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A record 92,594,000 Americans were not in the labor force in April as the labor force participation rate matched a 36-year low of 62.8 percent, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In March, according to BLS's non-seasonally adjusted data, there were 91,630,000 Americans not in the labor force. In April, that increased by 964,000 people to an all-time record of 92,594,000. The previous record was 92,534,000, set in January of this year. The BLS's seasonally-adjusted number for people not in the labor force--which was 92,018,00 for April--was also an all-time record. This was up 988,000...

The U.S. economy stalled in the first three months of 2014, but don't panic yet as it's probably just the winter weather effect. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, grew at a 0.1% annual pace in the first quarter, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Wednesday. That's brutally slow, even by sluggish post-recession standards. Since the Great Recession ended in June 2009, the economy has been growing at a rate of about 2% to 3% per year.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH:  One-tenth of 1%.  One-tenth of 1%!  Let me say it again.  One-tenth of 1%.  That's first quarter economic growth, and the Regime is blaming the cold weather.  I thought it was supposed to be global warming.  That was the reason for the cold weather.  Now the cold weather, which, because of global warming, is what the Regime is using to explain economic growth.  One-tenth of 1%.  Ladies and gentlemen, the ChiComs have overtaken us.  The ChiComs are the world's biggest economy, a communist country.  I warned everybody about this March the 4th of last year, this McKinsey...

Washington - Drivers on the nation’s Interstates could soon be paying more to travel. A transportation proposal sent to Congress by the Obama administration on Tuesday would remove a prohibition on tolls for existing Interstate highways, clearing the way for states to raise revenue on roads that drivers currently use at no cost. Congress banned tolls on Interstates in 1956 when it created the national highway system under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The administration said lifting the toll ban would help address a shortfall in funding to pay for highway repairs. The tolls, along with other changes, could provide an

National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, now speaking to the NRA Annual Meeting’s Leadership Forum, held at the Lucas Oil Stadium: “One hundred million gun owners will not back down, not now, not ever. Freedom has never needed our defense more than now.” “The core values that we believe in the things we care about most are changing and eroding: our right to speak, our right to gather, our right to work, our right to practice our religion and raise our family and protect them they see fit. Those aren’t old values or new values. They are core...

As a thank you for paying taxes today, the White House has written up a “2013 Federal Taxpayer Receipt” that shows most income tax, 25.19 percent, goes to health related areas, after accounting for Medicare and Social Security. “Want to know how your federal taxes are spent? President Obama is keeping his promise to make sure Americans like you can easily see what you're getting for your taxes,” said an email from the White House. The email notes that payroll taxes for Social Security tops Uncle Sam's take. They also break out Medicare separately from income tax expenditures. Users can...

Obamacare is hurting people. A lot of people -- and not just the ones who are wasting all day trying and failing to sign up for the dysfunctional 600 million dollar website. Millions of Americans are losing their insurance, losing their doctors, and taking huge hits to their wallets because of Obamacare. Here are some of their stories... 1) Man with leukemia loses his health insurance: Michael Cerpok is a high school drop-out, one of six kids born to a school teacher, and doesn't come from a wealthy family. He has run two businesses for more than 25 years and...

WASHINGTON – Those tax-free spending accounts that you and your co-workers use to help pay for dental work, insurance copayments or over-the-counter drugs face a hit under the health overhaul bills in Congress — unless a coalition that includes a powerful union, insurers and others can stop it. Bills in the House and Senate would cap at $2,500 an employee's allowable annual contribution to a health care flexible spending account. There is no federal cap on contributions now, though companies that offer the accounts — more than 80 percent of companies employing 500 or more workers do — typically impose...

In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year. Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS. The IRS's assumption that the cheapest plan for family of five will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan. “The annual national...

Breaking Bad is the story of a seemingly well-intended but very misguided man who turned to cooking meth in order to amass enough wealth to provide for his family once he dies of cancer. The consequences of that unfortunate decision—not to mention the lies and deceptions to keep it on track—pyramid alarmingly over the course of five seasons, culminating in mayhem and a head-spinning body count. Obamacare isn’t a TV drama. But it will unleash its own tsunami of unintended consequences: more than a million jobs lost, an economy increasingly made up of part-time workers, higher health spending (at least...

Under the Affordable Care Act, someone making less than 138 percent of the poverty line qualifies for Medicaid, and someone between 138 and 400 percent of the poverty line is qualified to receive a federal tax subsidy for health insurance bought on a government exchange. But here is the problem: premiums will rise for millions of Americans because of requirements that policies provide certain benefits that they didn’t offer before. This means plenty of people will now have a pricier plan, and no way to defray the cost. My colleague Chuck Blahous sends me this piece from SFGate that gives...

Obama's Big Media mouthpieces are promoting the Dear Leader's latest talking point on Health Care: "Tax-free" health benefits from employers are actually a "tax break", and as such can be rescinded by The Leader and His Righteous Coven in the Congress.USA Today's Obama media sock puppet Richard Wolf "reports" in today's online rag:Lawmakers target health insurance tax break Congressscum appear to be ready to do a wilding on the health care you earned.

Guess Who Really Pays the Taxes By Stephen Moore From the November/December 2007 Issue Yes, income in America is skewed toward the rich. But taxes are skewed far, far more. The top 5 percent pay well over half the income taxes. STEPHEN MOORE has the numbers. 1. Are income taxes fair?That depends on who is offering the opinion. Democratic candidates for president certainly don’t think so. John Edwards has said, “It’s time to restore fairness to a tax code that has been driven badly out of whack.” Hillary Clinton laments that “middle-class and working families are paying a much higher percentage...

Veteran House Democratic aides are sick over the insurance prices they’ll pay under Obamacare, and they’re scrambling to find a cure.“In a shock to the system, the older staff in my office (folks over 59) have now found out their personal health insurance costs (even with the government contribution) have gone up 3-4 times what they were paying before,” Minh Ta, chief of staff to Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), wrote to fellow Democratic chiefs of staff in an email message obtained by POLITICO. “Simply unacceptable.”In the email, Ta noted that older congressional staffs may leave their jobs because of the...

Frustrated Democrats have been asking the same question for months: When are the rich going to pay their fair share? State employee unions are also asking — broadcasting television commercials depicting wealthy fat-cats smoking cigars and brandishing brandy snifters as Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell has avoided tax increases on the rich and corporations. The unions have spent about $400,000 since February on radio, television and cable advertisements in their campaign for tax fairness. But Sen. L. Scott Frantz, R-Greenwich, says the rich are already paying their fair share. In fact, Greenwich paid more than 14 percent of the state's...

The Senate health-care bill would raise effective marginal tax rates on lower and middle-income singles and families up to 41%. The effective marginal tax rate is the answer to the question: "If I earn $1 more, how much less than $1 do I get to save or spend?" If you can keep that full dollar for your disposal, the effective marginal tax rate is zero. If earning another dollar does not raise your disposable income by even a penny, the effective marginal tax rate is 100 percent. Consider, then, the figure below constructed for a two-earner family with two school-age...

.... The huge tax cuts passed under Presidents Reagan and Bush II (surrounding smaller tax increases under Bush I and Clinton), in the short term, contributed to the largest budget deficits in peacetime U.S. history. In the long term, they undermined the federal government's ability to pay for the social insurance programs that make up the largest part of the federal budget: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But the most remarkable victory of the conservative revolution has been taking tax increases off the policy table, to the point where even letting tax cuts for the very rich expire as scheduled...

A term new to most Americans, "tax expenditures," is being bandied about in Washington as Congress and President Barack Obama discuss ways to bring the federal budget closer to balance. In many discussions it is used interchangeably with a more familiar word, "loopholes." President Obama has been gaining a certain amount of political traction by urging elimination of many loopholes. He and liberals in Congress prefer to focus attention on tax breaks for big corporations and "the rich." That last needs to be qualified by noting that under one of the president's proposals, families earning $250,000 or more a year...

Nothing has been more damaging to rational discourse about economic policy than the notion, peddled relentlessly by Republican conservatives and accepted by too many centrist Democrats, that raising taxes is always and everywhere bad for the economy. Mind you, there's very little evidence supporting this view -- it's an article of faith and a convenient way for politicians to pander to their constituents. Reality is a whole lot more complicated. The economic impact of a given tax increase can be positive or negative, depending on who is taxed, how the tax is structured and how the tax revenue is used....

Fiscal Policy: President Obama is putting all his political chips on raising the minimum wage to 10.10 an hour, but so far that issue isn't gaining much political traction. The 500,000 job losses confirmed last week by the Congressional Budget Office certainly were a mortal wound to the legislative push — as well they should be when we have nearly 20 million Americans already unemployed or underemployed. But most Americans have a much bigger concern than raising the minimum wage. Only about 5% of workers make that little (the average is well above $20 an hour), and most receiving the...