Free Republic

Forgive Republican candidate Mitt Romney for his alleged failure to adequately explain why he paid "only" 14 percent of his income in taxes. The honest answer -- "Well, because my accountants couldn't figure out how to get them any lower" -- does not work in this or very many other election years. Romney seemed flat-footed because, like most business people, he seeks to minimize costs and expenses. This includes taxes. A normal wealthy-and-proud-of-it guy would have said: "Let me get this straight, pal. I'm not supposed to take every legal advantage provided me by the tax laws to reduce my...

The Club for Growth wrote a white paper on Governor Romney back in 2007. Most of the information below is from that repory, but since Romney has been outspoken on several issues then, weve updated his record to reflect those positions. ...During his initial 2002 campaign Romney refused to sign an anti-tax pledge, but he pledged to balance the budget without raising taxes and touted his fulfillment of that pledge throughout his term. But the details suggest that he broke his verbal committment. Romney did not impose any broad-based tax hikes he imposed a slew of fee hikes. He opposed...

WASHINGTON - Ten years after President George W. Bush cut income tax rates, his decision still remains at the epicenter of debate over future economic policy. President Obama, who came charging into office vowing to repeal the Bush's tax cuts, has been blocked at every turn by the Republicans, but also by some members of own party who thought it was insane to raise taxes in the midst of a recession when businesses were struggling and so many Americans were out of work. He reluctantly threw in the towel at the end of last year when the Bush tax cuts...

EDMONDS, Wash. — Travel guru Rick Steves says he's trying to make a political statement by giving $1 million to an arts center in his hometown. He says the amount equals what he saved from tax cuts approved by former President George W. Bush beginning in 2001. The Herald newspaper of Everett reports ( http://bit.ly/quuOap) that Steves says he's alarmed that the tax burden on rich people has dropped while public funding for important local programs has been slashed.

The White House is poised to revive efforts to repeal the Bush-era tax cuts, according to the website Humanevents.com. The website reached the conclusion from comments made by President Barack Obama as well as his press secretary Jay Carney in recent days. The administration will likely look to pre-empt the debt-ceiling super committee as it crafts the next stage of the debt-reduction package by insisting that those earning over $250,000 a year be more inclined to pay their fair share in taxes, the website says. Carney cited House Speaker John Boehner’s support of generating $800 billion in revenue when the...

Liberals find themselves in a tax trap. A tax bill trap, that is. While the recently enacted tax bill certainly has elements with which conservatives can rightfully disagree, there are far more – and far bigger – parts for liberals to dislike. Following the adage “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” conservatives should love this legislation. The most obvious problem for liberals with the extension of all the Bush tax cuts for an additional two years is the bipartisan mention of its positive economic effect. This has become the consensus selling point for this legislation. The question that...

Thanks for the Tax Cut!By LARRY DAVID Published: December 20, 2010 THERE is a God! It passed! The Bush tax cuts have been extended two years for the upper bracketeers, of which I am a proud member, thank you very much. I’m the last person in the world I’d want to be beside, but I am beside myself! This is a life changer, I tell you. A life changer! To begin with, I was planning a trip to Cabo with my kids for Christmas vacation. We were going to fly coach, but now with the money I’m saving in taxes,...

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team are working this afternoon to reach a solution to move forward on the tax cuts legislation after Democratic opposition to proceed on the bill forced the Democratic leadership to pull the tax cuts package from the floor. Democratic leadership pulled the tax cuts bill from the floor after it became apparent that liberals would not vote to pass the Rule, according to a senior Democratic leadership aide. The Democratic aide says that while the minority party never votes for rules and Democrats were not counting on Republican support to pass...

George W. Bush: Stop Calling Them "Bush Tax Cuts"Posted by Mary Dooe December 14, 2010 10:59 AM George W. Bush suggested in a radio interview on Monday that the debate over extending tax cuts in Washington might be made easier by using a phrase other than "Bush tax cuts." In the interview, conservative talk radio host Scott Hennen said that three of the most used words in politics in the last few months have been "Bush tax cuts." That's because of the debate raging over whether and how to extend the cuts, which were established in 2001 and 2003 and...

Domenico Montanaro writes: *** UPDATE *** NBC's Ken Strickland reports based on preliminary vote tally the Senate has cleared the 60-vote threshold to advance the tax bill. The vote is still open. These are preliminary numbers The Senate is voting on a key procedural vote on the tax cuts compromise bill; 60 was needed for passage.

Leadership: A mainstream media guru says the president is channeling Ronald Reagan but risks becoming Jimmy Carter. Reagan's policies worked, Carter's didn't and Obama's haven't. Wake up and smell the tax cuts. Noted journalist Howard Fineman, a former Newsweek icon now plying his thoughts at the Huffington Post, is not happy with President Obama's embrace of fiscal and political reality by striking a deal with a resurgent GOP that extends the Bush tax cuts. Typical of mainstream media angst, Fineman opines that Obama has "just been backed — or backed himself — into a Reaganite corner" and embraced the "essence...

The House and Senate appear to be on a collision course over President Obama's controversial tax plan, after House Democrats voted to block the package from coming to the floor in its current form. Though the vote was not binding, the House Democratic caucus on Thursday approved a measure by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., effectively rejecting the GOP-negotiated deal unless and until a majority of Democrats support it. One Democratic leadership aide said the vote "shows how much the White House screwed this up." Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, told Fox News he expects the Senate to take up...

Comrades! Thanks to the vigilance of the People’s Kosmittee, the Democratic Peoples’ Underground Guard and other proletarian heroes, we have identified dangerous counter-revolutionary treason in our midst! It is with sadness and personal disappointment that I must denounce Barack Obama. It has come to light that “Comrade” Obama has abused his position as Leader, Premier and Party Chancellor to sell out our revolutionary aspirations in unauthorized, secretive negotiations with the enemies of the people’s democracy.

Did the republicans secretly threaten Obama they would raise the eligibility question with him in order to get the Bush tax cuts extended? The president automatically did a about face to his democratic constituents and to the voters who looked up to him to 'Stick It To The Rich' so he could 'Spread The Wealth' as he said he would do on the campaign trail. There is a reason more sinister I feel on why he did this that has the democratic elite in D.C. up in arms. I personally think that the republicans (since they take over the house...

Here’s something I bet you didn’t know: Every dime the U.S. Government doesn’t take from you, every penny it lets you keep by its good graces, let’s face it, your whole paycheck has to be borrowed from China. While the whole mainstream media’s insistence on calling keeping the tax rates the same is a “tax cut,” implies that all your money really belongs to the government, Keith Olbermann and an obscure Democrat Congressman, Bobby Scott, just came out and expressed that totalitarian view last night in a segment curiously entitled, “America’s Secret Debt.” ( Secret?) In fact, Scott objects...

"(Obama) was not born here," Scott asserted to Answer Man in the session's last segment. "That's my belief. I was born here. If someone accuses me of not being born here, I can go — within 10 minutes — to my filing cabinet and I can pick up my real birth certificate and I can go, 'See? Look! Here it is. Here it is.' The man has dodged everything. He dodges questions, he doesn't answer anything."

Sen. Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who bucked his party leadership during the midterm elections, was back at it again Tuesday night, saying he would not vote for the tax cut deal brokered between the GOP and President Obama because it increases the deficit. “Most of us who ran this election said we were not going to vote for anything that increased the deficit. This does,” DeMint said, explaining his opposition to conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt. It could be the beginning of the deal’s unraveling, if DeMint’s public break with the deal and with his party’s...

Here is video from President Obama’s Press Conference today where he falsely claimed that Republicans had opposed extending tax cuts on the “middle-class.” Obama made the statement as he said he would oppose extending tax cuts for the wealthiest people in 2012, “just as I suspect the Republican Party may fight to end the middle-class tax cuts that I have championed, and that they’ve opposed.” Republicans never opposed middle-class tax cuts in this battle. Instead, the GOP wanted to extend the Bush Tax Cuts for ALL Americans. Obama is already trying to frame the 2012 Campaign around this issue. He...

It's almost BEYOND Meltdown Mode. This has been coming on for a while now: The DUmmies' utter disappointment in their erstwhile true love, Barack Obama. And now with this betrayal on taxes, he's gone from Obamassiah to Judas Isbarryot. For the CENTERPIECE of the Obama campaign was his pledge to punish the rich by raising their taxes. But now. . . . Oh, well! So the DUmmies are beyond disenchantment. They are, in some sense, even beyond seething rage--they've been there for some time now. But this, what we saw today--this moves them into more of a settled opposition....

Obama will be speaking to the nation shortly to put the best spin on his caving in to the Republicans on extending the Bush tax rates. The cable networks are standing by to cover it live.Here's a teaser from CNN on the deal: President Barack Obama presented congressional Democratic leaders Monday with a proposed deal with Republicans that would extend Bush-era tax cuts for two years and unemployment benefits for 13 months while also setting the estate tax at 35% for two years on inheritances worth more than $5 million, a senior Democratic source told CNN. The deal also includes...

At a press conference on Dec. 3, Sen. Claire McCaskill talked tax cuts in which she assailed Republicans with the typical class warfare talking points and added it’s “time to take up pitchforks” if the tax rate remains.

I am sure this has been covered, but I have a couple of questions about the tax cut/extension debate. Why are the Dems worried about the Bush Tax cuts expiring, after all I can remember during the original debate that these tax cuts only benifited the rich. Now all I hear is that if these tax cuts arnt extented for the middle class, they will be hurt(which they will be). Which is it? Next Nancy Pelosi says that unemployment benifits are the best stimulus for the economy, (since the Bernacke just said that 10% unemployment may last for 5 years,...

While appearing on MSNBC, former CBS Evening News host Dan Rather said that if the Bush tax cuts are extended for two more years, he believes President Obama will inevitably face a tough primary challenge in the next election.

Senate Republicans on Saturday voted against extending the Bush tax cuts to only the middle class in a pair of votes Democrats are seizing to paint the GOP as guardians of the rich. The Senate voted 53-36 to extend all expiring tax cuts on individuals with incomes of less than $200,000 a year and married couples making less than $250,000 -- seven shy of the required 60 to advance. The other proposal, which drew opposition from White House officials, would have renewed them for all tax filers with incomes of $1 million or less. That also failed in a 53-36...

The battle continues over private-sector job creation and government expansion. Taxation and unemployment are directly related, and if every American doesn't understand this, then Americans will continue to lose jobs. The Democratic left has placed a gun to congressional Republicans' heads by threatening to allow taxes to increase on all Americans on January 1. Democrats intend to continue government expansion by again extending the policy of paying people not to work, while Republicans are threatening to block all leftist lame-duck initiatives barring tax breaks for every American, including "the rich." The historical facts are quite clear on the subject: lowering...

A deal between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate on the upcoming tax hikes apparently collapsed last night after one Republican withheld unanimous consent to proceed. As a result, Democrats will hold two votes tomorrow on extending the current tax rates for middle-class workers, with one including workers making under $1 million per year. The votes won’t survive a filibuster, but Democrats want to use the votes to paint the GOP as the party of the rich. However, that strategy makes a lot less sense after the jobless report this morning: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to schedule...

Congressman John Duncan (R-Tenn.), voted with Democrats to renew only the middle-class cuts.

Ladies and gentlemen, from intellect as effervescent as a week old open can of Coke, I present to you for your rhetorical displeasure The Washington Post's own Ezra Klein... ...in all likelihood, what separates a tax cut bill that's "chicken crap" from a tax cut bill that's great is its treatment of the richest 1 percent of households in Boehner's district. And $700 billion slapped right onto the deficit. If Republicans win this debate despite the unpopularity of their position and its violent contradiction to their stated concern for the deficit, it'll be one of the most impressive coups...

I received this in an email years ago, now feels like now is the right time to dust this puppy off as a reminder to the idiots on the left who argue that extending the Bush tax cuts for only some taxpayers (or none) is a REALLY bad idea. I could post column after column with empty rhetoric and zero evidence to support my position like liberal columnists and bloggers have been doing for the past few weeks. Or I can just play WWJD and deliver this parable. :-) Last I checked the real author of this remains a...

Boehner rips House Democrats tax vote as "chicken crap" Deirdre Walsh By: CNN Congressional Prodcuer Evan Glass, CNN Congressional Producer Deirdre Walsh Washington (CNN) - House GOP Leader John Boehner ripped House Democrats for moving ahead with a vote Thursday just on extending tax cuts for those making $250,000 or less, calling the move "chicken crap." "I'm trying to catch my breath so I don't refer to this maneuver going on today as chicken crap, all right? But this is nonsense, all right?" Boehner told reporters Thursday. Boehner argued that Democrats were ignoring the message from voters last month who...

WASHINGTON — Not even 24 hours after President Obama met with senior Republican Congressional leaders and expressed hopes for a “new dialogue,” renewed partisan fury engulfed the Senate on Wednesday, as Republicans threatened to block any legislation until a deal is reached to extend the expiring Bush-era tax cuts, potentially derailing the Democrats’ busy end-of-year agenda. The blunt threat was made in a letter to the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and signed by all 42 Senate Republicans. And it was reiterated by the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, in a speech in which he accused Democratic leaders...

Republicans are prepared to vote down a bill extending all but the top-end tax cuts, the second-ranking GOP leader in the House said Tuesday. Incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said on Bloomberg Television he was ready to instruct GOP members to vote down legislation Democrats plan to bring to the floor that would extend the expiring Bush-era tax cuts only for the middle class. Democrats in both the House and the Senate have signaled they would bring up for a vote this week bills that would extend tax cuts for all households earning less than $250,000 per year...

The Democrats resent their recent losses and propose to take their anger out on American taxpayers — with a massive tax hike presented as a compromise on extending the Bush tax rates. It may be bad news for taxpayers, investors, the jobless, and the economy at large, but the Democrats’ intransigent insistence on sticking to their class-warfare platform is excellent news for incoming Republicans, inasmuch as it suggests that the Democrats still have not figured out exactly why the nation visited an almighty shellacking upon them on Election Day. Many congressional Democrats first wanted to undo what they still insist...

With time running out and high political and economic stakes, Obama is pushing Democratic leaders to determine if they can win an acceptable extension of the cuts, which he could sign into law. Resurgent Republicans are demanding that all the tax cuts be renewed, including those for wealthier Americans -- individuals making more than $200,000 and families above$250,000. Obama favors renewing the tax cuts only for those at or below those level, saying the nation cannot afford to renew them for wealthier Americans. Despite a number of options -- including renewing all tax cuts or only those for the middle...

Anti-tax activists everywhere have been loudly arguing for an extension of George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in the United States. Now a group of millionaires is arguing the opposite. More than 40 of the nation's millionaires have joined Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength to ask President Obama to discontinue the tax breaks established for them during the Bush administration, as Salon reports. "For the fiscal health of our nation and the well-being of our fellow citizens, we ask that you allow tax cuts on incomes over $1,000,000 to expire at the end of this year as...

WASHINGTON (AP) - After meeting with President Barack Obama Thursday, Democratic leaders in Congress said they plan to hold a series of politically charged votes to extend middle-class tax cuts while letting tax cuts for the wealthy expire. Excerpted per FR posting rules.

Barack Obama continues to insist on raising taxes for those vile rich people–those who earn $250,000 or more. Like the guy who fixes garage doors. I asked the garage door man what $250K means to him. His response was quick: “It’s my overhead.” A quarter million means the garage door man can meet his outrageous (this is SoCal) overhead. His basics: fees, insurance, taxes, marketing, vehicles, supplies and equipment. That’s it. How many employees does he get for $250K? None. All of that vast wealth nets him the ability to keep his doors open. Not enough left over to hire...

I am appalled watching the news now about the Obama White House signaling that they intend NOT to extend the Bush Tax Cuts that will help small business owners all over the United States so they can stimulate the economy and hire more people. This will be devastating for people all over. It will cause massive bankruptcy in the private and business sector. If they do this then Palin literally will have the ammo to take Obama down and she will have corporate backing from business leaders everywhere that will propel her to the Oval Office. This is a arrogant...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi will not give ground on her opposition to extending the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans, even as the White House and other Democrats have signaled that it might be time to compromise. "It's too costly. It's $700 billion," Pelosi told NPR this morning. "One year would be around $70 billion. That's a lot of money to give a tax cut at the high end. And I remind you that those tax cuts have been in effect for a very long time, they did not create jobs." Pelosi's strong stand mimics that of some of her...

Paging Head DUmmmie Skinner! Your Tombstoning services are required. Why? Because the DUmmies are REVOLTING. Yes, they are now revolting against the Obamassiah over the possibility he will approved an extension of the (GASP!) Bush tax cuts. And this idea has the DUmmies throwing mass fits as you can see in this THREAD, "White House Gives In On Bush Tax Cuts." So let us now watch the revolting DUmmies blow a gasket in Bolshevik Red while the commentary of your humble correspondent, enjoying the smell of DUmmie angst in the morning, is in the [barackets]: White House Gives In...

President Obama declared Friday that his "No. 1 priority" is preserving tax cuts for the middle class, and sharply denied that comments by his senior adviser David Axelrod suggest that his administration is about to cave in to Republicans who also want to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. "That is the wrong interpretation because I haven't had a conversation with Democratic and Republican leaders," Obama said of a Huffington Post article suggesting that in advance of negotiations with lawmakers next week, the White House has calculated that giving in on tax cuts for the rich is the...

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod said this morning that President Obama has not caved to GOP demands on the extension of the Bush tax cuts, despite a report to the contrary. “We're willing to discuss how we move forward,” Axelrod said in an e-mail to National Journal rebutting the Huffington Post story, “but we believe that it's imperative to extend the tax cuts for the middle class, and don't believe we can afford a permanent extension of tax cuts for the wealthy.” The Huffington Post reported this morning that Axelrod suggested that “the administration is ready to accept and...

The Looney Left's bête noire, Chimpy McHitler, has recently emerged from the Führerbunker and awakened the latent BDS always boiling just beneath the surface. A softball interview on the Orca Windbag Show only served to rehabilitate the Evil One. What's next, a turn on Brush-Clearing With the Stars? Well, if that were not enough, now comes President Obama morphing INTO Barack W. McSame! HuffPo has broken a story--perhaps just a trial baloney at this point--"White House Gives In On Bush Tax Cuts," and even this whiff of a RUMOR is enough to set off a FIRESTORM across the Lands...

Recent unsettling revelations would indicate that, more and more, the US Chamber of Commerce is working for foreign nationals and corporations. Big business has been sending American jobs to other nations for a long time. Our current Congress has tried several measures to stop the bleeding and to bring some of those jobs back to Americans.

For newly empowered congressional Republicans, priority one must be an extension of the Bush tax cuts. There should be enough votes not only from a new Republican majority, but also from some of the decimated and dispirited (and even newly elected) Democrats. If President Obama is smart, he won't veto the bill. If the tax cuts are allowed to expire, everyone who gets a paycheck and has taxes withheld is going to see less money in the "net" column starting January 1. Bloomberg.com has published some calculations. It reports that, according to the Tax Institute at H&R Block, "for a...

When the House voted to adjourn about a month ago by a 210-209 margin, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her cronies avoided dealing with extending the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, which expire Dec. 31. Rather than address the tax issue, the Senate also voted to adjourn.Instead, Congress is holding a lame-duck session beginning Nov. 15. What that means is whether or not you elect them back into office, they are poised to do what they want when they want with little election fallout.Before adjournment, 47 House Democrats endorsed a letter to Pelosi pleading for the extension of all...

Low-income workers stand to lose the most if lawmakers fail to reach a consensus on the Bush-era tax cuts, according to a new report from the Tax Foundation. The report states that on Jan. 1 the doubling of the child tax credit, increased standard deductions and income credits and the creation of the 10 percent tax bracket — all of which primarily aimed at non-wealthy taxpayers — will vanish if gridlock persists in Washington. While wealthier taxpayers pay more in taxes and stand to lose more money if the tax cuts expire, the impact on low-income taxpayers will be far...

Congress left Washington without addressing the massive tax hikes that will come at the end of the year as the tax-rate reductions of 2001 and 2003 expire. Absent action on Capitol Hill, those increases will take $4 trillion out of the economy over the next ten years — and even if the lower tax bracket reductions get extended, $700 billion of capital will get redirected from the private sector to Washington. How will that impact economic growth in the US? Peter Ferrara argues that it will create not just a double-dip recession, but a second economic collapse — one worse...