Just What is the “Fiscal Cliff?”

As we approach the end of 2012, you’ve likely heard lots of talk among politicians and the media about the impending “fiscal cliff.” This term refers to a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that are slated to take effect in January 2013 if Congress fails to take action. But how will this affect you?

big (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

Payroll Tax – 2013 will bring the expiration of the payroll tax cut enacted by Congress in 2011. Starting next year, the current employee payroll tax rate of 4.2 percent will go back to 6.2 percent.

A Victory for Demagoguery (America seems to be falling for Obama’s class warfare campaign)

I’m in the camp that believes Republicans have no choice but to agree to raise taxes on the top 2 percent of earners. The party has been successfully caricatured as the servant of the rich. This is unjust, yes, but justice is imperfect in this life. It’s political suicide for Republicans to stand fast on maintaining current rates for high earners even at the cost of raising taxes for everyone else. Imagine if we went over the fiscal cliff. In January, Obama would call upon Congress to pass a law restoring the tax rates for 98 percent of filers. What could Republicans do then, refuse?

 

RPREVOLU (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

There is a time for strategic retreat. Republicans are not without tactical opportunities though. They can reply, as my friend Michael Medved has suggested, that if the Clinton tax rates are desirable, so are the Clinton spending rates. They could resurrect a budget from 1998 and pass it. Democrats would protest that 1998 spending rates are not remotely commensurate with our needs. But wait, don’t they argue that the Clinton years were economic utopia? Were people living in cardboard boxes on the streets in the 1990s? While they’re at it, they could propose Clinton levels of regulation, too.

 

The True Disciple of Saul Alinsky by Patrick J. Buchanan… ~ (“What to do? Forget the deal. Walk away from the talks with Geithner. Pass an extension of the payroll tax cut, and send it to Harry Reid. Pass the Bush tax cuts, and send them to Harry Reid and say: “Harry, you are going to have to pass this extension of the tax cuts, or kill them, or send us a counteroffer. Do nothing, and you, not we, will take America over the cliff.”)

What to do?

 

Forget the deal. Walk away from the talks with Geithner. Pass an extension of the payroll tax cut, and send it to Harry Reid. Pass the Bush tax cuts, and send them to Harry Reid and say:

 

Pat Buchanan in Manchester, NH (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

“Harry, you are going to have to pass this extension of the tax cuts, or kill them, or send us a counteroffer. Do nothing, and you, not we, will take America over the cliff.”

 

Americans Are Already Double and Triple Taxed

 

GyGRet (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

Unless the Democrats and Republicansin Congress can reach an agreement on an extension, many temporary tax-cut provisions will expire at the end of this year.

 

RPREVOLU (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

 

 

The so-called Bush tax cut — The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA) and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (JGTRRA) — gave us our current six income tax brackets of 10, 15, 25, 28, 33, and 35 percent, a $1,000 child tax credit, a long-term capital gains rate of 15 percent, a qualified dividend tax rate of 15 percent (0 percent for those in the two lowest tax brackets), a section 179 expense deduction of up to $250,000 for small businesses, an estate tax that was gradually reduced to zero for 2010, and numerous tax credits and deductions.

 

The Crisis of Liberalism… (“If his heralded new majority for change does not triumph in congressional and state elections in 2012 or …”)

 

In the late innings of the health care fight President Barack Obama told a joint session of Congress, “we did not come here just to clean up crises,” even one as big as the Great Recession.

 

obamadash (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

“We came to build a future,” to do the “great things” that “will meet history’s test.” He concluded, “This is our calling. This is our character.”

 

And that had been his ambition all along. “Let us transform this nation,” he implored in 2007 when he announced his candidacy for president. As Election Day 2008 approached, he promised, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”Those words mean this will be a different country when he’s finished with it. If, Rip Van Winkle-style, one had slept through the Obama Administration, one would awaken, as it were, in a new land.

 

White House warns of $1,600 tax hike on 114M middle-class families

 

The White House has launched a new offensive in its fight with congressional Republicans over taxes, arguing 114 million middle-class families will see their taxes rise without action by Congress.

 

Democratic version of Look away! (Photo credit: Norm Walsh)

 

A report from President Obama’s National Economic Council released Monday contends the families would see their taxes rise by an average of $1,600 if the George W. Bush-era tax cuts expire as scheduled at the end of the year.

 

Does ObamaTax even EXIST in the U.S. Tax Code?

Remember, Obamacare is only legal if it’s understood as a tax. But normally when Congress amends tax law, which the mandate would do, there is language in the text of the bill that references the U.S. Tax Code and how the current bill will amend it. For example, here is the text of the Bush Tax Cuts in 2003:

“AMENDMENT OF 1986 CODE

Clinton Hit List

Theoretically, 47 People Affiliated with

President Bill Clinton have Died Mysteriously.

Obama will not extend tax cuts, W.H. says

The White House is sticking by its opposition to an extension of the Bush tax cuts for wealthy Americans despite the increasing number of Democrats voicing support for it, including former President Bill Clinton.

What Do We Do Now? Focus on Obama

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So what do we do now, folks? That’s the question. Everybody wants to know what do we do now? And what we do now is what we should have been doing all along. I’ll give you an example. Obama‘s on TV this morning. He was in Falls Church, Virginia, doing a campaign speech. And in this appearance he announced yet another plan to bail out people who are underwater in their houses. I don’t know what this is, HARP 2, HARP 3. We alluded to this a few weeks ago where Obama was gonna take people that were underwater and basically refinance their mortgages and have a monthly payment max out at something like six or seven hundred dollars. Not quite forgive everybody’s mortgage, but the effort was to make them think that was going to happen. That’s the reason, one of the many reasons, Obama’s out there saying, “Vote for me today.”

We predicted this a few weeks ago, promising the government will refinance everybody’s loans. No credit checks. No proof of anything. All you have to do is promise to vote for him. And that’s implied. That is understood. I mean that’s the whole point of it. So how do you fight this? What do we do? The only thing that has ever had a chance from the first days of this election, this campaign, has been to make it about Obama. Every day, in every which way possible, on issues, on Obama’s record, on the things you can’t defend. That’s what needs to happen. That’s what our chance is. Our team is not all that good. You know it and I know it. They’re just not.

Pelosi to supercommittee Republicans: Tax the rich to avoid defense cuts

Pelosi to supercommittee Republicans: Tax the rich to avoid defense cuts

The Hill ^

Posted on Thursday, November 17, 2011 2:20:30 PM by Sub-Driver

Pelosi to supercommittee Republicans: Tax the rich to avoid defense cuts By Mike Lillis – 11/17/11 12:04 PM ET

If Republicans wish to avoid defense cuts, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi warned Thursday, they should agree with Democrats to tax the rich.

The California Democrat accused Republicans of feeling more bound to the anti-tax pledge of Grover Norquist, head of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, than to their oath to serve and defend the country.

“The sequester is what it is,” Pelosi said during a press briefing in the Capitol, referring to the $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts that would be triggered if the supercommittee fails to agree to that amount in deficit reduction over the next decade.

“There are some who think or have suggested that the oath to Mr. Norquist is more important than other oaths that members take.”

The automatic cuts would be split between defense and domestic programs. A number of leading Republicans, as well as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, have warned that Pentagon cuts of such magnitude would cripple the country’s defense capabilities.

Pelosi on Thursday said Democrats are no less concerned with the nation’s strength — both in terms of defense and domestic affairs. But the entire idea behind making the automatic cuts so unattractive, she noted, was to force the supercommittee members to make the tough choices required to reach a deal.

“The thought with sequester is that we’re all very concerned about our national defense and the strength of our country, whether it’s measuring the health and education [and] well-being of our people on one side of the sequester, and as it is measured in our military strength,” she said.

“We would rather there be a better way to do this. But if you refuse … to take one red cent from the wealthiest people in our country and the price we have to pay is the diminished defense and the diminished strength of our country, I think that something is [wrong] here.

(READER RESPONSE) Allen West – Obama is Destroying This Country!

READER RESPONSE: See All Reader Responses @ Link/Article…

Allan West is a fraud. He bailed and turned into a Boehner boot licker on the debt ceiling and now is pandering the fraudulent BBA. I don’t know which is worse betraying us on the debt vote or praising a BBA that provides for open ended spending and taxing

Obama’s Class Warfare: It’s All He’s Got Left

There he goes again. President Obama, on the campaign stump, rails against the “rich,” saying our “wealth gap” shows a need for a “fairer approach.”

Does he really believe our economic problems have been caused by insufficient taxes on the rich? Insufficient taxes overall? If not, then what can we conclude about his insistence on hammering this point rather than addressing the real causes and real solutions?

Ron Paul’s Economic Plan: Cut 5 Cabinet Agencies, Cut Taxes, Cut President’s Pay

GOP presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul will unveil his economic plan Monday afternoon, calling for a lower corporate tax rate, cutting spending by $1 trillion during his first year in office and eliminating five cabinet-level agencies, including the Education Department, according to excerpts released to Washington Wire.

Mr. Paul’s “Restore America” plan calls for a drastically reduced federal government to help spur American business — a familiar theme for the Texas Republican and many of the GOP White House hopefuls. But unlike some of his Republican rivals who have released economic plans, the libertarian congressman mostly avoids the weeds of tax and trade policy, according to excerpts.

But Mr. Paul does get specific when he calls for a 10% reduction in the federal work force, while pledging to limit his presidential salary to $39,336, which his campaign says is “approximately equal to the median personal income of the American worker.” The current pay rate for commander in chief is $400,000 a year.

The Paul plan would also lower the corporate tax rate to 15% from 35%, though it is silent on personal income tax rates, which Mr. Paul would like to abolish. The congressman would end taxes on personal savings and extend “all Bush tax cuts.”

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com …

via Ron Paul’s Economic Plan: Cut 5 Cabinet Agencies, Cut Taxes, Cut President’s Pay.