Free Republic

I think we’ve all been broke before. Large men come and break your thumbs and threaten your family, and then you hide out in a dumpster until it all blows over. That’s all well and good for an individual, but what happens if our entire country goes broke? Robert J. Samuelson raised this concern in the Washington Post, and it got me worried, even though I didn’t quite understand it all (which perhaps actually increases the worry). We can’t just hide America in a dumpster (and even if we could, I bet that goody-two-shoes Canada would rat us out); we...

Governor David Paterson called an unusual joint session of the Legislature Monday to implore recalcitrant lawmakers to close the state's huge budget gap before New York runs out of money. To some lawmakers it's nothing more than a photo op to help Paterson get re-elected. But the governor is dead serious. He said if the Legislature doesn't cut the budget now the state could run out of money by next month

Ron Dellums, who earns about $184,000 as Oakland mayor on top of a congressional pension, appears to owe the Internal Revenue Service at least $66,554. A lien has been placed against his property for failing to pay taxes for 2006. According to the East Bay Express, which broke the story, Mayor Dellums and his wife, who file jointly, may owe more than $239,000 in taxes, mostly for the years he worked as a lobbyist in Washington, DC.

Taxing text messages? Some Vallejo voters are saying OMG. The North Bay city, with its ever-shrinking revenue stream, is asking voters Tuesday to expand its utility tax to include text messages, private phone networks, pagers and voice-over-Internet services. It's an idea that's spreading around California, as more than 40 cities have similarly expanded their utility taxes at the ballot box as a way to raise money. "We don't use our cell phones a lot, but we think this gives the city a blank check," said retired Mare Island shipyard worker John Kocourek of Vallejo, who's been working against the measure....

FRANKFURT (Dow Jones)-Greek and Portuguese government bonds came under pressure Thursday after rating agency Moody's Investors Service issued fresh warnings on the countries' sovereign credit ratings. Moody's placed Greece's A1 currency ratings on review for possible downgrade, and it also changed the outlook on Portugal's Aa2 rating to negative, citing serious fiscal deterioration in Greece and structural economic challenges and a lack of will to challenge them in Portugal.

ACRAMENTO — As oil companies continue to reap record profits amid strained state revenues, a pair of Democratic lawmakers are hoping to tap into their deep pockets by installing an oil severance tax that could relieve growing pressures to cut more state services. Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Long Beach, introduced a bill Monday called the Fair Share Act, that would impose a 10 percent oil severance fee on extractions from California wells to bring in $1.5 billion to the state's coffers. A similar bill that has already cleared one committee, by Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, D-Fremont, would impose a 9.9 percent fee,...

Here is video of GOP Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on This Week with George Stephanopoulos today, where he said Democrats are getting nervous "over this increasing view that Congress is acting like a teenager with their parents' credit card, not worried about who's going to have to pay the bill." What a great way to say it! . . . (VIDEO)

The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government released by the U.S. Department of Treasury, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports. The difference between the $455 billion "official" budget deficit numbers and the $5.1 trillion budget deficit based on data reported in the 2008 financial report is that the official budget deficit is calculated on a cash basis, where all tax receipts, including Social Security tax receipts, are used to pay government liabilities as they occur. The calculations...

Someday, some way and somehow, California will overhaul the way it finances services because the current system is unsustainable. We cannot continue to depend on a few thousand high-income Californians as the core of the state revenue structure. Their taxable incomes are increasingly erratic, and sooner or later, many will flee California's high marginal tax rates to states such as Florida, Nevada or Texas that have no income taxes. Did Tiger Woods, the first billion-dollar athlete, relocate from California to Florida because of better weather or nicer golf courses? Somehow, one doubts those were his motives. Getting his mail in...

Director of two non-profits, Les Leopold will discuss how Wall Street's casino-like practices which caused the first meltdown are back, and nothing has been done to protect U.S. taxpayers from another crash and bailout..

Since its entry into the Union, in the aftermath of war and the midst of gold fever, the state has seemed an improbable colossus. But again and again, California has made its way through hours of challenge – not only surviving intact, but emerging as a model for the rest of the nation. In the 19th century, despite immense geographic, ethnic, political, and social differences, Californians managed to form a cohesive identity, resisting numerous efforts to divide the state. They overcame the "curse of natural resources" that so long afflicted other commodity-rich states (and still afflicts some, like Alaska), laying the groundwork...

through a series of social, political, and economic experiments, California has acted as America's foremost laboratory of innovation, trying out ideas the country as a whole would go on to adopt. In the 1960s under Governor Pat Brown, the state offered a model of modernization, building the most advanced education and transportation infrastructures in the nation. Under Brown's successor, Ronald Reagan, it offered a model of conservative governance that would go on to transform American politics. Hollywood has made California a crucial part of America's cultural identity, and Silicon Valley has put it at the heart of our vision of...

As major Capitol business and labor groups denounced a tax overhaul package released Tuesday by a blue-ribbon commission, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger essentially embraced the plan, whose key components would flatten the state's income tax and install a new form of consumption tax on businesses. The Republican governor said he would sign the plan if it landed on his desk in its current form, although he acknowledged that lawmakers should have the chance to analyze and "tweak" the proposal. Schwarzenegger called a special legislative session on Tuesday to deal with the package, and he said he wanted lawmakers to act on...

John Podesta compared the nation’s current budget crisis to the situation former President Bill Clinton faced in 1993 and said some form of a value-added tax is “more plausible today than it ever has been.” “There’s going to have to be revenue in this budget,” said Podesta, Clinton’s former chief of staff and co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s transition team, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing today.

House Democrats are considering an insurance tax to help pay for their health care overhaul plan, even though such a funding scheme is bitterly opposed by labor unions that are among the party's most loyal constituencies. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Friday a tax on high-cost health insurance plans is "under consideration" as Democrats search for consensus within their ranks before taking a bill to the House floor later this fall. "We just have to see how much money we need for what," Pelosi said. "And if we're taking the bill down in cost, there are other provisions in...

While both the political will and a desire to compromise may be lacking, there is no shortage of proposed solutions to various aspects of state government's financial woes. In addition to a special commission on tax reform appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders, two reform groups have put forward suggested fixes to the tax system and budget process. And earlier this month, legislative leaders announced formation of a two-house committee charged with finding ways to make the system more efficient. Here's a look at some of the ideas being floated: • Shift more of the personal income tax...

Well, its over,we got the word today Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announce it, the Recession is "very likely over at this point." Great News Right? Well maybe not. Before you take out the champagne and invite your friends over for a party understand that there is much more to the story. Bernanke went on to say that we will have an under-performing economy well into next year "From a technical perspective the recession is very likely over," Bernanke said, cautioning that unemployment is likely to remain high. "It's still going to feel like a very weak economy for some...

(CNSNews.com) - Despite a still-lagging U.S. economy and rising unemployment rate, House Democrats announced late yesterday that they will seek a massive increase in federal income taxes to help pay for the national health-care reform proposal that President Obama is urging Congress to enact this summer. House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D.-N.Y.)revealed late Friday afternoon that House Democrats will seek to increase income taxes by $540 billion. The move, which had been discussed earlier in the week by House Democrats, broke in an Associated Press story that was published at 4:14 PM Eastern Daylight time on Friday afternoon...

California's gasoline taxes are 43 percent higher than the national average, according to a recent study by University of California and California State University economists. Since 1997, Californians have paid up to 60 cents more per gallon of gas than residents of other states. That is simply unacceptable. Major fuel consumers and employers in this state, like United Airlines, who rely heavily on affordable fuel prices, are being hit hard by these California-only fuel polices. What causes this disparity in fuel prices? It's simple: California prices are increasingly inflated by the state's policies, taxes and fees. These California-specific rules and...

<p>"At what point do we run out of money?" President Obama was asked in May. "Well, we are out of money now," he replied. That was when he projected the deficit to be $7 trillion over the next 10 years. Now his administration admits the number likely will reach $9 trillion. We sure are out of money -- and the true deficit number probably is at least another $1 trillion bigger.</p>

The Democrats in Congress are beginning to look like college freshmen with their first credit card. Now, like an observant parent, the American public is saying "enough already " as reflected in a Rasmussen poll survey of likely voters.

California Has Amassed A Mountain Of Debt By Dan Walters Aug. 12, 2009 What, one might ask, is the appropriate metaphor for California's convoluted budgetary situation? Would be it be Enron, which cooked its books to fool investors and lenders? Perhaps a Third World country whose rulers run up a mountain of debt while squandering revenues? Or both? Whatever it may be, years of irresponsibility by politicians and voters alike have left California with ongoing spending obligations that are nearly 50 percent higher than its ongoing revenues – roughly $110 billion a year in the former and $75 billion in...

What, one might ask, is the appropriate metaphor for California's convoluted budgetary situation? Would be it be Enron, which cooked its books to fool investors and lenders? Perhaps a Third World country whose rulers run up a mountain of debt while squandering revenues? Or both? Whatever it may be, years of irresponsibility by politicians and voters alike have left California with ongoing spending obligations that are nearly 50 percent higher than its ongoing revenues – roughly $110 billion a year in the former and $75 billion in the latter – and debts that would be daunting even were the economy...

At some point, the Great Recession will end. Newsweek even says it's already over. Whenever it happens, we will see that the downturn was but a minor blip in the long story of the economy. In the next chapter, abundance beckons -- for some. Advances in technology drive economic growth, and there is no sign that they are slackening. The American economy is likely to continue unabated on the upward path that began with the Industrial Revolution. No, the economic problems of the future will not be about growth but about something more nettlesome: the ineluctable increase in the number...

Thought you be interested in this roll call vote on Sen. Tom Coburn’s proposal to allow traded-in Cash-for-Clunkers cars to be used to assist charities and poor families. Here’s the text of the proposal. [Amendment, quickly: The clunkers, instead of being destroyed, could be donated to charitable organizations] Here's the breakdown

Top Democrat predicts extension of 'cash for clunkers' planTue Aug 4, 4:22 PM WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Democratic leader of the US Senate Harry Reid on Tuesday predicted that Congress would this week extend a wildly popular plan to entice Americans to trade in gas guzzling cars. The "Cash for Clunkers" plan, which offers drivers up to 4,500 dollars to replace obsolete autos with more fuel efficient models, exhausted its one billion dollar budget in a weeklong spree which boosted depressed car sales. Senate Majority leader Reid said after a meeting with President Barack Obama that despite congressional wrangling over...

Analysis: Some health care numbers don't tally By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer – Mon Aug 03 WASHINGTON – Some of President Barack Obama's health care numbers don't seem to add up. And that's complicating his efforts to pass his top domestic priority. Obama could be falling into the same trap that snagged George W. Bush when he was pushing private accounts for Social Security as part of his "ownership society" in 2005. Bush's claims that the proposal would help shore up Social Security's long-term finances were hard to document mathematically and wound up feeding greater public skepticism. Obama claims...

Few of President Obama’s 2008 campaign pledges were more definitive than his vow that anyone making less than $250,000 a year “will not see their taxes increase by a single dime” if he was elected. And he was right, very strictly speaking: It’s going to be many, many, many billions of dimes. Asked about raising taxes on the middle class on Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” White House economist Larry Summers wouldn’t repeat Mr. Obama’s pre-election promise. “It is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out no matter what,” Mr. Summers said—except, apparently, when his boss is...

WASHINGTON – The recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and other programs on the nation's plate and struggling to find money to pay the tab. The numbers could hardly be more stark: Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion. Other figures in an Associated Press analysis underscore the recession's impact: Individual income tax receipts are down 22 percent from a year ago....

California is just one of three states that require supermajority votes to enact state budgets, and while that constitutional provision has been in effect for nearly eight decades, only in the past quarter-century has it become a major political impediment. The state's socioeconomic evolution, term limits, gerrymandered legislative districts, volatility in the state's revenue and the concentration of fiscal power in Sacramento have made the budget process infinitely more complex and, in turn, turned the two-thirds budget vote, once a formality, into a major factor. Much of last month's machinations over overhauling the deficit-ridden budget stemmed from the legal requirement...

Top U.S. officials said on Sunday more steps may be needed to firm up economic recovery -- including extended jobless benefits -- and declined to rule out future tax increases to tame massive budget deficits. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the government needed to show the will to reverse deficits after the recovery, and would have to make some "hard choices" about whether this may include increasing tax revenues. "We have to bring them down to a level where the amount we're borrowing from the world is stable at a reasonable level," Geithner said...

To get the economy back on track, will President Barack Obama have to break his pledge not to raise taxes on 95 percent of Americans? In a “This Week” exclusive, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told me, "We’re going to have to do what’s necessary.” Geithner was clear that he believes a key component of economic recovery is deficit reduction. When I gave him several opportunities to rule out a middle class tax hike, he wouldn’t do it. “We have to bring these deficits down very dramatically,” Geithner told me. “And that’s going to require some very hard choices.”

New taxes to help address the long-term budget deficit cannot be ruled out, National Economic Council Director Larry Summers admitted Sunday. Summers said during an appearance on CBS that "it's never a good idea to absolutely rule things out no matter what" when it comes to the prospect of new taxes. [snip] President Obama's top economic adviser said that the efforts to restructure healthcare in the U.S. would be chief among its efforts to reduce the deficit over time, characterizing the administration's attempt for a deficit-neutral reform bill as historically responsible. "This is the most fiscally responsible approach to introducing...

started out like a song ... we knew we had a good thing going. And if I wanted too much, was that such a mistake? President Barack Obama’s answer to composer Stephen Sondheim’s question would be “yes”, were he the sort who readily admits error — which he most definitely is not.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said in an interview airing Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that it will take hard choices to lower the deficit "very dramatically." He said overhauling the health care system and lowering costs are keys to getting the deficit under control. Geithner was asked in the interview whether he would rule out new taxes. He said the country needs to understand the administration will do "what's necessary."

First CBO tells us that nationalizing health care won’t actually be “deficit-neutral,” as The One has long and insanely claimed, and now this. Everything I thought I knew about economics has been proven totally, er, true. Normally it’d be a moral victory that the Times is even reporting this, but come on. Was there anyone so naive as to think they wouldn’t end up being shaken down by a utopian liberal with a Democratic Congress to do his bidding? Besides Christopher Buckley, I mean. As these analysts recognize, taxing the rich has its limits both economically and politically, such that...

The IRS just released some interesting tax information -- the Top 1% of taxpayers is now paying more in taxes than the bottom 95%. Scott Hodge from the Tax Foundation created the chart nearby that graphs the new data. Perthaps the CD-10 candidates can advise at what higher rate do you tax the “rich” in order to make the tax code even more progressive and supposedly more “fair?” Once Obama and the Democrats in Congress get done with us, only politicians and public employees will be the rich. Yummm, pass the BBQ sauce. Who says turnabout isn’t fair play? Hmmm…DeSaulnier...

The Secretary of State's office has given the green light to begin gathering signatures for a ballot initiative to lower the vote requirement for passing a state budget or increasing taxes from two-thirds to a three-fifths supermajority. The man behind the initiative, Berkeley-based attorney and editor Robert Denham, says he figures that a three-fifths majority would prevent gridlock over the budget but still be palatable to voters wary of dropping the requirement to a simple majority. "I thought voters are more likely to sign off on something that doesn't make it too easy," said Denham, a Democrat. "That sort of...

Everywhere you look, states are being crunched by fiscal emergencies that range from painful to excruciating. California, which has been paying bills with IOUs, is now preparing to close state parks and furlough state employees -- which is what you have to do when your budget deficit is bigger than the entire budget of some states. It's not alone. "At least 39 states have imposed cuts that hurt vulnerable residents," trumpeted a recent report from the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. California, New York and Delaware have approved income-tax increases, and Pennsylvania and Illinois are considering doing likewise....

Thirty-one years after its overwhelming enactment, Proposition 13, the historic property tax limit measure, continues to generate two reactions – continuing high support among voters, especially those owning homes, and continuing efforts, redoubled during this period of budgetary angst, to undo it. Poll after poll of voters have demonstrated Proposition 13's enduring popularity, which is why those on the political left have never dared to frontally seek repeal. Just a few years ago, liberal groups placed on the ballot a measure that, among other things, would have modified Proposition 13's requirement of a two-thirds legislative vote to raise state taxes,...

Wow! Zell hammers Obama! Video Link

The volatility of California's tax revenue – booming one year, plummeting the next – plagues the state budget. The volatility, born of the state's reliance on personal income taxes from a relative handful of high-income Californians, is the underlying factor in revising the current state budget to close a whopping deficit. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislators are wrangling over how to apply the state's ultra-complex school finance law in an era of declining revenue. Democrats want guarantees that shortfalls in school financing will be fully restored in the years ahead, but Schwarzenegger is unwilling to provide restoration money beyond...

"Decrying a federal government he says is out of control, former Georgia Gov. and U.S. Sen. Zell Miller said Thursday that America is “spending like we’re Paris Hilton.” But the comparison to the blonde socialite might not be the worst offense in Miller’s litany of all that’s wrong with the country. Speaking to more than 1,000 conservative - overwhelmingly Republican - lawmakers from around the country, Miller said, “Today, we’re spending like we’re Paris Hilton, regulating like we’re Ralph Nader, nationalizing like we’re Hugo Chavez, printing money like we’re the Weimar Republic and taxing like we’re, well, the Democratic Congress.”

It’s an emergency, they tell us. We NEED it NOW, the Democrats insist. No time to mess around, it’s time to get serious Obama told us. If we don’t get Obamacare quick the world will topple around us we are assured. So what is the Senate doing instead of taking the time to consider these important issues? Instead of worrying about healthcare, the Senate is spending its time larding the bill billions of dollars in pork projects. As the Boston Globe reports, added to the bill is “billions of dollars for walking paths, streetlights, jungle gyms, and even farmers’ markets.”...

Here is video from last night's All-Star game where President Obama joined Fox announcer Joe Buck and analyst Tim McCarver in the booth for part of an inning. As they talked, Joe Buck said to Obama, "no bailout for the National League," referring to the National Leagues woes of not winning the All-Star game for the last 13 years, to which Obama replied, "We're out of money." As the old saying goes, "Many a truth are said in jest." Thanks to Obama, we are out of money. . . . . (Watch Video)

This is CRAZY!! http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/24863.html Our global competitors are laughing their a**es off. How are we supposed to get small businesses to hire and lead us out of recession when they face a more than 50% tax on every last dollar they earn?

Next year's elections are going to produce a political earthquake. That is because we currently suffer the most left-wing government in our nation's history. After just 6 months in office, the flower children that rule Washington in overwhelming numbers are already smashing through all records regarding federal taxes, spending, deficits, and debt. Obama and his ultra-left Democrats adopted a so-called stimulus bill raising spending a trillion dollars that never had a prayer of actually creating jobs and promoting long-term economic growth, because it was based entirely on old-fashioned, brain dead, proven to fail, Keynesian economics. Though we would have to...

Congressman Tim Bishop has been a Rubber Stamp for Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and the rest of the Washington elitists who want to tax and spend this nation to death. Some angry taxpayers had a little surprise for him at one of his "Town Hall" meetings on June 22, 2009.

More than a million small business owners and about two-thirds of the profits earned by American small businesses would be subject to a health care surtax that the House Weighs and Means Committee is set to unveil Tuesday, a taxpayer watchdog says. Ryan Ellis, director of tax policy for Americans for Tax Reform, told CNSNews.com he calculated that 1.09 million of 21.5 million small business owners would see a one- to three-percent surtax on their profits in order to fund the House of Representatives’ trillion-dollar health care reform bill. While only about five percent of small business owners would be...

The blue-ribbon commission charged with overhauling California's tax system is heading for an ideological clash that could stall any meaningful recommendations to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature. The commission, headed by Southern California businessman Gerald Parsky, was charged with reforming a revenue system that has been widely criticized for its volatile reliance on income taxes on high-income Californians and its disconnect from 21st century economic realities. Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders have said they hope tax reform would smooth out the boom-and-bust cycle in state budgets that has resulted in huge deficits. At Parsky's behest, the commission, which has been...