Free Republic

A new tax law will allow retirees to skip required withdrawals from individual retirement accounts and related accounts this year [2009]. The change -- signed into law by President Bush last month -- is intended to give beaten-down nest eggs time to rebound from the brutal bear market. ~snip~ The new law suspends required distributions in 2009. This gives those who can afford to leave their nest eggs alone a better chance of recovering some of the investment losses they sustained last year. "They'll have more dollars working for them in the event of a stock-market rebound," says Elizabeth Drigotas,...

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama said he wanted to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for top earners upon taking office in January. Now he seems to favor letting those cuts expire as scheduled, at the end of 2010. His apparent concern is that raising anyone’s taxes immediately might worsen the economic crisis. As Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, said when asked on Fox News about the delay, “The main thing right now is to get this economic recovery package on the road, to get money in the pockets of the middle class, to get these projects going, to...

Barack Obama ran an exceptional campaign in so many ways. His greatest accomplishment, however, was a shrewd commandeering of the tax issue away from John McCain and the Republicans. (The implosion of the American financial landscape in September didn't hurt him either). If the 2008 election cycle were held in more "normal" times, and the words "tax cuts" were threshed out, you could expect to see a Republican at the spewing end. "Tax cuts," after all, historically flow with great abundance from the lips of those on the right - not unlike press conferences flow with great abundance from the...

President-elect Barack Obama may consider delaying a campaign promise - to roll back tax cuts on high-income Americans - as part of his economic recovery strategy, two aides said on Sunday. David Axelrod, the Obama campaign strategist who was chosen to be a senior White House adviser, was asked if the tax cuts could be allowed to expire on schedule after tax year 2010 rather than being rolled back by legislation earlier. "Those considerations will be made," he said on "Fox News Sunday." Bill Daley, an adviser to Obama and commerce secretary under former President Bill Clinton, said on NBC's...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Barack Obama may consider delaying a campaign promise - to roll back tax cuts on high-income Americans - as part of his economic recovery strategy, two aides said on Sunday. David Axelrod, the Obama campaign strategist who was chosen to be a senior White House adviser, was asked if the tax cuts could be allowed to expire on schedule after tax year 2010 rather than being rolled back by legislation earlier. "Those considerations will be made," he said on "Fox News Sunday." Bill Daley, an adviser to Obama and commerce secretary under former President Bill Clinton,...

Obama may delay high-income tax-cut repeal: aide Sun Nov 23, 2008 9:39am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama may consider delaying an election promise - to roll back tax cuts on high-income Americans - as part of his economic recovery strategy, a senior aide and an adviser said on Sunday.

WASHINGTON – People want the tax cuts promised during the presidential campaign, but may be willing to wait while President-elect Obama takes on the larger issue of fixing the economy.

For the rich, the party is over - as promised. Despite speculation to the contrary, President-elect Barack Obama will act on his campaign promise and roll back the Bush administration's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, an Obama senior adviser told The Daily News. The Obama camp rejected the overnight analysis by some pundits who speculated the language at his first news conference Friday suggested the President-elect was backing away from his tax plans. "No change to the tax plan - at all," the aide said. Obama plans to raise taxes on the wealthy by asking the Democratic-controlled Congress to...

PLEASE call talk shows and talk with people these last 75 hours, pleading with them to understand that first, WITH OBAMA, WE LOSE THE TAX CUTS OF THE LAST SEVEN YEARS! That's people making $25,000 a year, lower-middle class and middle class people. That's BEFORE all of the various tax hikes we'd get with Obama, Pelosi, Reid, etc. It has been the most under-valued issue of the campaign for us. The talk show guys have not pounded on this the way they should have. I think that maybe they make too much money to even know that the tax cuts...

Dear John McCain, As pointed out yesterday, Obama's plan to expire the Bush tax cuts means a tax INCREASE for 100% of all taxpayers regardless of how much or little they earn, even those who currently pay no taxes. Most taxpayers will see an immediate tax increase as the Bush tax cut expires, and ALL consumers will see increases in the prices of products and services they buy as business will have to charge more for their products to make up for Obama's business income tax and payroll tax increases. This ill advised Marxist wealth redistribution tax increase scheme is...

DALLAS (January 21, 2008) – As Congress debates whether to renew tax cuts enacted early in the George W. Bush presidency, as well as various economic stimulus plans, critics often label the measures as "tax cuts for the rich." Yet a new report from the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) says the Bush tax cuts made the tax code more progressive, no matter how progressivity is measured. In fact, the report concludes that every major tax change (Republican or Democrat) over the past two decades has increased the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans. The top 1...

The Democrats have a dirty little secret that they don’t want you to know. It is that their mantra of Bush’s “Tax Cuts for the Rich” is unabashedly false. The rich paid a higher percentage of the total tax bill under the Bush plan than under Clinton. In fact, the expiration of the Bush tax cut savages the low- and middle-class voters. This case has been made and fact-checked with the ever-liberal Snopes.Com. The Tax Foundation used “tax table” rates between the Bush and Clinton tax plans to shows a huge difference for low income taxpayers, sometimes even a 100%...

Here's what the U.S. Constitution says: "All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills." How many times have we heard politicians, pundits and guardians of our news media say that President Bush cut taxes, or Obama is going to raise taxes? The fact of the matter is that presidents have no power to raise or lower taxes. They can propose tax measures or veto them but it is Congress that has the ultimate power to raise or lower taxes since they can, with...

WASHINGTON - Alan Greenspan says the country can't afford tax cuts of the magnitude proposed by Republican presidential contender John McCain — at least not without a corresponding reduction in government spending. "Unless we cut spending, no," the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked McCain's proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion. "I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money," Greenspan said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. "I always have tied tax cuts to spending."

WASHINGTON – Alan Greenspan says the country can't afford tax cuts of the magnitude proposed by Republican presidential contender John McCain — at least not without a corresponding reduction in government spending. "Unless we cut spending, no," the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked about McCain's proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion. "I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money," Greenspan said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. "I always have tied tax cuts to spending." McCain has said that he would offset his proposed cuts — including reducing the corporate...

(AP / WASHINGTON) — Democrat Barack Obama says he would delay rescinding President Bush's tax cuts on wealthy Americans if he becomes the next president and the economy is in a recession, suggesting such an increase would further hurt the economy. Nevertheless, Obama has no plans to extend the Bush tax cuts beyond their expiration date, as Republican John McCain advocates. Instead, Obama wants to push for his promised tax cuts for the middle class, he said in a broadcast interview aired Sunday. "Even if we're still in a recession, I'm going to go through with my tax cuts," Obama...

Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama had a change of heart yesterday about one of his major campaign issues; the Bush Tax Cuts. The Associated Press quotes Obama as now saying that “he would delay rescinding President Bush's tax cuts on wealthy Americans if he becomes the next president and the economy is in a recession, suggesting such an increase would further hurt the economy.” Two things struck me about this comment. First; he uses the term increase. This is the first time I’ve heard him admit that rescinding the Bush cuts would in reality be a tax increase. Second; he...

WASHINGTON — Democrat Barack Obama says he would delay rescinding President Bush’s tax cuts on wealthy Americans if he becomes the next president and the economy is in a recession, suggesting such an increase would further hurt the economy.

WASHINGTON – Democrat Barack Obama says he would delay rescinding President Bush's tax cuts on wealthy Americans if he becomes the next president and the economy is in a recession, suggesting such an increase would further hurt the economy. Nevertheless, Obama has no plans to extend the Bush tax cuts beyond their expiration date, as Republican John McCain advocates. Instead, Obama wants to push for his promised tax cuts for the middle class, he said in a broadcast interview aired Sunday. "Even if we're still in a recession, I'm going to go through with my tax cuts," Obama said. "That's...

Republicans are sending onto the field a presidential candidate who perhaps has the least to offer middle-class voters on taxes since the first George Bush in 1992. Of course, Bush lost that year to a Democrat promising only to raise taxes on “the rich” and to cut them for the middle class — exactly Obama’s position now. In his primary campaign, McCain had to endorse the extension of the Bush tax cuts he voted against in the Senate. But they have turned into a trap. Because Obama also wants to extend the middle-class aspects of the Bush cuts, McCain is...

If you believe as I do that the tax hikes proposed by Barack Obama and Democrats are bad for the country, then we are in good company. No less an authority than Nobel Prize winner and Columbia University economist Robert Mundell, a principal contributor to the creation of the euro, says that ending the Bush tax cuts — as proposed by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama — would cause "a big recession, a nosedive." In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mundell said, "the most important thing that could be done with respect to tax rates is to...

"...He also suddenly supports the notion that Tax Cuts and rebates can stimulate the economy, he wants to make a $1000 tax rebate a permanent part of the tax code. Suddenly, we are supposed to believe that Obama is a supply-side economist, someone who believes that tax breaks actually create more tax revenue. He has said this will stimulate the economy, it runs counter to everything we know about him up to this point, except for the fact that he wants to tax Corporations and our most successful to pay for it. These so-called tax rebates that he is promising...

Robert Mundell isn't in the habit of making fruitless policy recommendations, though some take a long time ripening. Nearly four decades passed between his early work on optimal currency areas and the birth of the euro in 1999 – the same year he received the Nobel Prize for economics... ...So when Mr. Mundell says that rescinding the Bush tax cuts "would be devastating to the world economy," that oil prices are "not so far off track," that Asia needs its own multilateral currency, or that the ham sandwiches sitting before us could use some mustard, one is inclined to pay...

Despite liberal condemnation of the Bush tax cuts, virtually no one embraces a complete return to their pre-cut level — including the Democratic majority in Congress and both pending presidential nominees. There is good reason.Implicit in this rejection is the admission that they were too high to return to. While the media won't say it now, and certainly wouldn't then, those supposedly halcyon days of fiscal policy rested on historically high tax levels. Taxes got there by increasing retroactively in 1993, adding a 36% income-tax bracket and effectively another of 39.6% through a surcharge on incomes above a certain level....

The fifth anniversary is traditionally the “wood” one. But this year, instead of getting another knick-knack, millions of Americans are celebrating a fifth anniversary with paper. Paper money, that is -- and more of it.         That’s because our country just marked the fifth year of the 2003 tax cuts.        Five years ago, Congress and the president agreed to accelerate the key provisions of the 2001 tax act that: Doubled the child tax credit to $1,000 per child. Fixed the “marriage penalty” -- that quirk of the tax code that forced couples filing jointly to pay more that singles filing...

Democrats' Budget Agreement Assumes Bush Tax Cuts Will Expire By Andrew Taylor, Associated Press CNSNews.com May 13, 2008 Washington (AP) - Democrats controlling Congress are leaving grim decisions on automatic tax increases to the next president and the newly elected Congress under a freshly negotiated House-Senate blueprint for the upcoming budget year. The fiscal 2009 budget plan worked out in private talks between House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt Jr., D-S.C., and his Senate counterpart, Kent Conrad, D-N.D., awards an approximately 4 percent increase on average to nondefense Cabinet budgets passed by Congress each year. But it makes no effort...

John McCain, the Republican nominee for President, has proposed extending the Bush tax cuts. So as morning follows night this week, Democratic news analysis has been pouring forth to proclaim that his tax ideas are a threat to the republic because they'll explode the budget deficit. The Senator needs to understand that he can't win this election by playing on this economic turf. The subtext of the criticism of the McCain tax plan is that it would somehow "starve" the government of revenue. The figures being tossed around for the "cost" of the McCain tax plan have been estimated at...

NOTE: since Obama doesn't understand the basics of economic theory, maybe a current example would be helpful for him. Subway sandwiches has a special promotion for any footlong sub for $5. In some cases, that saves up to about $1.70 on a footlong sub. What has that done? According to the store where I have bought more sandwiches than usual, the amount of subs they are selling has increased dramatically. A similar paradox for this lowering of price to increase revenue works with taxes. Lowering taxes raises the revenue to the treasury. It is amazing how that works. If Obama...

President Bush proposed, and Congress quickly passed, an economic stimulus package in the form of tax “rebates” that could total $150 billion dollars back in the pockets of most Americans. The president and Congress agreed that as much as $600 would be returned to individual Americans, or $1,200 per couple, and even more to households with children. The reason given for the rebates is that it will give the economy a needed shot in the arm and likely avoid or lessen a recession. Does any of this sound vaguely familiar? The president’s proposal should forever end the debate whether or...

Congress' $3,000 per Household Tax Increase by Brian Riedl Washington has no budget problems that higher taxes cannot solve. So seems the message from Congress The House- and Senate-passed budgets would raise taxes on every American taxpayer by an average of $3,000 per household. But don’t expect Congress to share in the sacrifice: The budget would hike discretionary spending by 8 percent, and not cut a single government program. First, the tax increase. The largest four-year revenue surge in 40 years has pushed tax revenues to 18.8 percent of GDP -- well above the historical average. Yet the House-passed budget...

WASHINGTON — The Senate rejected calls from both parties' presidential candidates to take an election-year break from pork-barrel spending as a Democratic-run Congress passed budget plans that would torpedo hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts won by President Bush.John McCain, the GOP nominee-to-be, couldn't attract even a majority of Senate Republicans to vote with him Thursday night behind the earmark moratorium touted by party conservatives as a way to restore the GOP's credibility with voters. It failed on a 71-29 vote. Only three Democrats joined with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama in voting for it. The underlying...

WASHINGTON - House Democrats neared initial approval of an election-year budget blueprint late Wednesday that would produce sizable surpluses by 2012 by allowing President Bush's tax cuts to expire as scheduled. The $3 trillion budget plan for 2009, expected to pass the House Budget Committee on a party-line vote, would award greater-than-inflation increases to domestic programs. That immediately earned a promise from the White House that Bush would veto subsequent spending bills funding agency budgets. The Senate Budget Committee planned a vote Thursday on a largely similar plan. At issue is the annual congressional budget resolution, a nonbinding document that...

What we need is more production -- real production. And what encourages that is permanent tax reduction. In any economy, growth is a function of people and productivity. An increase of labor or capital will always result in higher levels of output. Unfortunately, the stimulus package being fast-tracked by Washington these days provides little incentive for increasing either. One would have thought by now that the mere escalation of government transfer payments -- whether in the form of rebates (the key element of a tentative agreement announced Thursday) or larger food-stamp and unemployment checks (a Democratic idea that's out of...

Make the Tax Cuts WorkBy LEN BURMAN Published: January 23, 2008 Washington SINCE 2001, Washington’s answer to every policy question has been the same. What should we do with a big surplus? Tax cuts. How do we beat back global terrorism? Tax cuts. Increase energy independence? Rebuild New Orleans? Expand health insurance coverage? Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Now comes another question that becomes more pressing each day that the markets lose ground — one to which taxes have long been at least part of the answer. How do we stimulate the economy to prevent or shorten a recession?...

WASHINGTON - President Bush backs tax rebates as the best way to stimulate the economy, but will not detail how big they should be, an administration official said Friday. Democratic congressional leaders agree that one-time checks should be in the package, but are working on a broader measure that would also include aid targeted to the poor and unemployed. Bush planned to lay out his position publicly for the first time later Friday, first in remarks at the White House and later at a Frederick, Md., manufacturing plant. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said earlier that Bush also will outline...

With slower economic growth raising fears of a recession, Washington is abuzz with economic stimulus proposals centered on tax rebates. Tax rebates, however, don't stimulate the economy. Lawmakers currently examining economic stimulus proposals should reject rebates in favor of tax rate reductions.Tax Rebates Don't StimulateBy definition, an economy grows when it produces more goods and services than it did the year before. In 2007, Americans produced $13 trillion worth of goods and services, up 3 percent over 2006.Economic growth requires four main factors: (1) an educated, trained, and motivated workforce; (2) sufficient levels of capital equipment and technology; (3)...

With remarkable speed, Congress, the White House, Republicans, Democrats and even the Federal Reserve have come to a consensus on the need for economic stimulus to moderate and perhaps forestall a recession. It seems certain that the final stimulus package will contain a tax rebate. The underlying theory for the rebate idea traces back to the British economist John Maynard Keynes. He believed that spending was the driving force in the economy. It didn't matter whether the spending was done by businesses on capital equipment, by governments on public works, or by consumers -- spending is spending in the Keynesian...

President George W. Bush's administration is considering an individual tax rebate of up to 800 dollars as a short term measure to help boost the sagging US economy, a media report said Friday. The Republican leader was to unveil a fiscal stimulus plan later Friday, amid grim economic news that has united lawmakers and the Federal Reserve chief on the need to revive flagging US growth. The White House has said Bush would propose policies, not dollar amounts, because details of the plan must be hammered out with the Democratic-controlled Congress. "Privately, the White House has discussed its support for...

WASHINGTON - United for urgent action, the White House and Congress raced toward emergency steps Thursday to rescue the national economy from a possible recession, including tax rebates of $300 or more for many Americans. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke endorsed the idea of putting money into the hands of those who would spend it quickly and boost the flagging economy. All the talk of rescue efforts failed to soothe Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrials plunged 306.95 points, underscoring deepening concern about the country's economic health. The sudden scramble to take action came as fears mounted that a severe...

Bush Looks to Reprise Tax-Relief Measures Stimulus Proposal Echoes the Rebates, Breaks Given in '01 By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS January 9, 2008; Page A3 WASHINGTON -- Faced with recession fears, the White House is considering tax rebates for individuals to encourage spending and tax breaks for businesses to encourage investment, according to people familiar with the matter. The plan, if finalized by the administration and passed by Congress, would mark President Bush's first major steps to address the broad economic slowdown. He has limited himself to addressing the wave of home foreclosures and the Wall Street chaos caused by the...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration, faced with a deteriorating economy and a big jump in unemployment, said Friday it was considering an economic stimulus package that might include tax cuts to ward off a recession. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that unemployment was at a two-year high of 5 percent in December, while employers clamped down on hiring for the month. The amount of new jobs employers added to their payrolls was at a four-year low. Officials stressed that President Bush has not decided yet to offer a proposal but was looking at a variety of options with...

As we enter the New Year I thought it appropriate to reflect on President Bush's tax cuts, the ones that the Democrats and their media flunkies screamed would wreck the US economy by generating an unsustainable deficit. It was easy — and still is — to spring to the conclusion that the Democrats' response was driven by opportunism and a deeply ingrained cynicism. The Democrats also accused the President of playing politics with tax cuts. Of course he did. He would have been stupid not to. In any case, the charge was pretty silly coming from Democrats. What mattered...

Filed at 5:17 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- Negotiations on legislation to stimulate the economy hit another snag Thursday. Republicans accused Senate Democrats of setting impossibly high political standards for a compromise. With the talks on a one-day break, Republicans objected fiercely to a decision by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., to require that any deal be acceptable to a solid majority of the 50-member Senate Democratic caucus. Independent Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont also caucuses with the Democrats. Republicans said that was an unrealistic hurdle for any stimulus bill that includes significant tax relief, given opposition among many ...

<p>The White House is escalating its attacks against Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in an all-out drive to overcome Democratic resistance to a tax-cutting economic-stimulus bill that could be critical to the Republican Party's political prospects in the 2002 elections.</p>

Democrats have only two arguments left against extending the Bush tax cuts, but recent data affirm that neither is valid. Sadly, though, Democrats will never abandon their claims because they fit so well into their class warfare template. Even Democrats can't reasonably deny we've experienced sustained economic growth following the Bush tax cuts. Instead, they've resurrected the canard they used to discredit the phenomenal growth of the supply-side Reagan years: Our economic growth has come at the expense of federal solvency. The growth, they say, is illusory, because it has led to record federal deficits, which means that greedy capitalist...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal deficit so far this budget year is running sharply lower, driven by record revenues pouring into government coffers. The Treasury Department reported on Friday that the government produced a deficit of $157.3 billion for the budget year that began last Oct. 1. That's a substantial improvement from the red ink figure of $239.6 billion produced for the corresponding 10-month period last year. The lower year-to-date deficit was the result of a record of $2.12 trillion in revenues. Spending, however, was higher — $2.27 trillion, which also marked an all-time high. The White House predicts that...

Economy: The Democrat-controlled Congress wants to undo the Bush tax cuts, but the president is talking about more cuts to maintain this robust economy. It's another signal the White House is regaining its footing. The week after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got their clocks cleaned on terrorist surveillance legislation — with party discipline crumbling as 57 Democrats voted with congressional Republicans to give the White House a huge victory — President Bush has followed by boldly bringing up new tax cuts. In an interview with reporters after meeting Wednesday with his economic advisers at...

Red ink in Washington is invariably an excuse for raising taxes, so perhaps falling deficits should be a reason to cut them. The Bush Administration's midsession budget review, released yesterday, estimates that the deficit will have shrunk by more than 50% in three years: to $205 billion in the fiscal year ending this September from $413 billion in 2004. As a share of the economy, the budget deficit is expected to fall to 1.5%, well below the 40-year average of 2.4%. Buoyant tax revenues are the major reason for this deficit reduction. So far this year tax receipts are up...

New Jersey households will see their taxes skyrocket because the 2008 federal budget adopted last week includes "the biggest tax increase on American families in the history of the United States," Republican Rep. Scott Garrett says. Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell could not disagree more. "Nowhere in this budget do we call for an increase in taxes," said Pascrell, D-Paterson. Who's right? A review of the facts and interviews with budget experts shows that Garrett, whose district includes parts of Bergen and Passaic counties, is exaggerating, while Pascrell is telling only part of the story. It's possible, and even probable, that...

The Dow industrials closed above 12,000 for the first time Thursday as investors took in a mixed bag of earnings from leading banks, blue chips and tech companies. "The economy continues to weaken. But everyone is convinced the Federal Reserve will be able to engineer a soft landing," said the president of one brokerage. The Dow crossed the 12,000 milestone for the first time Wednesday but failed to finish above that number.