In his weekly address Saturday, Obama said that Democrats and Republicans not only agree on middle-class tax cuts but the need to rein in spending, and used this to try to drive his position on the tax cuts.
"At a time when we are going to ask folks across the board to make such difficult sacrifices, I don’t see how we can afford to borrow an additional $700 billion from other countries to make all the Bush tax cuts permanent, even for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans," the president said. "We’d be digging ourselves into an even deeper fiscal hole and passing the burden on to our children."
Obama noted the importance of extending the tax cuts in the lame-duck session, but focused the address on digging in against the full extension sought by Republicans and some Democrats.
"If Congress doesn’t act by New Year’s Eve, middle-class families will see their taxes go up starting on New Year’s Day," he warned.
Now, this is the message President Obama should have been putting out since last year. In fact, the Dems should have passed a bill to keep the tax cuts for 98% of Americans and dared the GOP to kill it. That never happened thanks to the Blue Dog caucus, but now 2/3rds of them won't be back in January. Obama is laying the groundwork here for the attack the Dems need to make.
Considering only 8% of Americans think extending the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy is our top legislative priority right now, this is a fight Obama can absolutely win. Let's see the Republicans play Obama's game here and have their first post-election act be raising taxes on all Americans. That'll help them in 2012, right?
Here's the rest of his address:
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13 comments:
So we're going for ignoring me and hoping I'll go away is that it?
OK.
Zandar is a liar and a fraud and trolls his own blog.
You won't be able to ignore me for long.
hang on for a second. i'm pretty sure that SteveAR and Wafflez are real people, in spite of the generally idiotic nature of their posts. but as somebody who has found at least some of the other trolling around here a little suspect, i can't completely dismiss your point here. i hope that isn't the case though, as Z seems like a good guy. of course, you could be full of crap too.
OT
I'm a real person and not Zander or Bon.
On Topic:
"At a time when we are going to ask folks across the board to make such difficult sacrifices, I don’t see how we can afford to borrow an additional $700 billion from other countries to make all the Bush tax cuts permanent, even for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans," the president said.
Obama is engaging in government double-talk. Using his ridiculous logic, it would cost the government over $3 trillion to leave all the tax cuts in place. For anyone reading this, $3 trillion is a helluva lot more, over 4 times, than $700 billion. The dirty little secret is that what Obama says is bogus.
It doesn't cost the government anything to keep tax rates as they are since the money hasn't been collected yet. Obama saying the government has to borrow money is a lie since this is money that is retained by the people, not money given away to the people by the government; in other words, it's our money to begin with, not the government's money.
Unfortunately, there are enough stupid people out there voting to retain in office such dregs as Harry Reid, "Moonbeam" Brown, Babs "Senator Ma'am" Boxer, Chris Coons, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Raul Grijalva, Pat Quinn, Patty Murray, etc., who believe Obama's and the Democrats' lies:
Considering only 8% of Americans think extending the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy is our top legislative priority right now, this is a fight Obama can absolutely win.
Lying and perpetuating a lie to the end, eh?
so if the tax rates remain what they are today and the gov't continues to collect xxx.xx of dollars then if the gov't raises the tax rate and collects more money the increased monies collected would allow the gov't to either borrow less or have a surplus with which to pay down the national debt.
I'm not an economist but I think thats the way it would work.
"It doesn't cost the government anything to keep tax rates as they are since the money hasn't been collected yet. Obama saying the government has to borrow money is a lie since this is money that is retained by the people, not money given away to the people by the government; in other words, it's our money to begin with, not the government's money. "
Wow.
Just...wow.
Read any sort of macroeconomics textbook please, and rejoin us in reality when you can.
Read any sort of macroeconomics textbook please, and rejoin us in reality when you can.
Here's some macroeconomics for you, courtesy of John Stossel:
Maryland created a special tax on rich people that was supposed to bring in $106 million. Instead, the state lost $257 million.
New York billionaire Tom Golisano isn't stupid, either. With $3,000 and one employee, he started a business that processes paychecks for companies. He created 13,000 jobs.
Then New York state hiked the income tax on millionaires...
He established residence in Florida, which has no personal income tax.
Donald Trump, who knows something about making money, says of course the rich will leave when hit with higher taxes. “I know these people,” he told me. “They're international people. Whether they live here or live in a place like Switzerland doesn't really matter to them.”
By the way, I left Illinois last year to live here in Arkansas. One of the reasons? Taxes, especially the high property taxes in Illinois.
By the way, is that the same macroeconomics book that says it's ok for the government to borrow $2.5 trillion in 3 years to stimulate the economy even though it hasn't worked? Is that the book you're talking about?
You might want to consider throwing out that macroeconomics book that you and Obama read.
SteveAR is quoting John Stossel? Really, dude ... that's like trying to support a serious policy argument by quoting Daffy Duck. The only people who think the John Stossel is informed are those people who are not. And you moved to Arkansas to avoid taxes? I moved from Florida and now gladly pay taxes to get the better schools. Adults understand that valuable services cost money.
taxes collected is a plus. taxes not collected is a minus.
kinda like bigger paycheck vs smaller paycheck
1 cent vs 2 cents, which is larger?
I've already proven he's a fraud and that Zandar is Arcadian. That's not in dispute. When I revealed that fraud Zandar deleted my posts again and again.
That's all the proof you need that he's been lying to you for months now.
Some of you seem like perfectly reasonable people. I don't know why you stand up for him. I can tell you that Zandar is lazy and unlikeable in person and spends way too much time on his blog when he should be working.
So if Arcadian isn't Zandar, I call on Zandar to prove it and explain why he deleted my posts when I saw him posting as Arcadian.
And just remember, whatever he says will be a lie. He's lied before, I've proven it here, he'll lie again. It's what he does.
Stop wasting your tme here on this blog, all of you.
I'm going to go with "I deleted them because you were being a particularly obnoxious troll who unlike the rest of the trolls I have here was stalking me at work too." I was sendng you a message that I knew who you were and that you were way over the line. This is still the case.
PS, didn't you get fired nine months ago just about the time I brought this up to HR?
So yeah, your word against mine, I have plenty of half-assed trolls here to deal with without needing to make them up, and I call on you to prove you're not the one who's been trolling me anonymously in order to "make your case".
PPS, I have IP addresses.
Have a nice day.
Woohoo!
The Shadow got OWNED!
yeah, but how do we know that you're not zandar?
i'm kidding, of course.
"yeah, but how do we know that you're not zandar?"
Well, one clue is that if I WAS Zandar, I'd have banned this creepy stalker ages ago.
I do wonder what it is about this site that has the trolls' (I'll play along with the idea they're a plurality, Z will now by the IPs how many are in fact sock puppets) panties in such a twist that they're so intent on trying to intimidate him (ha!) and get him to STFU.
Could it be that Z hits issues on the nose so often?
Anyhow, this blog gets read and linked because of the POSTS, it's never been a high-comment blog as long as I've been following it, so this campaign of disruption is bound to FAIL.
I'm glad to see some people developing as regular commenters and discussing the ISSUES Z raises. Once that drowns out these shitty trolls, I'll stop responding to and baiting them and let them get on with their sad pointless lives.
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