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RUSH: It’s amazing. The Drive-By Media now understands the concept of tax cuts and tax increases, but it took tariffs and a tariff war with the ChiComs for the Drive-Bys to understand it. I’m being ironic and a little sarcastic. They know it and understand it. It’s just that since the Republicans own mantra of tax cuts, since that is a Republican owned belief… Democrats don’t believe in cutting taxes; Republicans do, and the Democrats know it. So whenever the concept of tax cuts comes up, the Democrats and the media have to destroy it, as they did the latest...

When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez floated her idea (quasi-embraced by Sen. Kamala Harris) to raise the top marginal income tax rate to 70 percent on the richest Americans in order to pay for her "Green New Deal," I wrote that governmental confiscation of 70 cents on any dollar earned in a free society is unfair and immoral.  But would such a scheme at least make significant headway toward boosting federal revenues, commensurate with the orgy of new spending the Democratic Left is advocating?  Budget analyst Brian Riedl crunches the numbers for the Daily Beast and details the predictable answer to that...

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback on Wednesday vetoed a bill that would undo his signature income tax cut and his allies prevented the Legislature from overriding him, setting up future confrontations over balancing the state budget. Less than two hours after Brownback vetoed the bill, the state House voted 85-40 to override him, giving supporters one vote more than the two-thirds majority they needed. But the vote in the Senate hours later was 24-16, which was three shy of a two-thirds majority. By not overriding the veto, lawmakers will have to draft another plan aimed at closing projected budget shortfalls totaling...

The Sheridan millage tax increase scheduled on September 20th of 3.8 Mills will transfer $30,500,000 from already overtaxed private sector to public sector bureaucrats. The Clarksville Millage Tax of 4.8 Mills would cost taxpayers $19,000,000. The Hot Springs Millage Tax Increase would add $54,000,000 on top of a $50 million sales tax increase passed June 28th 2016. The Wonderview School District Millage Tax would be $12,300,000. A grand total of $115,500,000 in tax increases will be voted on Tuesday September 20th! This money will go towards a Public Education System that is plagued with leftist indoctrination, gender politics, unsecure gun...

Hillary Clinton has made clear she intends to dramatically raise taxes on the American people if elected. She has proposed an income tax increase, a business tax increase, a death tax increase, a capital gains tax increase, a tax on stock trading, and an Exit Tax, and more (see below). Her planned net tax increase on the American people is at least $1 trillion over ten years, based on her campaign’s own figures. Hillary has endorsed many tax increases on that would hit middle income Americans, despite her pledge not to raise taxes on any American making less than $250,000....

GUTHRIE: Do you believe in raising taxes on the wealthy? TRUMP: I do. I do – including myself. I do. That was...this morning, in an interview that featured some other controversial statements.  In fairness to Trump, he's been using the "raise taxes on rich people like me" line for months, embracing Obama-style class warfare tax gimmicks like the 'Buffet Rule.'  But raising taxes on anyone, an outcome Trump just re-endorsed, is not what his formal policy agenda proposes.  Just the opposite.  As we've seen on issues such immigration, abortion and foreign policy, Trump routinely makes clear that he isn't familiar with his own positions.  His stances aren't...

It's been a rough 24 hours for Team Trump. The billionaire's campaign manager has been arrested for battery against a female reporter -- with new surveillance conclusively proving that he lied about the incident and smeared his accuser -- and the candidate himself was subjected to a string of inhospitable interviews with conservative radio hosts in Wisconsin. We wrote about his exchange with Charlie Sykes yesterday; later, he hung up on Vicki McKenna after he grew exasperated with her questions about his threats and insults against Heidi Cruz.  The Texas Senator narrowly leads in recent Badger State polling and just landed the endorsement of Scott Walker, who is...

Gov. Tom Wolf warned lawmakers on Tuesday that Pennsylvania's finances are a ticking time bomb amid a record-long budget gridlock, as he sent them a spending proposal for the coming fiscal year with no full plan in place for the year that began back in July. The first-term Democrat delivered an approximately $33.3 billion plan for 2016-17 to the Republican-controlled Legislature as he tries again to break down resistance to a multibillion-dollar tax increase that has held up passage of a budget for the current year. Wolf delivered his message in a blunt, 25-minute speech that prompted objections from most...

Puerto Rico is $72 billion in debt, and it will take a painful process to bring the island's finances back from the brink. It's a massive debt load for such a small territory, and the problem can really be traced to one issue — bad tax policy. After Puerto Rico let one tax break for manufacturers expire almost a decade ago, manufacturers started shutting down operations on the island. That caused a spike in unemployment. On top of that, business-friendly tax policies for some of the companies that remained allowed multinational giants to pay tax rates of little more than...

Powerful and well funded, 1199 SEIU has unprecedented reach into city and state government. ... Medicaid is one of the primary sources of funding for the hospitals employing workers from 1199 SEIU, the powerful hospital and nursing-home employees’ union. ... The union’s clout can be assessed by several measures: the sheer size of its membership, its spending on campaigns and lobbying, and the depth and breadth of its connections with New York’s ruling elite. With well over 300,000 members in Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida, Washington, D.C., and New York (where over half of that total resides), 1199SEIU is the largest union...

As European Union leaders push Greece for more austerity reforms, Athens enters political crisis and social media erupts in response. A two-day emergency meeting on Greece’s economic future ended Sunday with strict conditions from the European Union, including contentious austerity reforms, if it wants a new bailout and keep the euro. To meet the conditions for fresh aid packages and a third bailout that Greece needs to avoid bankruptcy, European finance ministers want Greece to pass a series of austerity measures--including tax and pension reforms-- through Parliament and put them into law by Wednesday. Greece will also have to lose...

VOTE AGAINST HIGHER TAXES MAY 12TH The millage tax increase scheduled on May 12th of 5.6 mills would make the average overall millage rate in the Pulaski County Special School District from 40.7 to 46.3 mills. Arkansas already has a 6.5% sales tax, 40.2 cents a gallon tax on gas, a capital gains tax, & a high income tax. Arkansas is one of the highest taxes states in a nation that is over $18 trillion in debt! Yet the AR Education Commissioner Tony Wood, who approved this millage tax, still made over $231,000 in 2014. This $12 million a year...

House Democrats have unveiled a $3.7 trillion budget plan for next year. It mirrors President Barack Obama’s call for $1.8 trillion in tax increases on wealthier people and corporations over the coming decade but would add almost $6 trillion to the national debt over that time. […] The plan calls for a wave of new spending for infrastructure like roads and bridges and additional funding for education and medical research. It would make modest curbs on the rapid growth of the popular Medicare program. …

President Obama will deliver yet another State of the Union Address with much the same message and policy prescription of his first six: Spread the wealth around. He wants $320 billion in new taxes on both the middle class and wealthy over the next decade to pay for income redistribution handout programs that are supposed to help the poor and middle class. But Obama has been president now for six years. If his redistribution policies worked, why are the poor getting poorer and why has the middle class stalled out? Is this George Bush's fault? The irony of the Obama...

Kansas would nearly triple its cigarette tax, raise taxes on alcohol and slow down promised income tax cuts to balance its budget under proposals Republican Gov. Sam Brownback outlined Friday. Brownback presented detailed recommendations to the GOP-dominated Legislature for eliminating projected shortfalls totaling more than $710 million in the current budget and for the fiscal year beginning July 1. He also presented a spending blueprint for the fiscal year beginning in July 2016 designed to leave the state with some cash reserves. The state’s budget problems arose after lawmakers aggressively cut personal income taxes in 2012 and 2013 at Brownback's...

Germans could foot the bill for unemployment benefits in other European countries under an EU plan to tax the union’s richest states.László Andor, EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, set out his proposal in June in Berlin to share the burden of unemployment benefits among EU countries. The plan is now “not far from the table”, CDU politician and MEP Herbert Reul told Welt newspaper on Monday. Andor claims that in a time of economic downturn, this concept could stabilize and revive struggling economies. He told the Welt on Monday that his plan would not replace countries’ unemployment...

WASHINGTON – The federal Highway Trust Fund, which contributes to road building and maintenance projects across the country, is expected to run out of money in early August, leading some states to issue plans to halt construction in case the well runs dry. The House and Senate are considering dueling packages and have not reached an agreement on how to address the fund’s impending insolvency. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has advised governors that reimbursements may slow to a trickle if the chambers can’t agree in time. Foxx told the states his department “will continue to take every possible measure to...

Since taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama has formally proposed a total of 442 tax increases, according to an Americans for Tax Reform analysis of Obama administration budgets for fiscal years 2010 through 2015. The 442 total proposed tax increases does not include the 20 tax increases Obama signed into law as part of Obamacare. "History tells us what Obama was able to do. This list reminds us of what Obama wanted to do," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. The number of proposed tax increases per year is as follows: 79 tax increases for FY...

The cost of Obamacare has been most visible recently in the form of purchase and coverage mandates, but we should all recognize that there are explicit taxes scheduled to take effect next year as well. President Obama has been jerking the insurance companies around with the sign-up deadlines and "un-cancelled plans." The companies might be getting a little retribution. The New York Post reports that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama is putting an explicit line on their form that shows what the Obamacare taxes are costing consumers every month: But one insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama,...