democratic rhetoric…
“I’m here to implore one thing of you. I think you’ve missed the target on the way you’re addressing Romney’s weaknesses. I want to beg you to redirect and go after his obvious disingenuous about his conservatism and lay off the corporatist versus the free market. I think it’s nuanced,” Dean Glossop, an Army Reservist [and Santorum supporter] from Inman, S.C., said.
Mitt Romney, the Value-Added Tax, and America’s European Future
[BigGovernment.com]
Posted Jan 4th 2012 at 7:03 am
by Dan Mitchell
My Iowa caucus predictions from yesterday were hopelessly wrong, probably because I was picking with my heart rather than my head. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Mitt Romney’s openness to a value-added tax makes him a dangerously flawed candidate, and I hoped Iowa voters shared my concern.
In a column for today’s Wall Street Journal, I elaborated on those concerns, explaining why a VAT is bad fiscal policy. I had three main points. First, I noted that the big spenders need a VAT in order to achieve a European-sized welfare state in America.
… the left needs a VAT. It is the only realistic way to collect the huge amount of revenue that will be necessary to finance the mountainous benefits promised by our entitlement programs. Which is exactly what happened in Europe, where welfare-state policies only became feasible after VATs were adopted, beginning in the late 1960s.
Second, I explained that the left favors this giant tax on the middle class because they want more money and soak-the-rich taxes don’t generate much revenue.
Prisoners May Be Preparing Your Tax Return
[PatriotUpdate.com]
January 1, 2012
A story in USA Today reports that inmates, some of them serving life sentences, have applied to the IRS to be tax preparers. Most of them did not reveal that they were incarcerated. It’s good to know that prisoners are trying to be productive members of society. It’s kind of like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption (1994) who does the books for the warden and the prison guards.
While Andy was innocent of the crime of murder that got him into prison, he used his considerable financial skills to turn the tables on the corrupt warden. He learned how to be a criminal while in prison. It’s quite a story worth watching. I suggest that you watch an edited version since the language and some of the scenes are kind of rough.
Maybe these incarcerated prisoners got their inspiration from watching Shawshank.
Where Your Rights End and Mine Begin
[BigGovernment.com]
Posted December 3rd 2011 at 5:07 pm
As a child, I used to play with the neighbors across the street in one of the coolest sandboxes one could imagine. It was built into the landscape, with giant boulders lining the back and sides. Five kids could easily play in it, building sandcastles and manipulating bulldozers and dump trucks to their hearts content. Hours could go by before being called home to dinner. There was only one problem… neighborhood cats considered that magical place as their personal giant sized litter box. We were often told, sadly, that we could not play in it because of this ongoing problem.
These past few months, renting a home in a beach community has allowed my dog and I the opportunity to take a daily walk along the shore, where I hunt for shells, watch for porpoise, and occasionally exchange niceties with the fisherman who set up their poles in the sand, and with the locals who are also enjoying their surroundings. Every day, I thank my blessings that I’ve been given this chance to live in such surroundings but my happiness is often interrupted by dogs roaming the beach, unleashed, in violation of the rules which are clearly posted at each entrance. Not only do these dogs defecate on the sand but often they are not well behaved, running at leashed dogs, children, solitary walkers, and anyone within their proximity.
I do not fault the dogs. I am a dog lover and I understand that dogs are social creatures. My problem is with the owners who clearly do not consider that some dogs may respond aggressively to such provocation, children and adults may be afraid of their beloved pets, and some beachcombers may not want to worry about stepping on dog feces, let alone experience being showered by a dog shaking out its wet fur, when their intention is to savor the sand and water running between their toes. The worst offenders do not attempt to corral their dogs around other people and assume because their dogs are friendly, all is well with the world. They do not comprehend the compromise which allows both dogs and people to enjoy this pristine environment.
Jobs Are Up, But Not Nearly Enough
[BigGovernment.com]
Posted Nov 5th 2011 at 3:03 pm
by Larry Kudlow
Despite some modest improvements in the jobs picture with the release of Friday’s Labor Department report, I would guard against any irrational overexuberance that problems with employment or the economy are being solved.
A smaller-than-expected 80,000 gain in nonfarm payrolls was bolstered by upward revisions in the prior two months, amounting to 102,000 additional jobs. So over the past three months the establishment survey has averaged 114,000. It’s really nothing to write home about.
A 2 percent economy is simply way too slow to generate the kind of 300,000 per month job gains the country needs. Economic growth at 5 percent would be more like it.
And this should be a warning to members of Congress who are flirting with higher tax rates as part of the supercommittee deficit deliberations. There’s loose talk about raising the top Bush tax rates and adding to that a surcharge on millionaire tax rates. That would be a big negative for future growth.
Surprise! Warren Buffett’s Company Has $1 Billion Federal Tax Obligation
[BigGovernment.com]
Posted Oct 13th 2011 at 9:14 pm
“It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”
- Warren Buffett, NY Times Op-Ed August 15, 2011
Those high-minded and selfless words from one of the nation’s richest men inspired the Democrats’ latest push for higher taxes on job creators. It also sounds like one of the creepy slogans chanted and repeated by the aromatic “Occupy Wall St” protesters when they decry corporate greed and the doomed capitalist system.
The Return of Van Jones and Marxist Street Protests
[BigGovernment.com]
Posted Oct 3rd 2011 at 11:01 am
From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:
A “Take Back the American Dream” three-day conference in Washington begins on Monday that features Van Jones, the disgraced former Obama Administration “Green Jobs Czar,” a Russian TV star, and a veteran of the Venceremos Brigades to Cuba who works for the AFL-CIO. Such is the nature of the modern progressive movement.
“I think everybody should hold onto your seats,” said Jones on Thursday’s MSNBC program “The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell.”
“October is going to be the turning point when it comes to the progressive fight back,” he went on. “We are a part of something called the American Dream Movement. We`re having a huge summit on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Come—you can go to rebuildthedream.com and find out more about it. We are going to build a progressive counterbalance to the Tea Party.”
Clinton on Obama’s Economic Performance: ‘Got a Very Difficult Hand to Play’
[TheBlaze.com]
- Posted on September 18, 2011 at 4:15pm by
Christopher Santarelli
Waiting for an uptick in the economy during President Obama’s first term? Former President Bill Clinton says don’t hold your breath:
After reading a quote from President Clinton’s former adviser James Carville, suggesting that President Obama take a complete change of direction and “fire a lot of people,” President Clinton countered Carville’s assertion that things are not going well with:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Weinergate: The Moment Democrats Lost Control of the Debt Ceiling Narrative
BigGovernment.com
Posted Aug 2nd 2011 at 2:29 pm
You might recall this extraordinary press conference on May 31, 2011, when then-Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) called a reporter a “jackass” in refusing to answer questions about his (false) allegation that someone had hacked his Twitter account.
Instead, he wanted to talk about the debt ceiling: “We are, tonight…going to be casting a vote on something has monumental importance to our economy…I want to focus on that.”
Later that evening, a staggering bipartisan majority voted down the “clean” debt ceiling increase that President Barack Obama had wanted.
Increase the Debt Ceiling? [Reader Post]
FloppingAces.net
August 1, 2011
By: Warren Beatty
Today we hear quite a lot about the U.S. debt ceiling or debt limit. So in this article I try to draw upon Internet news, political news, and economic news for sources to examine this situation. Before deciding about the politics of the debt limit, one must understand it – what it is, from where it came, and how Congress uses it.
Debt Ceiling ORIGIN, Composition, and Purpose
A statutory ceiling on federal debt was established in 1917 under the ‘Second Liberty Bond Act.’
The debt is the total outstanding liability owed by the US Federal Government to:
- U.S. Citizens
- Corporations
- Foreign Governments
Christopher Prandoni: Obama Uses Debt Crisis to Raise Taxes
BigGovernment.com
Posted July 14, 2011 at 4:03 pm [REPOST: July 22, 2011]
After months of sitting on the sidelines, President Obama has injected himself into debt limit talks. Unfortunately, the president’s proposals are anything but novel—tax increases on oil and natural gas companies—and are unlikely to break the current impasse. Tax hikes are a non-starter for Republicans—the GOP has no interest in helping Obama fund his over-sized government that now consumes 25 percent of GDP.
Just a thought experiment, is raising oil and natural gas companies taxes a good way to address the deficit? Obama seems to think so. After all, the president decries oil and natural gas companies every chance he gets. Like yesterday, when he said:
“What we have talked about is that starting in 2013, that we have gotten rid of some of these egregious loopholes that are benefiting corporate jet owners or oil companies at a time where they’re making billions of dollars of profits. What we have said is as part of a broader package we should have revenues, and the best place to get those revenues are from folks like me who have been extraordinarily fortunate, and that millionaires and billionaires can afford to pay a little bit more.”
Mr. President, Here’s that Balanced Approach You Keep Demanding
BigGovernment.com
by Dan Mitchell
Posted Jul 16th 2011 at 7:50 am
At his press conference Friday, President Obama repeatedly said that a “balanced approach” is needed to deal with the fiscal situation.
Here’s a chart based on those OMB and CBO numbers.
The White House has obviously poll-tested and focus-grouped that phrase. But just because it’s gimmicky, that doesn’t mean balance is a bad idea. So I’ve decided to take the President’s challenge.
I want to know why America’s fiscal situation is so out of whack. I’m willing to take a dispassionate look at the numbers. And if those figures show that the President is right, and that “unaffordable tax cuts” have caused higher deficits, then I’m willing to support higher revenues (after all, I am a pragmatic, middle-of-the-road guy).
My first step was to go the White House website and track down the historical data from the President’s Office of Management and Budget.
Those numbers show that federal spending, on average, consumed 19.8 percent of GDP from 1950-2000.
John R. Lott, Jr. Seven Myths About the Looming Debt-Ceiling ‘Disaster’
BigGovernment.com
Posted Jul 15th 2011 at 8:55 pm
If Congress and the president don’t raise the debt ceiling, the consequences will be disastrous, politicians and pundits tell us, — the equivalent of an economic Armageddon. And President Obama warns that the consequences are so dire that he cannot possibly tolerate any delay in making an agreement. He announced yesterday that any debt deal must be completed by July 15th.
According to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, failure to raise the limit will cause the US to default and “cause a financial crisis potentially more severe than the crisis from which we are only now starting to recover.” On Thursday, he renewed these warnings. And President Obama alarmed retired Americans this week: “I cannot guarantee that those [Social Security] checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.”
But the list of terrible things to come, if the government is stopped from continued deficit spending, goes on. Failure to raise the ceiling, it is warned, will dramatically raise mortgage interest rates, cause housing sales to plunge, create panic on world financial markets, and destroy the value of the dollar.
Oops! Jan Schakowsky, Calling for Higher Taxes, Cites Source Who Collected $250,000 Earmark
BigGovernment.com
Posted Jun 7th 2011 at 12:26 pm
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) unwittingly highlighted the corruption inherent in congressional earmarks today, in an op-ed published in the Chicago Tribune.
Calling for Congress to “raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires,” Schakowsky quoted a constituent who supports her:
“Our country is not really broke,” said Cynthia Carranza, who directs a food pantry in Niles. Carranza has watched the increase in hungry people at her food pantry door even as government support for her program is slashed. “We’re an incredibly rich and prosperous nation. But our wealth is skewed to a very few fortunate at the top. We’re not broken, just twisted.”
Carranza’s support for government redistribution of wealth is no surprise. She may complain about the rich, but she has benefited richly from federal largesse: Carranza’s food pantry was the recipient of a $250,000 earmark requested by Schakowsky for FY 2011 in the run-up to last year’s congressional election.
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