Obama Tax Cuts Plan?

[KKB]

Republicans achieve top goal in Obama tax-cut plan
GOP cheers, Dems sulk over Obama tax plan for the rich, the jobless and the working class

I found this on Yahoo news this morning....

what the...?? It was Bush's plan to begin with in like, 2002. Obama is extending it.

[get some]

kinda like it was Bush's Bailout plan but Obama extended it?

funny how people can be selective about where they place credit and blame without any consistency in their ideals when it comes to politics.

[dad]

Kinda like people are now regretting voting for Obama...although the alternative wasn't any better. But hey you get to watch Obama continue to self-promote on shows like "The View". Wow, all the garbage going on in the world, yet there's time to hang out with Barbara WaWa and Whoopi.

[Mighty Mouse]

The then presidential candidates from both major parties, Senators Barack Obama (D) and John McCain (R) voted in favor of the Senate version of the bill on October 1, 2008. Senator Barack Obama pledged to telephone wavering House of Representatives members to urge them to support the legislation.

Obama supported the bailout before he came into office, so yes, he was extending it. On the other hand, he opposed the tax cut, so you can't be given credit for extending something you didn't support in the first place.

Fine nuance there, but I'm sure you understand my point.

[Baba]

Extending tax cuts to millionaires in this current (or any) economic climate is a crime.
(no dont give that carp about rich people will provide more jobs if they get a tax cut)
Obama felt he had to swallow that poison to get the compromise of extending unemployment benefits about to expire for many a week before Xmas (ho ho ho).
If only Obama and democrats could grow a spine and let the Party of no take some heat for their politics of obstructionism.
However spinelessness seems genetically encoded in the Dem's.

[Cloud]

Agreed Baba,
I dont know the specifics of what happened, but it appears that Obama redistribute wealth upwards and not downwards which is what the democrats have been striving to do. The inequality of wealth has increased significantly over the last 30 years and now it appears that Obama is continuing this in his latest move. Obama needs to not make compromises during his first two years. You dont make compromises with a party that has done nothing but trying and figuring a way to get him out of office in '12.
I don't want to say that I have lost a lot of respect towards him because I'm not totally educated on the purpose of this, but it seems so un-Obama.

[Mighty Mouse]

Obama needs to not make compromises during his first two years. You dont make compromises with a party that has done nothing but trying and figuring a way to get him out of office in '12.

As opposed to the Dems who do the same whenever a Republican is in office? That's just politics. Like it or not, Republicans represent half the US population. What you are talking about is recipe for failure.

Mid-term elections where some of the Dems were forced to distance themselves from Obama policy to try and get re-elected probably forced his hand to compromise. He could not afford to expend political capital in an atmosphere of bad news on the economic front, and display of waning political capital in Washington.

As for tax cuts, how about we force both parties to stop spending money they don't have? Why are taxes the only solution to lack of money? We hear all the time about government waste and increased budgets, but in my family, we spend less when we earn less. We don't borrow more from our neighbors to support our way of life, we adjust our standards accordingly. Why is that out of the question for politicos?

And please, let's not make it sound like the 'rich' are paying no taxes. From the Washington section of the NY times:

But the Congressional study offers additional insight because it incorporates information about what people paid in 2004, the first year in which taxpayers could take full advantage of the cuts on stock dividends and capital gains.

The study estimates that the effective federal income tax rate, which excludes payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, declined modestly for people in the middle- and lower-income categories.

Families in the middle fifth of annual earnings, who had average incomes of $56,200 in 2004, saw their average effective tax rate edge down to 2.9 percent in 2004 from 5 percent in 2000. That translated to an average tax cut of $1,180 per household, but the tax rate actually increased slightly from 2003.

Tax cuts were much deeper, and affected far more money, for families in the highest income categories. Households in the top 1 percent of earnings, which had an average income of $1.25 million, saw their effective individual tax rates drop to 19.6 percent in 2004 from 24.2 percent in 2000. The rate cut was twice as deep as for middle-income families, and it translated to an average tax cut of almost $58,000.

In its report, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the overall effective federal tax rate edged up to 20 percent in 2004, from 19.8 percent the year before.

But even with that increase, Americans faced lower tax rates than any time since 1979. If President Bush has his way, those rates could decline even more as the estate tax on inherited wealth is gradually phased out by the start of 2010.

The budget office offered little commentary on its new estimates, but many of its numbers spoke for themselves.

The report shows that a comparatively small number of very wealthy households account for a very big share of total tax payments, and their share increased in the first four years after Mr. Bush’s tax cuts.

The top 1 percent of income earners paid about 36.7 percent of federal income taxes and 25.3 percent of all federal taxes in 2004. The top 20 percent of income earners paid 67.1 percent of all federal taxes, up from 66.1 percent in 2000, according to the budget office.

By contrast, families in the bottom 40 percent of income earners, those with incomes below $36,300, typically paid no federal income tax and received money back from the government. That so-called negative income tax stemmed mainly from the earned-income tax credit, a program that benefits low-income parents who are employed.

Put another way: rich families were the undisputed winners from President Bush’s tax cuts, but people in the bottom half of the earnings scale were not paying much in taxes anyway.

[KKB]

In response to my original post, I blame the media (Yahoo) for constantly trying to blow their horn in favor of the left...

Let's face it, the media and our universities have been corrupted with far left leaning views
and that is a major reason why FOX news is so popular.

Im also not worried about Obama. He'll never get re-elected. he's pissed off the middle, the right already hates him and now the liberals have a case of the red ass with his latest doings.

[Baba]

uh huh kkb, your echoing of hot gaseous secretions from Fox/Beck etc does little to advance the discussion... anyway.

Re MM,
Yes it is politics and it is ugly on both sides of the aisle.

part of why we need at least another aisle there.

As to

Like it or not, Republicans represent half the US population.

while I know you weren't saying that literally, it made me do some digging as to voter registration #'s and voter participation numbers which are very illuminating.

from U.S. census bureau:
2008 election:
US citizens 18 years and older:
64.9% registered to vote,
58.2% voted
of a total (>18 year olds) population 225,499,000

131,257,328 total voted 2008

= 36,752,016 Republicans
= 16.3 % Republican's of >18 year olds

(pre election 2008 gallup poll)
Dems 37%
Independents/other/dont know 34%
Republicans 28%

So of course there are many other factors, such as Dem's and Indies voting Republican, a trend that increased in 2010.
My point is not so much to obsess on the facts on the micro level but what it shows me about the state of our hallowed Democracy.

Barely over half of our voting age population actually votes!

We (Americans) tend to be woefully ignorant on many matters concerning politics, the world around us, and the complexity on these issues.
Thus many in this country find it easier to buy the "readers digest" version of reality that play on our real fears and real existing social and economic issues.
These condensed and usually very ideologically twisted versions are easy to swallow, require less chewing/thinking, and are repeatedly stated so they stick on some of the densest of objects
such as -

I blame the media (Yahoo) for constantly trying to blow their horn in favor of the left...

Let's face it, the media and our universities have been corrupted with far left leaning views

Yes I know it is an issue on the left to, and I do know the left (and I dont mean the democratic party when I say the left btw)
Dummying down ones subject matter to make a point is part of politics, but it is done to absurd proportions and to very ill effect.
My neighbor just returned from doing a work stint over in Australia and New Zealand. He commented that Australians knew more about the US political scene and policies domestic to the US than most Americans do.
I have also found this is true in my international travel.
Its a sad statement.

Please don't interpret (and dismiss) my statements as a raving anti American lunatic.
I love this country and love the people in it.
I work in a job where I am able to talk to a wide spectrum of people on a lot of different topics on a daily basis, so I'm not just regurgitating book knowledge or
others political rhetoric.
I come from a family of people who have rejected more elitist ways of work and life to work and interact with a broader segment of society.
My Grandfather who trained in the classics (Greek and Latin) at Yale but chose to move to Montana and become a rancher (also a State Senator/Majority Leader for Montana for the Republican party in the 1920's no less)
My father who as a Doctor chose to work in the newly independent country of Tanzania for 8 years receiving a whopping Government salary of $9,000/yr, this during his prime earning years.
This is my heritage and is indeed the American heritage.
That of not being bound by centuries old tradition and convention.
Of looking outside the box.
There is so much to love about my country , thats why I get so upset at its failings and weakness's.

[Mighty Mouse]

Yeah, I realize that there are more shades of gray on the political scene, but did not want to get into the whole Dem/Rep/Inde/Tea/Green/Comm analysis to make a point. Although there are more, I thought you would understand what I meant since we are effectively in a 2 party system.

I agree with you on lack of political sophistication in many Americans. I still find it amazing that Americans don't even know that there are thousands of Korean veterans from Vietnam. Every time I bring up Korea, the canned response is 'you owe us for saving your country' and 'how about that loon Kim Jong Il'. Koreans have supported every significant US military campaign, some even not related to direct Korean interests. As for Kim, that's what happens when superpowers decide to divide a country in half to suit their needs and prop up a puppet, perhaps on both sides, but that's for another day. US policies kind of seeded the area for paranoid dictator to take root.

I didn't mean to turn this into bash US and support Korea, but it irks me that children nowadays are not learning the in-depth history and US policies behind an area of the world that may perhaps become the next flash point for US intervention. Sad to say, but I thought Iraq/Afghanistan would encourage more people to learn about what's going on out there, not just rely on sound bites, but it may take an invasion of US soil to teach Americans that there is a world a lot bigger than America out there with as many enemies as there are friends.

Don't even get me started on the Free Trade Agreement w/Korea.