Barack Obama, one-percenter

[Chris_]

Obama paid a lower tax rate than his secretary, White House confirms

President Barack Obama's secretary paid taxes at a higher rate than he did in 2011 despite having a "substantially lower income," the White House said Friday, casting the disparity as an argument for Congress to adopt the so-called "Buffett Rule."

Obama on Friday released his 2011 tax filings, showing that he paid $162,074 in total taxes on adjusted gross income of $789,674, an effective rate of 20.5 percent

ABC News

There you go, another rich fatcat hiding his money using "loopholes" to avoid paying more in taxes.

[DLR Pyro]

This article was from April 2012.  Why wasn't this fact reported on ad nauseum by the media like how they were hammering Romney about his house with a car elevator, his trip years back with the dog on the roof of the car, his allegedly giving a fellow classmate a haircut decades ago.....

[Chris_]

I didn't even notice the date.  I'm trying to remember where I found it, but someone else linked to it today.

[thundley4]

The difference between Obama and Romney is that Obama believes the rich should pay more, so he is being a hypocrite, Romney isn't.

[Sam Dodd]

At least the President isn't opposed to raising taxes on himself.

[Eupher]

At least the President isn't opposed to raising taxes on himself.

So that makes raising taxes acceptable? Just because Barry says he can pay more?

I suppose that's why on a percentage basis, Barry's SECRETARY paid more in taxes than he did. 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/04/13/president-obama-paid-lower-tax-rate-than-his-secretary/

[Sam Dodd]

So that makes raising taxes acceptable? Just because Barry says he can pay more?

I suppose that's why on a percentage basis, Barry's SECRETARY paid more in taxes than he did. 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/04/13/president-obama-paid-lower-tax-rate-than-his-secretary/

Was it acceptable to lower them and create the debt Bush left us?

[Eupher]

Was it acceptable to lower them and create the debt Bush left us?

Stick to the question posed to you. Throwing in strawmen just provides a highly ignitable target.

[rich_t]

Was it acceptable to lower them and create the debt Bush left us?

Congress is 100% responsible for any and all debt.  They control the national checkbook and you liberals spend tax payer money like there ain't no tomorrow.

[Sam Dodd]

Congress is 100% responsible for any and all debt.  They control the national checkbook and you liberals spend tax payer money like their ain't no tomorrow.

Actually, the pork barreling runs on the House and the new tea party members.  And the Defense Budget Obama presented was raised billions by Ryan.

The republicans spend like there's no tomorrow on the rich, including their tax cuts for the rich.

[Eupher]

Actually, the pork barreling runs on the House and the new tea party members.  And the Defense Budget Obama presented was raised billions by Ryan.

The republicans spend like there's no tomorrow on the rich, including their tax cuts for the rich.

You're long on rhetoric and short on substance there, noob. Put up or shut up.

[Sam Dodd]

Somebody Should Tell Politicians that the Military Budget is for National Defense, not Pork and Political Correctness

But in many cases, it’s not the fault of the Generals and Admirals. America’s military is forced to waste money because the politicians in Washington are motivated by cronyism, corruption, pork, and political correctness.

For example, let’s look at an excerpt from a column in the Washington Examiner.

    Imagine you’re a legislator in a country with a bloated budget of almost $4 trillion and a record level of spending that requires massive deficits and could mean job-killing tax increases. Now imagine you’ve got a weapons program that is billions over budget, a decade behind schedule and unwanted even by those for whom it is intended. What would you do? If you said, “Earmark the program another $380 million,” you’re apparently qualified to serve on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee. The weapons program is the Medium Extended Air Defense System, a joint venture with Germany and Italy that was zeroed out by three of four relevant congressional funding authorities. But the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense decided the program was worth a $380 million earmark, and the full committee passed the final bill along with a unanimous vote.

I’m not an expert on weapons systems. Heck, I know less about such matters than Obama’s cabinet knows about the economy. But it certainly seems foolish to throw good money after bad on a program that doesn’t work. Especially when the military doesn’t want it!

And here are a couple of sentences from a Forbes column about part of the military budget being diverted to subsidize solar power.

    EPA regional headquarters?

    The U.S. Army is looking for a few good renewable energy projects. Some $7 billion worth. On Tuesday the Army began accepting bids for green energy installations that will be deployed on military bases and facilities across the U.S. The Army will sign contracts to buy the electricity generated by solar, wind, geothermal and biomass projects for up to 30 years. …The program is part of a Department of Defense initiative to meet at least 25% of energy demand on its bases from renewable sources by 2025. The military is also aiming its bases to become “net zero” consumers of electricity – generating more power than they use by installing solar and other renewable energy systems.

Silly me. I thought the Pentagon was responsible for keeping the nation safe. I guess I missed the memo where it was tasked with being a tool for the green agenda.

[thundley4]

Was it acceptable to lower them and create the debt Bush left us?

Lowering taxes does not create debt. Spending does.  Tax revenues went up after the Bush tax cuts, and "the rich" paid more in than before.

[Sam Dodd]

Lowering taxes does not create debt. Spending does.  Tax revenues went up after the Bush tax cuts, and "the rich" paid more in than before.

What?  Lowering taxes take money DIRECTLY out of the general fund CREATING more debt.

[rich_t]

What?  Lowering taxes take money DIRECTLY out of the general fund CREATING more debt.

Facts don't support that.

[Zeus]

Was it acceptable to lower them and create the debt Bush left us?

Why America Is Going To Miss The Bush Tax Cuts
Peter Ferrara, Contributor
OP/ED | 12/06/2012 @ 9:58AM

Quote
President Obama seems to have a strategy to terminate all of the Bush tax cuts, not just those for “the rich,” as he has been saying since 2008.  He is offering the Republicans exactly zero concessions in the “fiscal cliff” negotiations.  No spending cuts, no entitlement reform, no compromise on the rates.  It is entirely my way or the highway, and if the Republicans refuse to do everything exactly as he demands, he will let the Bush tax cuts expire entirely, for the middle class and working people as well as the upper incomes, and blame the Republicans for refusing to go along with him, and for the economic results.

It is a cynical game worthy of an undeveloped, third world country, not the United States of America.  But this is just one more reason, with many more to come, for the American people to regret the mistake they made on Election Day.

Because so many major media institutions, like the New York Times and the Washington Post, have been so duplicitous and dishonest in discussing the Bush tax cuts, most Americans don’t know much about them, even though they have been living with them for 10 years or more now.  Indeed, most of what they think they know is not true.  But the American people will understand them better, when they see what life is like without them.

President Bush and his Congressional Republican majorities at the time cut taxes for everyone in the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.  Indeed, they cut more for lower and middle income taxpayers than they did for “the rich,” as Obama calls the nation’s job creators, investors, and successful small businesses.  The top tax rate was cut by only 13%, while the lowest rate was cut by one-third, 33%.

According to official IRS data, the top 1% of income earners paid $84 billion more in federal income taxes in 2007 than in 2000 before the Bush tax cuts were passed, 23% more.  The share of total federal income taxes paid by the top 1% rose from 37% in 2000, before the Bush tax cuts, to 40% in 2007, after the tax cuts.

In contrast, the bottom half of income earners paid $6 billion less in federal income taxes in 2007 than in 2000, a decline of 16%.  The share of federal income taxes paid by the bottom 50% declined from 3.9% in 2000 to 2.9% in 2007.

The Bush tax cuts also included a doubling of the child tax credit from $500 per child to $1,000 per child.  Because of that, and the 33% cut in the bottom tax rate, nearly 8 million more people dropped off the federal income tax rolls entirely, paying zero federal income taxes.  Indeed, under the Bush tax cuts, the bottom 40% of all income earners not only paid no federal income taxes, as a group on net.  By 2009, they were being paid cash by the IRS equal to 10% of all federal income taxes.

These Bush tax cuts did not explode the deficit, as Obama and his echo chamber have alleged.  By 2007, the deficit was down to $160 billion, less than 15% of Obama’s deficits today.  Total federal revenues soared from $793.7 billion in 2003, when the last of the Bush tax cuts were enacted, to $1.16 trillion in 2007, a 47% increase.  Capital gains revenues had doubled by 2005, despite the 25% capital gains rate cut adopted in 2003.  Federal revenues rose to 18.5% of GDP by 2007, above the long term, postwar, historical average over the prior 60 years.  CBO was projecting surpluses to return indefinitely in 2012 through the end of its projection period in 2018.

Bush did increase federal spending as a percent of GDP by one-seventh, erasing the federal spending cuts enacted by the Republican Congressional majorities in the 1990s.  But even with that, deficits during the Bush years averaged just 2% of GDP, one-third less than the average over the prior 50 years.  President Obama’s deficits have averaged 5 times as much, at 9.1% of GDP.

The proof is in the pudding over the Bush tax cuts.  They were followed by a record 52 straight months of job creation, producing 8 million new jobs, with the unemployment rate falling to 4.4%.  Business investment spending, which had declined for 9 straight quarters, reversed and increased 6.7% per quarter, producing all those new jobs.

Because of that increased investment, labor productivity soared by 2.5% annually from 2003 to 2007, higher than the averages of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.  As a result, real after tax income per capita increased by more than 11%.

Manufacturing output soared to its highest level in 20 years.  The stock market revived, creating almost $7 trillion in new shareholder wealth.  From 2003 to 2007, the S&P 500 almost doubled.   After the Bush tax cuts started in 2001, quickly ending the 2001 recession, the economy continued to grow for another 73 months.  From 2000 to 2007, real GDP grew by more than 17%, meaning an additional $2.1 trillion for the American people.

This was mostly the opposite of what President Obama has produced, with his neo-Marxist Obamanomics, particularly unemployment more than twice as high, declining middle class incomes, soaring poverty, weak job growth, stagnant stock market values, collapsing business investment, and negligible growth in GDP.

Of course, the Bush tax cut boom was ended by the 2008 financial crisis.  But as discussed in many previous columns, that was caused by the excessive overregulation of President Clinton’s home ownership promotion policies, creating the subprime mortgage market and the housing bubble, and by President Bush’s cheap dollar monetary policies.  Obama’s foolish argument that the Bush tax cuts caused the 2008-2009 recession is so dishonest that abusive propaganda alone should disqualify him from office.

Obama’s gleeful termination of the Bush tax cuts will produce just the opposite results of those tax cuts.  The combination of all the tax rate increases, along with Obama’s abusive overregulation, and the Fed’s continued mischief, will throw the economy back into recession next year.  Unemployment will soar back into double digits, breaking the post depression record of 10.8%.  The deficit will soar to over $2 trillion, setting new all time world records.  The national debt as a percent of GDP will gallop past Greece.

Middle class incomes will plummet further.  Poverty will soar to new all time records.

We can’t afford the Bush tax cuts, as Obama says?  We can’t afford to terminate them.  Over the past 45 years, every time the capital gains tax rate has been increased, capital gains revenues have declined rather than increased.  Obama’s nearly 60% increase in that rate will have the same effect.  After the Bush cut in taxes on dividends, dividends paid soared, and so did taxes paid on those dividends.  Obama’s near tripling of that tax will have the opposite effect as well.  Indeed, if the economy declines back into renewed recession, total federal revenues will decline rather than increase.

Obama’s ploy of blaming all of this on the Republicans will not work this time.  The public knows the Bush tax cuts were adopted into law by the Republicans, with complete Republican control of Congress and the White House at the time.  It will be too obvious that it took President Obama and his new neo-Marxist Democrat Party to let them expire.

Enjoy the new Obama recession.  You and your neighbors voted for it.

[Sam Dodd]

Facts don't support that.

Yeah, there are facts that support just that.

Calculating the cost of the Bush tax cuts

Since 2001, the cost of the tax cuts for the upper 1% in this nation's budget is

$708,144,147,723.

For the upper 5% which would include the above

$1,034,424,338,581.

[Sam Dodd]

An opinion piece from a right winger?  This is opinions...with a HUGE slant.


Peter Ferrara
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Peter Ferrara is Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, Senior Advisor for Entitlement Reform and Budget Policy for the National Tax Limitation Foundation, Senior Fellow for the National Center for Policy Analysis, and General Counsel for the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development for President Reagan and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush.

http://townhall.com/columnists/peterferrara/

[Zeus]

An opinion piece from a right winger?  This is opinions...with a HUGE slant.


Peter Ferrara
Email Peter Ferrara
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Peter Ferrara is Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, Senior Advisor for Entitlement Reform and Budget Policy for the National Tax Limitation Foundation, Senior Fellow for the National Center for Policy Analysis, and General Counsel for the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development for President Reagan and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush.

http://townhall.com/columnists/peterferrara/

The IRS data is opinion ?

[thundley4]

What?  Lowering taxes take money DIRECTLY out of the general fund CREATING more debt.

If you take a pay cut at your job, does that increase your debt?  No, your continued spending increases your debt.  A smart person  or a government should reduce spending to meet income.

However, the government did not see a decrease in revenues following the Bush tax cuts, but an increase, so spending caused the debt.

Tax revenues went up following the Bush tax cuts just as they have following every major tax , even the ones under Holy Democrat Icon JFK.

[docstew]

Was it acceptable to lower them and create the debt Bush left us?

Please, do a little research. I'll give you some google search terms: "lower tax rates" effect on "tax revenues"

Actually, I doubt you could pull that off. So, here's a link on the subject. Long story short, every time (1961, by JFK; 1982, by Reagan; and 2003 by GWB) that tax rates are lowered, tax revenues go UP. If O wants to raise revenue, he should lower the tax rates. He won't, because for him, it's not about actually raising revenue, it's about punishing success. The inverse is true, higher tax rates lead to lower revenues.

[Sam Dodd]

The IRS data is opinion ?

My stuff isn't opinion...your opinion piece by a right wing pundit is.

[Sam Dodd]

If you take a pay cut at your job, does that increase your debt?  No, your continued spending increases your debt.  A smart person  or a government should reduce spending to meet income.

However, the government did not see a decrease in revenues following the Bush tax cuts, but an increase, so spending caused the debt.

Tax revenues went up following the Bush tax cuts just as they have following every major tax , even the ones under Holy Democrat Icon JFK.

When you tax someone at 35% one year, you have that income.  When you LOWER the tax to 12% the next, you've LOST that income and increased  your debt because you lost money to pay for things..like two wars, Medicare Part B.

[Zeus]

My stuff isn't opinion...your opinion piece by a right wing pundit is.

My bad I wasn't aware the IRS was a right wing pundit.

The Tax Policy Center (TPC) is a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.

The Urban Institute is a Washington DC-based liberal think tank The Institute was established in 1968 by the Lyndon B. Johnson administration .

The Brookings Institution is a self-described independent American think tank based in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Its liberal reputation derived from "being closely identified with the technocratic liberal style of the 1960s".

[NHSparky]

Was it acceptable to lower them and create the debt Bush left us?

Yawn.  Okay, let's assume that the 2001/03 tax cuts had never been passed.  Wanna know how much less our debt would be right now?

About $1T, split between Bush and Obama...meaning, my dear blissfully ignorant noob, we'd STILL have over a $15T debt and Obama would still be pissing and moaning for tax hikes.

The moral of the story: When it comes to taking other people's money, it's never, EVER enough for a liberal.  EVER.