● Obama's economic team considering new stimulus package... ● Kabul Bank called on Thursday for intervention by the United States to head off a financial meltdown.... ● Health insurance tax credit likely to affect small part of small-business workforce... ● Mixed reaction to new FEC rules on candidates, interest groups working together... ● Maryland Democrat Sen. Currie indicted on charges of taking bribes... ● Summer of Economic Discontent ... ● CBO Update... ● Obama administration appeals stem cell funding decision despite US Law... ● Gloom for Democrats as they look to November... ● U.S. troop deaths in Afghan war up sharply...
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When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; When the government fears the people, there is liberty.  ~ Thomas Jefferson

 

Entries Tagged as 'Taxes'

Obama’s economic team considering new stimulus package

September 2nd, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Money Lost, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Stimulus, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within, Treason

White House considering major tax breaks for businesses, sources say

By Lori Montgomery – Thursday, September 2, 2010; 5:33 PM

With the recovery faltering less than two months before the November congressional elections, President Obama’s economic team is considering another big dose of stimulus in the form of tax breaks for businesses – potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars, according to two people familiar with the talks.

Among the options are a temporary payroll tax holiday and a permanent extension of the research and development tax credit, say people familiar with the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to describe private deliberations.

Permanently extending the research credit would cost roughly $100 billion over the next decade, tax experts said. And depending on its form and duration, a payroll tax holiday could let businesses keep more than $300 billion they would otherwise owe the Treasury.

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Kabul Bank called on Thursday for intervention by the United States to head off a financial meltdown.

September 2nd, 2010 · Democrats, Federal Spending, Foreign Policy, Non-Transparency, Tax Dollars, Taxes, War on Terrorism

Nervous Afghans pull money from Kabul Bank, raising fears

By David Nakamura and Andrew Higgins Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 2, 2010

KABUL – With Afghans clamoring to pull their cash from their nation’s biggest bank, the United States risks a politically perilous decision: whether to step in to help shore up a wobbly bank critical not only to Afghanistan’s economy but also to the battle against the Taliban.

A swarm of customers at the headquarters of Kabul Bank in the Afghan capital on Wednesday raised the prospect of a full-scale bank run that would further alienate dispirited Afghans from their government and imperil American efforts to contain the insurgency.

The tumult in Kabul and reports of crowds at other branches suggested that a decision this week by the Central Bank to purge the management of Kabul Bank and rein in its freewheeling ways – which included disastrous property speculation in Dubai – could backfire and set off the very crisis officials hoped to avoid. President Hamid Karzai’s brother Mahmoud, who used to run an Afghan restaurant in Maryland, owns 7 percent of Kabul Bank.

Afghan officials, struggling to prevent panic, insisted Wednesday that Kabul Bank and its rivals, some of which are perhaps even more fragile, are not in danger of collapse.

David Cohen, the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing, praised the Central Bank’s leaders for acting “aggressively, decisively and as a bank regulator should act under the circumstances.” He said the Treasury Department is “confident” that the Central Bank “has the expertise to handle the situation with Kabul Bank.”

Treasury has assigned a small team of experts to work with the Central Bank on the matter.

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Health insurance tax credit likely to affect small part of small-business workforce

September 2nd, 2010 · Democrats, Federal Spending, Healthcare, Money Lost, Non-Transparency, Obama Exposed, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Small Business, Tax Dollars, Taxes

By N.C. Aizenman Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 2, 2010; 12:09 AM

About 16.6 million workers are employed by small businesses that are eligible for health insurance tax credits under the new health-care law, according to estimates that were to be released by a nonpartisan research foundation Thursday.

However, the report by the Commonwealth Fund estimated that only 3.4 million of those workers are at firms that would take advantage of the tax credit. For the most part, those are firms that already offer their employees health insurance.

Those firms that do not offer coverage are unlikely to consider the tax breaks enough of a financial incentive to start doing so, according to the report’s authors.

Still, the authors stressed the potential stimulus benefits of the tax credits, which apply beginning this taxable year and will increase in value in 2014 from as much as 35 percent of an employer’s premium contribution to as much as 50 percent. (The lower the wages and number of workers at a small business, the greater the size of the tax credit it is eligible for.)

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that by 2016, the last year for which the tax credits will be available, they will have reduced health insurance premiums for small business by 8 to 11 percent.

At that point, small businesses and their employees will be able to buy comprehensive insurance on state-based exchanges, which will be established in 2014 and are expected to offer more affordable rates than available in the current market.

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Summer of Economic Discontent

September 2nd, 2010 · Change of Power, Deception, Democrats, Dissention, Ethics, Federal Spending, Foreign Policy, Government, Greed, Money Lost, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Social Security, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Unemployment

The administration’s ‘summer of recovery’ has fizzled in almost every way imaginable. The growth rate is less than half what it was at this stage after the 1974-75 and 1981-82 recessions.

By Michael Boskin

The Obama administration’s “summer of recovery” has morphed into a summer of economic discontent amid anxiety over the weakening economy. The greater than 4% growth and less than 8% unemployment envisioned by the president’s economic team are nowhere to be seen. Almost everything that is supposed to be up—the economic growth rate, the stock market, bond yields—is down. And almost everything that is supposed to be down—unemployment-insurance claims, new mortgage delinquencies—is up.

Sometimes a weak early recovery gathers strength after a year or so, as in 2003 when the second round of the Bush tax cuts helped double growth to 3.8% from 1.9%. But there are serious headwinds to stronger growth: household deleveraging, unresolved toxic assets, and most government economic policies headed in the wrong direction. While the base case outlook is still slow recovery, a double-dip recession or a Japanese-style lost decade is more plausible than a few months ago. This explains why Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke felt compelled last week to reiterate that the Fed will use more of its (in my view, weak) ammunition should the economy falter further.

How bad is it? In the data for the last few weeks and months, real personal disposable income was flat; core capital goods orders, a precursor of business capital spending, declined 8%; new home sales fell 12.4%, existing sales 27%, despite record low mortgage rates; single-family housing starts declined 4.2%; building permits, foreshadowing future construction, fell 1.2%; initial jobless claims spiked to over 500,000, leading forecasters to expect at best meager short-term private-sector job growth; the Kansas City, Philadelphia and New York Fed manufacturing indexes fell; and the trade deficit increased, as exports fell and imports rose.

These weak backward-looking data were accompanied by big downdrafts in forward-looking financial markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost over 4% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq over 6% in August—partly retraced yesterday—and the 10-year U.S. bond yield, at 2.47%, was back to its lows of March 2009. Real GDP growth slowed from 3.7% in the first quarter to just 1.6% last quarter.

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Obama and the Democrat’s Social Security Bait and Switch

August 31st, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Federal Spending, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Social Security, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Unemployment

Associated Press

‘Harry, am I making this up?’ Yes, Mr. President, you are.

Democrats are trying to keep control of Congress by scaring the wig off grandma with a phantom GOP plot against Social Security. That is not news. Social Security scare tactics have been regular campaign themes since FDR. President Obama’s unique contribution is to do this even as he’s begging Republicans to help him reduce the deficit and reform entitlement spending.

On the one hand, Mr. Obama has charged his deficit commission with crafting a bipartisan plan to restrain entitlements. “Everything’s on the table. That’s how this thing’s going to work,” he said when he created the commission in February. “We now have to, in a gradual way, reduce spending, particularly on those big ticket items” like Social Security, he later added in Racine, Wisconsin. “That’s going to be our project for the next couple years.”

Yet even as Mr. Obama beseeches Republicans, he and his political allies are playing the Social Security card for all it’s worth in this campaign season. This has all the earmarks of a political bait and switch designed to ambush Republicans if they’re gullible enough to believe his bipartisan pleas.

Mr. Obama personally teed up the campaign theme earlier this month when he celebrated Social Security’s 75th anniversary by claiming that “privatizing Social Security” is “a key part” of the Republican “legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall.” He went on to say that this plan, which does not in fact exist, is “wrong for America” and “I’ll fight with everything I’ve got to stop those who would gamble your Social Security on Wall Street. Because you shouldn’t be worried that a sudden downturn in the stock market will put all you’ve worked so hard for—all you’ve earned—at risk.”

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The Folly of Subsidizing Unemployment

August 30th, 2010 · Accountability, Deception, Democrats, Federal Spending, Money Lost, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Treason, Unemployment

My calculations suggest the jobless rate could be as low as 6.8%, instead of 9.5%, if jobless benefits hadn’t been extended to 99 weeks.

By Robert Barro

Congressman John Boehner recently suggested that President Obama replace his top economic advisers. I think he may have a point. The economic “recovery” has been disappointing, to put it mildly, and it has become increasingly clear that the blame lies with the policies of the Obama administration, not with those of its predecessor.

In general, the current administration has been too focused on expanding government, redistributing more from rich to poor, and stimulating aggregate demand. I have previously criticized the stimulus package as cost-ineffective. In particular, whatever tax reductions were in the package did not involve the cuts in marginal income tax rates that encourage investment, work effort and productivity growth.

Now the administration wants to kill the 2003 income-tax cuts, at least the parts that reduced marginal income tax rates for high-income earners and for all recipients of dividend income. This proposal is particularly disturbing because the 2003 law was George W. Bush’s main economic achievement; unlike most of Mr. Bush’s policies, this one was well-conceived and effective.

I want to focus here on another dimension of the Obama administration’s policies: the expansion of unemployment-insurance eligibility to as much as 99 weeks from the standard 26 weeks.

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The Death of Conservatism Was Greatly Exaggerated

August 28th, 2010 · Accountability, Change of Power, Deception, Democrats, Dissention, Federal Spending, Government, Government Control, Greed, Money Lost, Non-Transparency, Obama Exposed, Obama's Scheme, Tax Dollars, Taxes

In 2008 liberals proclaimed the collapse of Reaganism. Two years later the idea of limited government is back in vogue.

By Peter Berkowitz

Last August left little doubt that a conservative revival was underway. Constituents packed town-hall meetings across the country to confront Democratic House members and senators ill-prepared to explain why, in the teeth of a historic economic downturn and nearly 10% employment, President Obama and his party were pressing ahead with costly health-care legislation instead of reining in spending, cutting the deficit and spurring economic growth.

Still, whether that revival would have staying power was very much open to question. A year later—and notwithstanding the Democrats’ steadily declining poll numbers and the mounting electoral momentum that could well produce a Republican majority in the House and a substantial swing in the Senate—it still is.

Sustaining the revival depends on the ability of GOP leaders, office-holders and candidates to harness the extraordinary upsurge of popular opposition to Mr. Obama’s aggressive progressivism. Our constitutional tradition provides enduring principles that should guide them.

In late 2008 and early 2009, in the wake of Mr. Obama’s meteoric ascent, the idea that conservatism would enjoy any sort of revival in the summer of 2009 would have seemed to demoralized conservatives too much to hope for. To leading lights on the left, it would have appeared absolutely outlandish.

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Honey, I Shrunk My Approval Ratings

August 26th, 2010 · Auto Industry, Banking Industry, Deception, Democrats, Federal Spending, Government Control, Greed, Non-Transparency, Obama Exposed, Obama's Scheme, Reform, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Unemployment

The White House is having a disastrous ‘summer of recovery.’

By Karl Rove

In what will rank as one of the all-time presidential PR disasters, we’re now well over half way through what the White House called “the summer of recovery.” And what a recovery it’s been.

Earlier this month, first-time claims for unemployment hit a nine-month high. The unemployment rate remains at 9.5% and 18.4% of workers are out of a job, can only get part-time work, or have given up looking for a job altogether. Sales of existing homes dropped 27% from June to July, hitting the lowest point since data were first collected in 1999. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index fell to 50.4 in July, continuing a slide that started in February. And the stock market is down 11% from its peak in April.

All of this has helped shatter public confidence in the president. In early May, Mr. Obama’s approval on the economy in the YouGov/Polimetrix poll was 42%. By mid-August, it was 35%—a frightening number for Democrats less than 70 days from a midterm election. According to this week’s Reuters poll, 72% are “very” worried about jobs and 67% “very concerned” about government spending.

Mr. Obama’s credibility is crumbling, and for good reason: He and his people are saying things people don’t believe. At the start of his summer of recovery road show, the president flatly asserted that last year’s massive stimulus package had “worked.” Vice President Joe Biden, not to be outdone, promised monthly job gains of up to 500,000 and insisted that the recovery’s pace “continues to increase, not decrease” as stimulus spending was “moving into its highest gear.”

It’s slightly surreal. “Who are you going to believe,” as Groucho Marx once said, “me or your own eyes?”

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With their Jobs on the line, Dems want to fix the economy. Too little too late.

August 25th, 2010 · Accountability, Auto Industry, Banking Industry, Change of Power, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Federal Spending, Government Control, Greed, Money Lost, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Reform, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within, Treason, Treasury, Unemployment

As midterms loom, Democrats work to shore up faltering recovery

By Lori Montgomery – Wednesday, August 25, 2010

A rapidly weakening economy threatens to undermine President Obama’s assertion that he has set the nation on a path to prosperity and, with barely two months until congressional midterm elections, Democrats find themselves with few options for reviving the faltering recovery.

The latest sign that the economy is losing steam: Home sales fell 27 percent in July, the steepest one-month drop since figures were first compiled in 1968, according to a report released Tuesday. Analysts had expected sales to decline following the expiration of a federal tax credit for homebuyers this spring, but the drop was nearly twice as large as forecast.

The housing report punctuated a wave of bad news that has been building all summer. The number of jobless claims has risen in each of the past four weeks and last week hit its highest point in nine months. Private-sector job creation is trending well below the level needed to keep up with population growth. Retail sales have also been disappointing.

Economists generally do not expect a dip back into recession, although many say the risk has grown with each new piece of disheartening data.

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Minority leader Boehner: Fire Obama’s economic team, extend tax cuts

August 24th, 2010 · Accountability, Corruption, Deception, Democrats, Federal Spending, Foreign Policy, Greed, Money Lost, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within, Treasury

By Paul Kane and Michael D. Shear – Tuesday, August 24, 2010; 12:21 PM

CLEVELAND — House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) called Tuesday for the mass firing of the Obama administration’s economic team, including Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and White House adviser Larry Summers, arguing that November’s midterm elections are shaping up as a referendum on sustained unemployment across the nation and saying the “writing is on the wall.”

Boehner said President Obama‘s team lacks “real-world, hands-on experience” in creating jobs that are needed for a full economic recovery. The Republican lawmaker cited reports that some senior aides complained of “exhaustion,” including the recently departed budget chief Peter Orszag.

“President Obama should ask for – and accept – the resignations of the remaining members of his economic team, starting with Secretary Geithner and Larry Summers, the head of the National Economic Council,” Boehner said in the morning speech to business leaders at the City Club of Cleveland. The mass dismissal, he added, would be “no substitute for a referendum on the president’s job-killing agenda. That question will be put before the American people in due time. But we do not have the luxury of waiting months for the president to pick scapegoats for his failing ‘stimulus’ policies.”

Vice President Biden lashed back at Boehner, called his “so-called” economic plan nothing but a list of what Republicans are against and devoid of innovative new ideas that can help move the country forward.

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