Palin dislikes “lousy” tax deal – ABC
Add Sarah Palin to the list of politicos who are not happy about the tax cut package President Barack Obama crafted with Republican lawmakers.
“I think it’s a lousy deal and we can do better for the American people,” the former Alaska governor said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” airing Friday.
Palin, a former Republican vice presidential nominee, said it’s an issue that would be best left to the new Congress that will be sworn-in in January.
“It is better to wait until they are seated and get a good deal for the American public than to accept what I think is a lousy deal, because it creates a temporary economy with even more uncertainty for businesses and it does increase taxes,” Palin said.
Palin, one of the potential challengers to Obama in the 2012 presidential campaign, expressed gratitude for his compromise — or as she put it his “flip flop” — on his original promise not to extend tax cuts to people making more than $250, 000 per year.
“I would say that it is a flip flop in his position on taxes because he was so adamant about not allowing the tax cut extension to take place for job creators, and then all of a sudden one day he was fine with it,” Palin said in the interview at her home in Wasilla, Alaska.
“He, you know, can term it compromise. I term it flip flop,” she said. “I was thankful that he did but it’s still not good enough because our economy is … at a breaking point and we are on a path towards insolvency if we do not start incentivizing businesses to start producing more in our own country.”
Democrats, Meet Mr. Hobson
Democrats don’t like President Barack Obama’s tax compromise. They’re disappointed. Some may vote against it. But the package still seems destined to pass.
“If the idea is that this is a take-it-or-leave-it deal, I think the president’s going to realize there are going to be a lot of Democrats who are going to be voting ‘no’,” House Democrat Anthony Weiner tells ABC.
The tough-talking New Yorker, one of Obama’s more ferocious critics on the tax issue, has likened the tax discussion Vice President Joe Biden had with House Democrats on Wednesday to a prison brawl.
He calls Obama ”negotiator in chief” for accepting a weak-kneed deal with congressional Republicans and warns the president to pull his socks up or face the consequences: “I have to tell you something: It’s only going to get worse for the president if he allows himself to be pushed around like this,” Weiner says.
The question is which consequences are likely to matter most to Democrats at large.
The ‘no’ votes Weiner’s talking about would say ‘no’ to further tax cuts for wealthy Americans.
But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says that would also mean ‘no’ to middle-class tax cuts and extended unemployment benefits for the jobless, because those dang filibustering Republicans in the Senate want tax cuts for all and won’t budge an inch.
We do it by $250,000 incraments. We ask the opposed parties OK we now pass it with a cap of $500,000 no how about $750,000, common now we know you hoe’s have a number lets say $999,999.99 but you have to include all bone-us ‘s just like a waitress has to include her tips. lets make it even. Whatever, percent of the wealth of this country you controll equals your tax rate, if your in the top 2% and you controll 80% you pay 80%, phased in over 10 years of course, this will drive down national spending on oh say 10 years.
Rising above politics … in Washington
President Barack Obama seems to want to rise above politics in the tax debate. Good luck with that.
When Obama announced the White House’s tentative tax deal with congressional Republicans, he said he had agreed to compromise rather than “play politics” at a time when Americans want problems solved.
The president gave every impression of bowing to the verdict that voters delivered on Nov. 2, when they evicted so many Democrats from their lodgings in the House of Representatives and handed the time-share keys to the Republicans.
But whether voters are grateful enough to reward Obama’s thoughtfulness in 2012 is another story.
Many Democratic voters are likely to be aghast at his willingness to accept continued tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.
Democratic lawmakers, mindful of those same voters, may show their own distaste for the deal by walking out on the debate.
“There’s a group that may walk and say at some point, you’ve gone too far,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told National Public Radio after Obama announced the tentative tax deal. “If the Republicans overreach, if they start including some of their pet projects into this compromise, when it comes to the tax code, you could find a walkout on the Democratic side, people saying you’ve just pushed it too far.”
Washington Extra – Go figure
It seems slightly surreal to see a concerted attempt to rally support behind a radical plan to bring the U.S. budget deficit down to a manageable level, while at the same time Republicans and Democrats haggle over the extent of tax cuts which will achieve exactly the opposite.
But deficit hawks will be pleased to see support growing for the final draft Simpson-Bowles deficit-cutting plan, a plan all but written off a few weeks ago. Two more votes were pledged today, bringing the number of commission members in favor to 9. The hurdle of 14 votes that would trigger congressional consideration still looks elusive, but many of the proposals that form the plan may have legs.
The atmosphere around the Bush-era tax cut talks was altogether less bipartisan today, with Democrats forcing a vote through the House to extend the cuts for the middle class only. Incoming House Speaker John Boehner dismissed the vote as a “political maneuver” and then used a bit of verbal maneuvering to call it “chicken crap,” without quite calling it that.
“I’m trying to catch my breath so I don’t refer to this maneuver going on today as chicken crap, alright?” he said. “But this is nonsense. alright? The election was one month ago. We’re 23 months from the next election and the political games have already started trying to set up the next election. We had an honest conversation at the White House about the challenges that we face to get out of here and to take care of what the American people expect of us. And to roll this vote out today really is just, it’s what you think I was going to say anyway.”
Elsewhere, the net is closing in on WikiLeaks controversial founder Julian Assange as Sweden tries to tie up a valid European arrest warrant in connection with alleged sex crimes. Nice blog from our correspondent Mark Hosenball today on the man brought in to plug future Wikileaks-style dumps of government secrets. Russell Travers is a veteran intelligence officer who ironically spent years trying to figure out how government agencies could more widely share sensitive information.
Here are our top stories from Washington today…
Deficit-cutting plan advances in uphill climb
Well, it looks like you are wrong here, TyC. If they voted that way to save their jobs, it worked, they kept their jobs. And the ones who voted against HCR lost their jobs. Obviously, voters were in favor of HCR. You fail again.
Washington Extra – Chicken and ducks
The wrangling continues over the Bush-era tax cuts. President Barack Obama said he was confident Democrats and Republicans could break the deadlock and reach a deal soon. But with time running out, there is something of a game of chicken being played by the two sides. Each is watching to see who blinks first, and with the economy still struggling, both know the stakes are high.
Texas Republican Congressman Jeb Hensarling warned of the risks of failure: “In a lame duck session, a lame duck Congress should not turn our economy into a dead duck economy.”
Let’s just hope they don’t duck the issue.
Here are our top stories from Washington today…
Washington Extra – Two to tango
One of the more surreal experiences at the Reuters Washington Summit this week was hearing Republicans saying they are prepared to work with President Barack Obama over the next two years and then listing their priorities – which started with undoing and repealing almost everything he has done in the past two.
Today, at the Tart Lumber Company in Virginia, John Boehner unveiled the Republicans’ “Pledge to America” – a glossy 45-page booklet meant to set out their agenda for government. “Republicans have heard the American people,” said Boehner, the party’s leader in the House of Representatives.
As expected, there were howls of derision from the left. Many conservative commentators rallied behind the proposals to cut spending, lower taxes and balance the budget, but not everyone is happy. In his column, Reuters Breakingviews columnist James Pethokoukis argued that Republicans had missed the chance to make the case for the kind of serious fiscal reform the United States desperately needs.
“America’s so-called ‘party of no’ has finally revealed what it will say ‘yes’ to. Yet a new Republican manifesto offers little more than undoing President Barack Obama’s reforms to date, with vague talk of balanced budgets. Maybe that’s smart politics. But it’s a missed opportunity.”
Lest you think Washington Extra is letting Democrats off the hook for the lack of bipartisanship in Washington these days, there was another moment of surreal politics that stood out at this week’s Reuters summit. How can you blame the administration for the uncertainty plaguing business, one senior administration official asked, when the president has been “totally certain” all along about what he wanted to do with the Bush-era tax cuts?
Blame uncertainty on the Republicans for “agitating to change that basic formulation,” the official said. Perhaps this is what our Republican guests meant about the “arrogance of power” and how policies are just being sent down Pennsylvania Avenue.
It takes two to tango, and right now neither party seems inclined to dance with the other. That is not good news for the deficit or ultimately for business and financial markets, where concern is rising that failure to agree on tax policy could see everyone’s taxes rise in January. Further ahead, two years of both parties staring at each other across the dance floor is also less than voters deserve.
The “Pledge to America” was apparently crafted by Republicans who lacked access to a calculator. Republicans seriously want Americans to believe the struggling economy will be better off if we scrap investments in the economy and reduce the number of Americans with jobs. To do as the “Pledge” suggests would require drastic cuts to education and essential public services — the kind of cuts that would harm American citizens at a time when the economy is already struggling.
House Republicans say these cuts are necessary to restore fiscal responsibility. Except their numbers don’t come close to adding up. The GOP left a $1.3 trillion budget deficit for Democrats to clean up. Two years later, Republicans have decided to push for $4 trillion in tax cuts, which would increase the deficit; push for the repeal of health care reform, which would increase the deficit; and increase spending on missile defense, which would increase the deficit.
They want to cancel economic recovery funds, reduce the number of public jobs, and slash discretionary spending, but even if Republicans did all of this, economy be damned, the cuts don’t even come close to covering the costs of the GOP agenda. In other words, Republicans have spent two years complaining about the deficit, and have used the deficit as an excuse to block all legislation. But when presenting its own “Pledge,” the House GOP has presented a plan to make that same deficit considerably worse.
Why Americans would hire arsonists to put out a fire is something I’ll never fully understand.
Taxes: battle of the shoulds, musts, nots
Political maneuvering is in full bloom as positions are being staked out in the battle over tax cuts to the wealthy and for the hearts and minds of the Middle Class ahead of the November election.
President Barack Obama on Friday had his say: Congress should pass what everyone agrees on — extend Bush-era Middle Class tax relief for families earning up to $250,000.
For higher incomes, Obama said the country can’t afford extending tax cuts, but he is willing to talk about it . “We can have a further conversation about how they want to spend an additional $700 billion to give an average of $100,000 to millionaires. That I think is a bad idea.”
Obama didn’t slam the door in anyone’s face. In fact, if someone was looking for grains of compromise he appeared to leave the door slightly ajar.
House Republican leader John Boehner, who could be Speaker if his party wrestles control from Democrats on Nov. 2, said on Sunday that he would be open to only the Middle Class extension if that was the only piece that would get through, but in principle all the expiring tax relief should be extended.
“If the only option I have is to vote for those at 250 and below, of course I’m going to do that,” Boehner said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “But I’m going to do everything I can to fight to make sure that we extend the current tax rates for all Americans.”
Then there’s Eric Cantor. The House Republican Whip is second on the leader ladder and issued a statement on Monday that didn’t exactly back Boehner (could there be a fight for Speaker brewing?)
Reuters/Ipsos poll: Obama approval hits new low, but Republicans catch blame too
President Barack Obama’s approval rating sank to a new low of 45 percent, while his disapproval rating rose to 52 percent, according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll. It was the first time more Americans disapproved than approved of Obama in an Ipsos poll since he became president.
But Republicans had little to crow about because they were blamed more than Democrats for Washington being broken, according to the August national poll.
Among registered voters the readings were about even when looking ahead to the November midterm elections, with 46 percent likely to vote for Republican candidates and 45 percent for Democrats.
Unemployment topped the list of economic worries with 92 percent of those surveyed expressing concern. The unemployment rate in June and July was 9.5 percent.
“Ninety-two percent, that’s a very, very high number,” Ipsos pollster Cliff Young said. “We’re seeing (an interest in) a jobs agenda that we haven’t seen in almost two decades.”
Of those surveyed, 62 percent believe the country is on the wrong track.
And 78 percent believe Washington was not working effectively because of fighting between the parties, for which 36 percent blamed Republicans, 28 percent blamed Democrats and another 28 percent blamed both parties. Since late February, the biggest shift has been the increase in the number of people blaming both parties.
The media seems to be running the country. The people can’t think for themselves or look for both sides of the picture. Proof positive that the school system is a disaster. Some of those candidates sound like reincarnations from the middle ages. Can you see Rand Paul or McDonnell negotiating with Iran?
Go ahead. Vote the clowns in and see what happens. Obama is not only brilliant; he is a statesman. The majority of the country obviously cannot see that. He could do incredible things for the country if he were not being maligned and the subject of intense bigotry and racism. The world is laughing at America. But since America thinks they are the only country in the world, they just blunder along.
Democrats in a dilemma on Bush tax cuts
Conventional political wisdom says that if you are going to cut taxes, do it before an election. But in a congressional election year when record deficits and a $13 trillion national debt are unnerving voters, that wisdom may not hold.
At least that seems to be the case among Democrats who are facing serious voter concerns about deficits, the fragile economy and lack of job creation going into the November elections when Republicans hope to take control of Congress.
President George W. Bush’s tax cuts expire at the end of the year. Republicans want to extend all of the tax cuts. Democrats want to extend lower tax rates for middle income earners at least through 2011 and allow tax cuts for wealthier taxpayers to expire.
The question Democrats are debating is when to take up the tax cuts — before or after the November election. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about that at her weekly press conference, but she declined to offer any insight.
“I’m not going to make any announcements today (about) what we will be taking up in terms of timing, but we will be taking them up,” she said.
A tax cut bill could quickly pass the House of Representatives. But it would be much harder to speed one through the Senate where Republicans have successfully thrown up roadblocks against a number of Democratic initiatives.
The dilemma facing Democrats as they debate the timing of tax cut legislation is how it will play out in an election year when voters are so worried about the $1.4 trillion deficit. Democrats are taking a lot of heat on the deficit and may not get that much voter credit for extending Bush’s tax cuts.
