Posted on 10/13/2008 12:07:33 PM PDT by reaganaut1
TOLEDO — Senator Barack Obama on Monday expanded his economic platform, including proposals to spur new jobs, to give Americans penalty-free access to retirement savings to help them through the downturn, to urge a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures and to lend money to strapped local and state governments.
Mr. Obama also is calling on Congress to double $25 billion the government loan guarantees for automakers and to temporarily eliminate taxes on unemployment benefits.
...
Senator John McCain, his Republican rival, also gave an economic speech in Virginia Beach, Va., but he had no new policy prescriptions, having rejected his advisers’ options over the weekend as too gimmicky, according to one Republican close to the campaign.
...
The main new proposals would:
— for the next two years, give businesses a $3,000 income-tax credit for each new full-time employee they hire above the number in their current workforce;
— allow savers with tax-favored Individual Retirement Accounts and 401(k)’s to withdraw 15 percent of those retirement savings, up to a maximum of $10,000, without paying a tax penalty as the law currently requires for withdrawals before age 59 and a half;
— bar financial institutions that take advantage of the Treasury’s rescue plan from foreclosing on the mortgages of any homeowners who are making “good-faith efforts” to make payments;
— direct the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to create a temporary facility for loans to state and local governments, similar to the Fed’s new arrangement to loan corporations money by buying their commercial paper, which are the I.O.U.s that help businesses with daily operating expenses like payrolls.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“I will give every non-millionaire American, ONE MILLION DOLLARS...”
Interesting observation. Makes one ask, If Obozo is doing so great in the polls and has this race all locked up, why bother coming up with these ‘great’ tax ideas???
If the accounts are used to pay down mortgage dept or buy up foreclosures only, then loosening up these 401ks would improve the liquidity situation.
Most people have more tied up in their primary residence than their retirement account anyway - my order of priority is maintaining my mortgage first.
They are seeing their poll numbers go down as the bottom is now very possibly in. McCain will do better now as economic hysteria subsides.
Has Obama promised free dental care yet? I need a root canal, a crown and some bridge work. Can’t he work this in to being a right?
Yeah, where is the money going to come from? Barry will say anything or do anything to please the largest number of sheeple ... um, I mean, people.
It’s just that BO is so full of crap. He must have just learned about this stuff. Elitists who have a silver spoon in their mouths don’t understand main street America
The stupid states, ahh CALIFORNIA as a big example, should drill for oil and cut a deal with the oil companies just like Alaska.
it’s not the worst possible idea but it shows he really doesn’t have a clue how things work.
republicans are really doomed once the democrats realize that supply side works and that they could use the increased revenue from tax cuts and growth to pay for more social programs. They won’t, of course, and they will lose the next election.
Hey, osama forgot “a chicken in every pot” or a chicken and some pot!
Here’s an idea - what about reducing gov’t SPENDING. cut programs that are not constitutional. In these trying times, people understand about tightening their belts - when is the the gov’t going to follow this example???
I would like to see the salaries for ALL Congressmen & Senators and their staffs frozen and possibly reduced.
“Interesting observation. Makes one ask, If Obozo is doing so great in the polls and has this race all locked up, why bother coming up with these ‘great’ tax ideas???”
A good athlete does not let up when he is ahead — he tries to put the game away. Obama is a good politician. His half-baked ideas, which I bet are poll-tested, need to be rebutted, and McCain needs to convince voters his ideas are better.
This is a terrible idea. If there is one thing we need today as a nation and as individuals it is to encourage savings. We can’t keep spending and borrowing our way out of crisis.
About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
“The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage “
Sad but true. A second-best that I've long favored would be to eliminate withholding tax. Under this setup, you'd get to hold your pay for a while, then have to send off the taxes yourself, just like a self-employed person. Writing the check would make people think a lot harder about the effects of government spending.
WHAT money, Barack? Forcing banks to lend money to people who didn't have the income to pay back their mortgage LANDED us in this mess in the first place. As for "lending money" to "strapped local and state governments" through what? How will "strapped state and local governments" pay this "loan" BACK, Barack?? It's the same BS that gave us the subprime mortgage crisis TIMES A HUNDRED!
Obama was talking about rebuilding the economy from the ground up. Most people may not find that chilling. I do.
According to Obama, you won’t have to worry about paying your mortgage ;-)
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