Posted on 03/02/2015 5:16:42 PM PST by amnestynone
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed Monday that President Obama is "very interested" in the idea of raising taxes through unitlateral executive action.
"The president certainly has not indicated any reticence in using his executive authority to try and advance an agenda that benefits middle class Americans," Earnest said in response to a question about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) calling on Obama to raise more than $100 billion in taxes through IRS executive action.
"Now I don't want to leave you with the impression that there is some imminent announcement, there is not, at least that I know of," Earnest continued. "But the president has asked his team to examine the array of executive authorities that are available to him to try to make progress on his goals. So I am not in a position to talk in any detail at this point, but the president is very interested in this avenue generally," Earnest finished.
Sanders sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew Friday identifying a number of executive actions he believes the IRS could take, without any input from Congress, that would close loopholes currently used by corporations. In the past, IRS lawyers have been hesitant to use executive actions to raise significant amounts of revenue, but that same calculation has change in other federal agencies since Obama became president.
Obama's preferred option would be for Congress to pass a corporate tax hike that would fund liberal infrastructure projects like mass transit. But if Congress fails to do as Obama wishes, just as Congress has failed to pass the immigration reforms that Obama prefers, Obama could take actions unilaterally instead. This past November, for example, Obama gave work permits, Social Security Numbers, and drivers licenses to approximately 4 million illegal immigrants.
Why do we have a Congress again?
“Executive Action”
IWas there ever a sequel.
Even if he gets impeached and removed he will just veto it
we have a Congress just for show
it is just a relic from our ‘constitutional’ days of Yore.
Congress doesn’t do anything good for us anymore,
its a totally neutered institution.
It is sort of like the Queen in the UK
except not as entertaining
i say let’s get rid of it
and save all the money it wastes
/s
The Townhall article unsurprisingly fails to point out the following concerning lawless Obama’s idea of raising taxes by means of constitutionally undefined executive action.
To begin with, what we’re probably not going to hear from RINO Speaker Boehner is this. The Founding States had made the Constitution’s “power of the purse” clause (1.7.1) to clarify that the only federal government entity with the power to make bills for raising revenue is the House of Representatives.
Also note that the Founding States had established the federal Senate in part to kill House appropriations bills that the state legislatures would disapprove of. But since all three branches of the federal government are corrupt, all constitutional firewalls against unwanted taxes have been defeated.
As DownInFlames put it, this is King George III all over again.
“Official” is right.
At this point, how far fetched is it to think he just might decide, for the stability of the middle class, that there s/b no presidential election in 2016 and he’ll just stay in office after issuing and executive action to that effect?
Who/what would stop him?
Congress = Roman Senate
Exactly, he knows he’s been given absolute power by these cowardly pieces of rat filth posing as our Congress so he is going all out for the next two years. Matter of fact that’s exactly what he said a few weeks ago, that he realizes he has 2 years left and he’s “going to work extra hard to bring about change” aka tyranny. Hey for all we know, he could order himself a 3rd term a 4th term, how about “Emperor for life”..do away with elections forever. I mean it’s not like anybody will do anything about it.
Illegal and unconstitutional, but that’s Obama.
“In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low. And the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.” — John F. Kennedy, speech to the Economic Club of New York, 1962
“This isn’t leftist bashing “
correct. You were not bashing leftists. You were bashing the rich and corporations. you really need to get your mind right, Luke. :-)
W.
T.
F?
I don't think that is the case at all. I think it was massive and targeted voter fraud, through the electronic voting machines. Easily, 5% of the vote was switched from Romney to 0bama. Look at the numbers in the key states, plus we knew it was going on - all the direction of 0bama.
The 2012 Election was stolen, not lost.
I certainly think there was voter fraud but Bush got over 62 million votes in 2004 and Romney got just under 57 million. Five million stayed home. Of course, they believed Romney was shoved down their throats by the Establishment so they said no. But the fact remains that Obama could have been stopped in 2012. I didn’t want Romney during the primaries. But when it came to the general election I wanted to stop Obama more than I wanted to teach a lesson to the establishment. Too many disagreed, albeit to stay true to their principles. That is noble but here with are with the unthinkable in the White House doing whatever he wants.
Who’s going to stop them if they do?
I think the strongest arguments he may use will be the fact that some corporations manage to fix their books so that they pay no taxes whatsoever (sort of like Greece?).
A second argument he has is the extremely high salaries that CEOs and other high executives earn. Personally I was outraged when my GE stock was dropping from $50 to $5 a share, and then I saw that the top seven executive were paid from $11 to $22 million a year during and after that whole debacle. Stockholders of Goldman Sachs were similarly outraged in 2008 (remember the bank failures and economic crash of 2007), when they learned the top 3 executives each earned over $65 million. In fact they were so angry that 43% of them voted for a Proposal for a Stockholders’ Advisory on Executive Compensation. The following year the CEO’s salary had dropped to a mere $25 million and after that it became very hard to find that information. Check out Forbes CEO Compensation at Google to see more about just how outrageous CEO salaries have become.
Funding infrastructure projects would help push poorer people farther from the desirable places to live and work, but keep it cheap enough so businesses would be able to get cheap labor if they haven’t already gone off shore to get even cheaper labor. So I think liberals are NOT the only ones who might like mass transit infrastructure projects.
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