With campaign over, Obama gets down to business
Updated 8:30 a.m.
One downside to winning a presidential election: You don't get very long to enjoy your victory.
On the heels of reelection last week, the president is now reckoning with the looming "fiscal cliff," figuring out who will replace top officials in his second term, and returning to the international stage - among other duties. Here's the state of play facing the already-busy president:
The fiscal cliff
Other than the shocking fall of CIA director David Petraeus - more on that later - this is the story that is consuming Washington.
First, a quick reminder: The "fiscal cliff" is the combination of tax hikes and spending cuts set to start kicking in at the end of the year, if Congress and the president don't come to a deal. The tax hikes, to the tune of about $500 billion in 2013, would result from the expiration of the Bush-era income tax cuts and the end of the payroll tax holiday that began in 2011, among many other factors. The spending cuts result from a law that Congress passed and the president signed in response to Republican refusal to raise the debt limit without concessions: The law mandates $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over a decade through indiscriminate cuts to most defense and non-defense domestic programs, including about $110 billion in cuts in 2013. Going off the cliff would affect nearly 90 percent of taxpayers, and many economists as well as the Congressional Budget Office say doing so would tip the economy into recession.
Congress returns to Washington Tuesday, and working out a deal to avoid the cliff is at the top of the agenda. Meanwhile, outside groups are ratcheting up pressure to shape a possible deal in the best possible terms. On Tuesday, Mr. Obama meets with labor leaders and progressive groups who will push the president not to make the major concessions on entitlement programs sought by Republicans. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama will meet with representatives from the business community, many of whom backed Mitt Romney in the election and who generally want the president to minimize tax hikes. (Some in this group are rallying around the $4 trillion Bowles-Simpson proposal that would, among other things, make significant changes to Social Security.) On Friday, the president is set to hold his first meeting with lawmakers from both parties to discuss a path forward.
The most obvious fault line between the two sides comes on raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. The president campaigned on raising tax rates on those making more than $250,000 per year, and he argues that his reelection shows the American people support that position. (National exit polling from Tuesday found that 60 percent of voters support raising taxes on this group.) In his carefully-constructed remarks on the issue last week, House Speaker John Boehner took a conciliatory tone but stood by his opposition to raising taxes on the highest earners, arguing that it would hurt small business owners and hamper economic growth. Boehner said he is open to revenue increases but that they should come from reforms to the tax code such as closing loopholes - the same position he held before the election.
There are signs, however, that Republicans may not take the hard line on taxes that they adopted in Mr. Obama's first term. The New York Times reported over the weekend that Boehner told House Republicans on a conference call that they must face political reality: The newspaper reported that Boehner told his caucus (in the Times' words) that Republicans "would continue to staunchly oppose tax rate increases as Congress grapples with the impending fiscal battle, [but] they had to avoid the nasty showdowns that marked so much of the last two years." Meanwhile, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told the Wall Street Journal that while Republicans have a "voter mandate not to raise taxes," he would be open to accepting tax increases equal to reductions in entitlement spending. And Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, a leading voice of establishment conservatism, said Sunday that "It won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires."
Right now, both sides are trying to cast themselves as the reasonable party ahead of the negotiations, since they don't want to be blamed if the nation does go over the cliff. Mr. Obama last year met largely behind closed doors in a failed attempt to reach a deal; this time around he's more aggressively taking his case to the public, and reportedly plans to "travel beyond the Beltway" to rally support for his position. He will also hold a news conference Wednesday in which he will take questions from reporters - his first such event since June. On Friday, he said that while he is "open to new ideas," he will reject any approach that does not involve a tax increase on the highest earners.
- no previous page
- next
1/2
Popular in Politics
- FBI director acknowledges domestic drone use 153 Comments
- Obama and Berlin: Faded echoes meet new realities 77 Comments
- Next up for Obama: Major effort on climate change
- Immigration reform would cut deficit, analysis shows 82 Comments
- House Republicans pass 20-week limit on abortions 598 Comments
- Michelle Obama and daughters tour Berlin Play Video
- IRS readying to pay $70M in employee bonuses, senator says
- IRS scandal: Is partisanship overshadowing facts?
Free medical care
Free dental care
Get free Obama money for your personal needs
Free cell phone
Home phone payments
Car gas payments
Free housing
Free money for your home upkeep
Lots of Obama government jobs
Larger amounts of Free food with free food stamps
Birth control supplies
No income tax payments
Free abortions
Get free education grants
Free home bailouts
Home rental payments
Home utility payments
Endless unemployment payments
Home mortgage payments
Babysitting payments
Get out of debt for fee
Free student loans
Larger and longer welfare payments
Free ipad
Free cigarettes
Free video games
Free car
Free health care
Free food
Free homes
Lower qualifications for disability payments
Free gay marriage service
Free fast food
Free candy
Free land
Free health insurance
Free personal bailouts
Free monthly debit cards
Free car
Get personal no payback loan guarantees
Get free travel for your own free education
Free big screen television
Free company bailouts
Car payments
Free makeup
Free education
Get free money to start your own solar business
Get free grants for your personal needs
Free union due payments
Get free money for your own business
Free McDonald's food
Get free money by using your home
Get free grants for your own business
Free clothes
Free athletic shoes
Free vacations
Free legal help
Obama Thanks You For Your Vote.
Hills: The fact you don't understand basic mathematics, economics, and finance is not due to MY low education.
Let me try to lay this out simply for you, and I'll use small words so you can understand.
___________________________________
arth, that was a meandering and poorly explained post, proving nothing but your own inability to grasp finance. In general, it was a complete waste of time - yours and mine. And underscores why I know you are not wealthy unless you won down at the bingo hall.
1) "They pocketed the 120,000, and when they saw their own house of cards about to collapse they yanked the money out and moved it - offshore, or to other financial instruments."
Very poor understanding of what happened. First off, the Purchase Price was $120,000. If the home foreclosed at $80,000, in most cases it reverts to beneficiary (the bank) and they have to sell it. It will go for around 75% of value of which the bank has to pay foreclosure costs and the selling and buying agent. So, in effect, they pocketed $50K or so not $120K. But they gave the homeowner $100K - so they lost $50K or didn't you realize that's what your post says. Learn math.
Second, "yanked the money out"? That is again a lib-blog-esque (child-like)understanding of the securitized financial instruments and the secondary market. It was either bought by a US corporation or fund, or a foreign bank or fund. So it was offshore by purchase or still in the country. "Yanking" out would be impossible. In fact, it doesn't even make sense.
2) "THEY DON'T PAY FULL TAX on the gain from the rise in property values, because it is a capital gain."
I don't even know where to start. If THEY is the bank, and a property appreciates, the homeowner pays the cap gains, if it applies. Not the bank, arth - what on earth are you on?
But, thank you, you highlight why cap gains is a FULL tax - on investment income - because it would take a real nitwit not to see that just because you invest and get a return, that's not guaranteed. First off, in your example, the homeowner invested $20,000 and came away with nothing. The bank invested in the homeowner with $100,000 and came away with $50K, not to mention billions upon billions lost in market capitalization. Risk of loss is why investment is incentivized with lower tax rate on cap gains. Simple.
Arth, I know you mean well but it's best to stay out of discussions on topics you don't understand.
----------------
This week, in Ireland, Savita Halappanavar who was 17 weeks pregnant with a wanted fetus went into the hospital complaining of severe lower back pain. It turns out that she was suffering a miscarriage. The doctors refused to give her an abortion because Ireland is a Catholic country. She died two days later of blood poisoning. Had the doctors believed in the importance of saving a viable independent woman instead of a obviously ill fetus she WOULD HAVE LIVED.
Blood poisoning in pregnancy is more common than you think.
The Far Right GOP would also have condemned any woman facing the same predicament....a death sentence for the mother.
----------------------
Most of you are familiar with the St. Joseph's Hospital (AZ) incident, yes? A nun in charge of medical ethics at the hospital authorized obstetricians to terminate the pregnancy of a woman (mother of four) dying of pulmonary hypertension (a condition that is catastrophically aggravated by pregnancy). She was so sick she could not be moved out of the ER, let alone transferred to another hospital.
A bishop excommunicated the nun and decertified the hospital as a Catholic institution. He deemed it morally unsupportable that a Catholic would have authorized the termination of a "healthy pregnancy." (What kind of disconnection from reality and biology could cause someone to see a a pregnancy that is 100% fatal to the fetus as healthy? What kind of church makes imposing death on women a cornerstone of its theology?) The only thing that saves Catholic hospitals from themselves in this country are the secular impulses of nearly all physicians. I am convinced that if this woman had been allowed to die with physicians forced to stand around and do nothing, its obstetrics department would have vanished overnight.
A few months later, the hospital's parent, changed its name from Catholic Healthcare West to Dignity Health Care and officially terminated its status as a Catholic institution.
--------------
A teen in the Dominican Republic died four months ago because she was denied chemotherapy for cancer. Countless others die every day, but without press coverage we just don't see or hear about them. Women in El Salvador and Mexico have been put in jail for both abortions and "suspicious" miscarriages. Young girls in Argentina and Brazil, victims of violence and incest, have been denied safe abortion care. A total abortion ban in Nicaragua means that not only do women die for lack of safe abortion care, but that untold numbers of women and girls who are the victims of violence are forced to endure pregnancy and childbearing against their will.
-------------------------
Anyone who has a choice should boycott Catholic hospitals.
There are many women (and men) who don't even truly understand how much peril women are in when they turn to Catholic institutions for obstetric care in particular. In the aftermath of the Arizona case, legislation was introduced in Congress affirming the right of religious hospitals to deny any treatment that is deemed incompatible with their religion.
Again, anyone who has a choice should boycott Catholic Hospitals.
________________________________________
This is such a muddled comment I don't really even know where to begin, but I'll give it a shot.
You say you are wealthy, arth, but I don't think so based on this comment. This type of thinking is indicative of a lower-class type low brow thought process.
An "underwater mortgage" means the value of the home is less than what is owed. There is no "missing money" first of all.
If by "missing money" you are talking about the securitized notes that represent the liens on the properties, that money isn't missing either. It still exists. It is just worthless.
It is not worthless because it is "missing". It is worthless because the contracts were written based on fraudulently inaccurate information provided by the homeowner. The banks allowed this to happen, Republicans deregulated the industry and allowed it to happen and Democrats stood by spouting how strong Fannie Mae was and how struggling Americans deserved homeownership.
Your assertion that the "missing money" went "into the pockets of the 1%" is a rudimentary and child-like perception, since those securitized notes aren't bought by individual. They are bought by hedge funds, pensions, and insurance companies, to name a few.
These notes were investments and indicate why investment income is taxed less than wage income - there is risk involved. You make the investment hoping to earn a return and sometimes you do. Sometimes however, you lose everything in the investment, including the principal you invested. It's pretty simple to understand really.
Jeez, there's nothing worse than someone who knows just enough to have a complete misunderstanding of the world. I'm disappointed in you arth.
Let me try to lay this out simply for you, and I'll use small words so you can understand.
Homeowner spends 20,000 and borrows 100,000 to buy a house "worth" 120,000. House is now worth 80,000. Homeowner is down 40,000 - if he sells, he still owes 20,000 and he doesn't get back the 20,000 he put in at the beginning. And the bank currently holding the mortgage is at risk for the default, so the loan is worth less. And whose wealth is hit for that? The homeowner (mostly middle class) and everyone that has investments in mortgage backed securities (most 401K plans, for example) also mostly middle class.
But who won? The banks, subprime lenders and 1% manipulators that lent the money on the wildly overvalued piece of real estate and quickly sold the liability to someone else. They pocketed the 120,000, and when they saw their own house of cards about to collapse they yanked the money out and moved it - offshore, or to other financial instruments. And guess what? THEY DON'T PAY FULL TAX on the gain from the rise in property values, because it is a capital gain.
Bottom line, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and asking the rich to pay a little more is perfectly reasonable since they have so many ways of avoiding paying their fair share - and have been avoiding it for decades.
linkicon reporticon emailicon
infant try man is the only anti American, GOP, economic terrorist, pimp for the 1% who has ever talked about helping people of color.
He must be a closet Democrat.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
------------------------------------------------
and you still have YET to figure anything out. It's a shame really
The importance of this election was that in spite of dirty, laundered, corrupt corporate money favoring the Republicons, most of the American people said no.
As President Obama said, we need to go Forward. And it is up to us the 99% to neuter the power of the Wall Street corporations and filthy rich. We need to go back to the policies of before Reagan who began the current disaster we are living with now.
Trickle down is dead and buried. Free trade and outsourcing has failed miserably. Corporate domination of the world on its way to the scrap heap of history.
-----------------------------------------------------------
This is so funny. Do you have an education at all?
99% did NOT vote for Obama! And dirty money, you have evidence right?
So yes, having much of your income sheltered from payroll taxes and having been wildly rewarded for hoarding money over the last 12 years is not fair, and fixing that IS.
________________________________________
This is a silly statement but I'll dissect it here.
1) "so many people are not currently paying federal income tax is due to the fact the rich have gotten richer (285% richer over the last 12 years) while everyone else has been getting poorer, and the combination of tax CUTS and credits (mostly REPUBLICAN)removed tax liability"
What? Your correlation is tenuous at best and a complete fantasy at worst. I don't even know where to begin here. This is a pure wealth envy premise - it is one made by people who don't understand marginal tax rates and capital gains tax rates and the reason for the difference. THey only look at what the wealthy HAVE, and burn with envy. See the article that I posted earlier - corporations contributed billions of dollars in tax revenue.
2) "Also note that the payroll taxes (which account for the second largest pile of federal dollars, almost as much as personal income tax on the wealthy) are paid disproportionately by THE MIDDLE CLASS because the maximum income that is taxable is capped."
An argument put forth by those dumb enough to buy into the 91% tax rate of the 50's - no one paid that rate - know why? It was only on every dollar earned after $360,000. Problem is, average YEARLY income back then was $5000. Only about 6 people made the top income and they were business owners who had all kinds of loopholes and paid far less, if they paid anything at all. The reason for all the prosperity was not taxes, like most lefty nitwits like to say, it was that we had the only intact manufacturing base in the world, plus cheap capital and labor.
3) having been wildly rewarded for hoarding money over the last 12 years is not fair, and fixing that IS.
Wealth envy again, pathetic. You and your friends need to make up your mind. We're talking about raising taxes on individuals earning $250K a year - those whom you have specifically said are NOT job creators. So you are saying their crime is hoarding money they've made in the last 12 years. Or on the flip side - you're mad they're not giving their hard earned money away. It's THEIR money.
So which is it? Face it, you and your friends want what they HAVE and you won't be satisfied until you get it and you don't care what you have to say to rationalize it. You are just a bunch of greedy little pigs who want something for nothing. Pathetic.
In order:
1) My correlation is neither tenuous nor inaccurate. Like most Teapublicans, you are confusing tax liability (how much of the taxes you pay that the government gets to keep) and tax payment. The main causes among TAXPAYERS for many having no tax LIABILITY:
a) Many people have lost higher wage jobs and are now in lower wage jobs, but have the same deductions (kids, mortgage interest, etc.) as wealth has consolidated at the top. This means their tax LIABILITY decreases - to zero.
b) Bush and the Republicans not only pushed through tax CUTS (which lowered the amount of taxes paid) they also pushed through increased EXEMPTIONS (doubled the child tax credit) and did not touch deductions. As a result, many more people now get their paid income tax refunded due to these changes.
And your Teapublican analysis totally ignores that the majority of the "47% that pay no federal income tax" are retired people, unemployed people, very poor people, and veterans. Surprise, they are all paying sales tax, gas tax, and dozens of other taxes. So you really need to focus on tax PAYERS that have no tax LIABILITY - which are for the reasons above.
2) I have no wealth envy - I am wealthy. And the fact corporations contribute "billions of dollars" in tax revenue is MEANINGLESS - when those same corporations have TRILLIONS of dollars in profits. The question isn't absolute - it's RELATIVE. And if you have 250 MILLION dollars in the bank, and we have to choose between asking you to pay $100 more a month in taxes OR (the other alternative) throwing poor people out in the streets to STARVE, I think it's fair to ask you to pay a little more.
3) Payroll taxes - I talk about reality (payroll taxes have caps on maximum income, and therefore the disproportionate burden falls on the people making BELOW that cap) and you respond with marginal tax rates in the 1950's? Surely you can do better than that. You completely failed to address my point, and your response is therefore meaningless. Payroll taxes are the second largest category of federal revenue, and ar emote than 75% of the total in federal income taxes. FACT. These taxes have a cap on the maximum income that is taxed. FACT. They only apply to payroll income, not to capital gains or other forms of "income". FACT. The disproportionality are paid, therefore, byt he working poor and the middle class. FACT.
4) Money hoarding and paying the fair share. Again - not wealth envy. FACT - from 1950 to 1980, EVERYONE got richer. Everyone's wealth went up at similar rates, and no one demographic group - rich, poor, middle class, well to do, etc. was left out or behind. SINCE 1980, however, virtually ALL the wealth is being captured by the top 5% = and mostly by the top 1%, while everyone else struggles to stay even. If credit wasn't freely available and if most families had not gone to two earners in the 1980's and early 1990's, the average household would have LOST ground.
5) My mind is not a problem. First, we are not talking about RAISING taxes - we are talking about letting TEMPORARY tax CUTS EXPIRE. Do you savvy the word "temporary"? Second, the change is on the amount of income OVER $250,000 - so if you make $255,000, the "added tax" is only on the last $5,000. Which means, based on average deduction, it really only impacts households with INCOME over $300,000. Third, I never said these people "are not job creators" - although mostly they aren't.
And finally, I assert (factually) that economies work when money is in motion between parties. This is how it works:
Business owner hires worker. Worker gets paid. Worker buys stuff. Business owner gets paid. Business owner hires more workers to make more stuff. Rinse, repeat. But that isn't what has been happening.
What has been happening instead is this:
Worker gets paid. Worker buys stuff. Business owner gets paid. Business owner FIRES WORKER and hires guy in China, pocketing half the extra money. Or worse - Business owner fires worker, sucks money out to their own accounts, sells business to unsuspecting workers, laughs while it blows up. That was the Bain Capital BUSINESS MODEL.
I don't want what others have. I have everything I need, and most people don't want more free stuff - they just want their kids to be able to have a good education, a decent job, and make enough money to take their kids to Disneyland once every few years. And those people are suffering because we have allowed the very wealthy to hoard the money, slowing the economy while the money is pumped out never to return, and in the long run it is bad for EVERYONE.
A famous poker player once said, "You can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin him once." Conservatives need to stop letting the wealthy skin the middle class.
_____________________________________
I haven't tripped over any bodies in the streets. Typical fearmongering from the left as if people will start dying if we don't extract more money from the wealthy.
Look, I understand the Left tendency to be a bleeding heart. Be a bleeding heart when the economy's humming. But we have to pick it up off it's face, dust it off and give it a kick in the butt first.
The problem with the Extreme Left is they see their best chance in years to get a bunch of free stuff implemented, or at least a bunch of taxes laid on the wealthy, whom they see as evil, when in reality, they are just harder working, more intelligent or more talented than the poor. Or maybe just luckier. It's not their fault. And I look at the lefties coveting their wealth and it disgusts me. That's my position.
linkicon reporticon emailicon
Hills: First, your final comment is bizarrely incorrect. The tax cuts in 2003 had no impact on the real economy. The economy improved in the mid-200's, not because of tax cuts, but because of the (fake) housing market rise which, when it collapsed, took the whole economy with it.
_______________________________________________
Wrong. Either you are ignoring the facts or you are just regurgitating something you read on a lib blog or a lib op-ed piece.
New York Times, July 8th:
"The main reason is a big spike in corporate tax receipts, which have nearly tripled since 2003, as well as what appears to be a big increase in individual taxes on stock market profits and executive bonuses.
On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office reported that corporate tax receipts for the nine months ending in June hit $250 billion — nearly 26 percent higher than the same time last year — and that overall revenues were $206 billion higher than at this point in 2005."
I don't see any support for your statement, there arth. BTW, this isn't a blog or an op ed piece. Which is why it doesn't mirror your information.
We were discussing tax CUTS improving the ECONOMY. Which they did not. You post something claiming tax RECEIPTS were higher due primarily to corporate profits and wealthy people getting richer. Which they did - but running up the housing market and the stock market like a Ponzi scheme (and some actual Ponzi schemes) to create paper wealth and sucking it out of everyone else's pockets is not improving the economy. If corporate profits were all that made up the economy, we would be in boom times as profits are historically high right NOW.
Yes, receipts were up - and everyone's 401K portfolios were high too, because so much was invested in real estate paper. Most people lost a lot of that wealth - and almost everyone is still carrying underwater mortgages. Where do you think that missing money (from your underwater mortgage) went? Answer - into the pockets of the top 1%.
I want it back so it can be given back to the 99% that need it.
But you just screwed yourself as well because you used the argument you did. If what you say was true, in that if was the onset of a boom that cause the spike in growth, how then do you expect to accomplish the same thing in a Depression with nothing in the economy to cause the spike?
You can't win arth, because your argument is illogical and baseless. Nothing you've said makes any sense because it's base on bogus correlations. Nice try though.
linkicon reporticon emailicon
HILLZHAVEAYS: Utter nonsense. The vast majority of people that voted for Obama didn't do it because they want "free stuff" - they want a fair and balanced approach to solving our national problems and they believed the Republicans would be neither fair nor balanced.
__________________________________________
Your definition of fair, since the demographic you speak already pays most of the taxes in this country, at least those making $113K+ per year, already pay $7 out of $10 of every dollar in Federal Revenue from individual filers with a positive AGI. This fact is indisputable. So, according to you, paying 70% is not "fair and balanced" and they should pay more.
The fact is, arth, you just want more of what they HAVE and you want the government to go in so you can get your greedy little paws on it.
In 2003, tax cuts went into place and the economy soared as a result. Now we're in a ditch and you want to raise taxes on those who are already paying the bulk of revenue. You are one greedy lib.
Second, the reason so many people are not currently paying federal income tax is due to the fact the rich have gotten richer (285% richer over the last 12 years) while everyone else has been getting poorer, and the combination of tax CUTS and credits (mostly REPUBLICAN)removed tax liability, not the systematic requirement to pay taxes. Also note that the payroll taxes (which account for the second largest pile of federal dollars, almost as much as personal income tax on the wealthy) are paid disproportionately by THE MIDDLE CLASS because the maximum income that is taxable is capped.
So yes, having much of your income sheltered from payroll taxes and having been wildly rewarded for hoarding money over the last 12 years is not fair, and fixing that IS.
I don't want ANYTHING of "what the rich have" - I am already rich. And I am not greedy - nor am I a liberal. I am an independent that was a Republican from 1978 to 1998 and exited when I realized the social conservatives had really hijacked the party.
What I DO want is to have a vibrant, healthy society which is what we HAD in the 20th century, and started dismantling in the mid 90's and through the Bush administration. Our entire government has been hijacked by the plutocrats, and they are raping the middle class and squirreling away the money out of the country in the process. I don't want to keep sending jobs to China and driving people in the US into poverty from medical bills and bad jobs, and that is what YOUR ideas are doing.
I want those that have benefited the most to pay the most - and they can afford it. And I will agree to level the tax field when everyone has equal opportunity at equal access to growing wealth - and they don't.