Higher Federal Taxation under Obama...

[BlackDragon24]

Did he quit his job as POTUS and leader of your party? Are you seriously trying to infer The Won holds no responsibility whatsoever in regard to the lack of a budget and that Congress holds all the blame?

The only vote Obama casts for a budget is the one he inks on the paper that congress puts in front of him....yea or veto.

H3ll yes we want a budget debate. Why do you think your party avoided it like the plague? Because it's toxic for them.. period. What we really want is an actual budget as the result of said debate. But the cowards leading your party are indeed to chickensh*t. So we're stuck with "deemed as passed". And Bamma is as much at fault as his brain trust Reid and Pelosi.

Maybe you want it but the repub politicians don't. Lets have it! I'd love to see how the deficit hawk republicans come down on extending tax cuts that will put us into hock for another trillion dollars over the next ten years. I am very curious to see how the deficit hawks will explain that we should go further into hock so wealthy people should keep their money but we shouldn't go into hock for the millions of people who lose their unemployment every week. Should be fun.

You never answered my question. What on earth makes you think your party will pass an actual budget? A few links to some supporting chatter would be nice.

I have no links to suggest that a budget will get passed this year. As I said, neither side wants it. Does it suck? Yes...but I'd love to have the debate.

[AMDScooter]

The only vote Obama casts for a budget is the one he inks on the paper that congress puts in front of him....yea or veto.

So you are seriously in the camp that claims The Won holds no responsibility for our lack of a budget. Wow. I really have nothing to add other than to say I cannot believe you actually buy into that.

Maybe you want it but the repub politicians don't. Lets have it! I'd love to see how the deficit hawk republicans come down on extending tax cuts that will put us into hock for another trillion dollars over the next ten years. I am very curious to see how the deficit hawks will explain that we should go further into hock so wealthy people should keep their money but we shouldn't go into hock for the millions of people who lose their unemployment every week. Should be fun.

Got enough liberals telling us who they think our leaders are and what the repugs do and don't want. How about you post a few links to support your notion repugs don't want a budget debate instead? Sorry no.. I won't take your word for it on this one either. And about that provably false claim that tax cuts will "put us in hock". Tax cuts = increased tax receipts.. period. Didya already forget the exchange you had with dutch just a few days ago?

Fair enough Dutch, I'll concede that the tax cuts led to in an increase in tax receipts.

As opposed to printing money to keep bamma's base on the payroll which actually does "put us in hock". See: stimulus stabilization act. Works about as well as restructuring loans for people in houses they could not afford to begin with.. it only prolongs the inevitable and puts us deeper in the hole.

I have no links to suggest that a budget will get passed this year. As I said, neither side wants it. Does it suck? Yes...but I'd love to have the debate.

I'll still contest your "neither side wants it" claim till proven otherwise. I'd love to see the debate also.

[BlackDragon24]

Do any of the conservatives who are claiming that the 2001/2003 tax cuts actually increased tax revenue have a link to back up their claims? I sort of took it on faith that it did but the more I look I'm having problems finding this evidence. As a matter of fact, everything points to the contrary.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1811

[Pehu]

And yeah, thanks for the nod to the orange shirted soccer studs. I was in Holland visiting family when they won ('80 or '82?) and the celebration made the Raider celebration at Jack London Square after their Super Bowl win look like grandma's lunch party. So I'll predict that if they win it all, the Dutch Army will once again have to close down Amsterdam at about three in the morning. It was the largest celebration I've ever participated in, by a factor of at least ten.

I wish 'em luck.

Off topic etc., but Holland has actually never won the World Cup. The only time Holland actually won something was in 1988 when it won the European championship. I think Holland now holds the records in World Cup final appearances without an actual championship (used to be tied with Hungary and Czechoslovakia).

[smoked trout]

Do any of the conservatives who are claiming that the 2001/2003 tax cuts actually increased tax revenue have a link to back up their claims? I sort of took it on faith that it did but the more I look I'm having problems finding this evidence. As a matter of fact, everything points to the contrary.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1811

Question everything

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfa....cfm?Docid=203

[Dutchcedar]

Off topic etc., but Holland has actually never won the World Cup. The only time Holland actually won something was in 1988 when it won the European championship. I think Holland now holds the records in World Cup final appearances without an actual championship (used to be tied with Hungary and Czechoslovakia).

You're right. I even had the years mixed up.

This time around, they played like crap.

[bk94si]

Oh, now it's a tax...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/he...1&ref=politics

[BlackDragon24]

Pretty much sums up my point of view on the topic, and why I think the thread title is completely misleading, albeit true.

Republicans now blaming Democrats for Bush tax cuts

The new Republican line is that there's a “Democrat tax hike" on the way. And it's a big 'un: "An unprecedented $3.8 trillion increase" that will affect -- and this is their bold and underline, not mine -- "every American who pays income taxes!"

To understand what's going on here, you need to go back 10 years to the passage of the Bush tax cuts. In order to maximize the size of the cuts, Republicans had to minimize the influence of minority Democrats on the package. So they chose to run the bill through the reconciliation process.

But that posed some challenges. Budget reconciliation had never been used to increase the deficit. In fact, it specifically existed to decrease the deficit. That's why one of its rules was that you couldn't use it to increase the deficit outside the budget window. Republicans realized they could take that very literally: The budget window was 10 years. So if the tax cuts expired after 10 years, they wouldn't increase the deficit outside the budget window. They'd also have the added benefit of appearing less costly in the Congressional Budget Office's estimates, as the CBO duly scored them as expiring after 10 years, which kept the long-range budget picture from exploding.

But the plan was never to have the tax cuts expire. Instead, the idea was that people would get used to the new tax rates, and no future Congress would want to allow a big tax increase, so when the time came, either Republicans in office would extend the cuts or Republicans in the minority would hammer Democrats until they extended them. And that's where we are now: Democrats control the government, so Republicans are screaming about tax increases as a way to get Democrats to extend tax cuts.

It's really hard to know where to start with this one. It's not a tax increase passed into law by Democrats. It's a reversion to old tax rates passed into law by Republicans. It's not how law is supposed to work. It's the result of twisting a budget process meant to reduce the deficit so you could use it to massively increase the deficit. And as for the policy itself, it's a fiscal nightmare: No one who professes concern for short-term deficits can argue for the extension of these deficit-financed tax cuts and retain credibility on debt issues. This is a litmus test. It's not Democrats who are trying to pass the largest tax hike of all time, but Republicans who are calling for the largest increase in the deficit in memory.

So republicans ran the bill thru senate budget reconciliation to increase the deficit. Once again they know no definition of irony.

[bk94si]

And has been documented numerous times now. Up to a point, federal tax receipts go UP with lower tax rates due to increased economic activity. Also, there is no way they can accurately project 40 years into the future. They can't even accurately do for next year.

[BlackDragon24]

And has been documented numerous times now. Up to a point, federal tax receipts go UP with lower tax rates due to increased economic activity. Also, there is no way they can accurately project 40 years into the future. They can't even accurately do for next year.

The increased economic activity will only occur if the people receiving the tax cuts spend the money on creating US jobs.

EDIT: It also doesn't mean much when you do a trillion dollar tax cut and end up getting an additional three hundred billion in tax receipts. You are still in the hole for seven hundred billion.

[bk94si]

The increased economic activity will only occur if the people receiving the tax cuts spend the money on creating US jobs.

EDIT: It also doesn't mean much when you do a trillion dollar tax cut and end up getting an additional three hundred billion in tax receipts. You are still in the hole for seven hundred billion.

I think your math needs work there. Your example gives the government an EXTRA 300 billion while giving taxpayers lower rates.

[BlackDragon24]

I think your math needs work there. Your example gives the government an EXTRA 300 billion while giving taxpayers lower rates.

You are correct...bad example.

My concern is that the increased revenue we saw was due to a lot of "fake money" in the stock market and mortgage industry.

Best piece I could find, from 2005, 4 years after the first round of cuts and 2 years after the second round.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/13/bu...ewanted=1&_r=1

Most of the increase in individual tax receipts appears to have come from higher stock market gains and the business income of relatively wealthy taxpayers. The biggest jump was not from taxes withheld from salaries but from quarterly payments on investment gains and business earnings, which were up 20 percent this year.

In addition, while a lot of the increase in tax revenue flows from the improving economy and higher incomes, part of the jump stemmed from a special factor: the expiration of a temporary tax break that allowed companies to write off their investment in new equipment much more rapidly than normal.

I don't really ever pretend to be an economist, and when I do I provide shoddy examples of my math skills . But doesn't it sound to you like we made a bunch of money of of wealthy people who were making a bunch of fake money? Can we expect the same investments and stock market gains in the next few years as we did with the second half of the Bush presidency? And can we expect it to be a real gain this time?

[otoc]

But doesn't it sound to you like we made a bunch of money of of wealthy people who were making a bunch of fake money?

Ya think?


Income Gaps Between Very Rich and Everyone Else More Than Tripled In Last Three Decades, New Data Show

[old82]

i still don't understand why y'all are interested in paying off this debt. if the economy can't afford to keep the bankers afloat, then how can the taxpayers keep them afloat (and by the way, the debt is more like 28 trillion now. for some reason the WHOLE bailout isn't included. i don't understand why that is.)?
isn't most of this debt for things to do with wall street and drug companies and war?


that may or may not be accurate.


but this is.

if the consumer cannot afford to keep the economy afloat at its current cost, then how can the tax payer afford to pay off this government debt given that much of it is used to prop up the economy? the whole pay off the debt scheme is a red herring.... or more like a windmill really.

[AMDScooter]

I'm confused as to why every single time it's shown that lower taxes = increased tax receipts the conversation gets shifted to something entirely unrelated... like the income gap?