Free Republic

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story gave the incorrect percent of the public that wants tax breaks across all income levels made permanent. Eighteen percent polled support the position taken by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.As President Obama navigates a choppy economy in his reelection bid, he can rely on one comforting fact: Americans continue to strongly embrace his opposition to extending tax breaks for those earning more than $250,000 a year.A new United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll shows that only 26 percent of the public wants to see all of the tax breaks created during the...

Senate Democratic leaders are politically paralyzed on how to proceed on the Bush-era tax rates. With five months to go before the election, President Obama and key congressional Democrats remain at odds on whether the threshold for extending the George W. Bush-era rates for families should be $250,000 per year or $1 million annually. Obama backs the former while most Democratic leaders, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), support the higher threshold. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has no immediate plans to advance a bill allowing Bush-era tax rates for the wealthy to...

Yesterday, Bill Clinton got into hot water by making the radical suggestion that having a massive tax hike in a recessionary environment might not be such a great idea. Clinton walked that back later in the day after other Democrats attacked him and questioned his motives for, er, making economic sense. Those critics might be turning their guns on Barack Obama's first Director of the National Economic Council and a key architect of Obama's economic policies, who said the same thing earlier today on MSNBC's Morning Joe: Lawrence Summers said Wednesday that Congress should temporarily extend Bush-era tax cuts, making...

Via Mediaite. In case you're keeping score, here's where the Democratic brain trust is on tax cuts. The White House wants them extended for those making less than $250,000 per year; Nancy Pelosi wants them extended for those making less than $1 million per year (yes, even Pelosi is more concerned about small businesses than O is); and now O's Democratic predecessor is calling for a new temporary across-the-board extension to maximize the country’s chances at growth.No wonder Team Romney has a Clinton fan page up on their site. Good lord: "They will probably have to put everything off until...

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi just pulled her caucus well to the right of President Obama, as she dramatically broadened the scope of her proposal for extending the Bush-era tax cuts. The White House, since Obama took office, has called for those tax rates to be extended only for households making less than $250,000 a year. The president wants the rates to expire for everybody else. But Pelosi, in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, upped that threshold to $1 million. She urged Boehner to schedule a vote "as early as next week" to extend the "middle-income tax cuts"...

Democrats have been having a field day with the cry of “tax cuts for the rich” — for which Republicans seem to have no reply. This is especially surprising, because Democrats made the same arguments back in the 1920s, and the Republicans then not only had a reply, but one that eventually carried the day, when the top tax rate was brought down from 73 percent to 24 percent. What was the difference then? The biggest difference is that Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon took the trouble to articulate the case for lower tax rates, in articles that appeared...

<p>New York (CNNMoney) – Former President George W. Bush said Tuesday he wishes his name wasn't so firmly attached to one of his administration's signature pieces of legislation - the broad-based tax cuts set to expire at the end of this year.</p>

The United States is now, officially, the worst place to do business in the developed world. On Sunday, Japan lowered its corporate tax rate in the hopes of luring business to its shores, handing the title of highest tax rate to the Land of the Free. The market reaction on Monday will tell whether money will begin flowing away from us and toward the more business-friendly Asian country. Japan’s combined corporate tax rate went down from 39.8 percent to 36.8 percent on its way to 34.5 percent within a few years. The U.S. federal rate is 35 percent and the...

Some years ago none other than our own governor, Jerry Brown, advocated a flat federal income tax. Imagine that. And it was, Brown said, to be a 13-percent tax. One tax rate for every income earner. And a relatively low rate, at that. That was then. Today Brown has changed, it would appear. Like a chameleon, . . .

The last thing Democrats and other tax-and-spenders want to do is to cut taxes. Oh woe are they if tax cutters have their way. Where will they get money to spend if taxes are cut? Of course, this is short-sighted as well as greedy. Ask Art Laffer. . . Or, ask John Kennedy. Yeah, that John Kennedy. . .

In mid-February, during the run-up to the extension of the two percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax to year’s end, the White House, using garbled language sadly not unusual for this bunch, claimed that: Currently, 160 million Americans benefit for the tax relief that’s set to expire at the end of the month. The typical family saves about $40 with every paycheck. Neither statement, even after grammatical correction, is anywhere close to being true. We can add both to the pile of falsehoods which will be as thick as a major metro area phone book by the time...

OK, Since it is the Christmas season and miracles happen, here is my hope for the Congress in February after this 2 month fiasco is over. They will put a message around the fact that if "payroll tax cuts/holidays" are good for the economy, how much better would across the board tax cuts work. They have two months to get their act together (again, this is the season of miracles) and take the fight forward through November. Quite frankly you could see this coming, they should have been smart enough to wait until tomorrow afternoon the 23rd and let it...

Republicans offered a debt reduction blueprint that includes meaningful tax reform, needed spending cuts, and at least $300 Billion in increased federal revenue -- the piece of the puzzle the Left relentlessly focuses on. Yet Democrats just aren't interested:

GOP May Block Payroll Tax Cut Extension That Obama Claims Could Save Up To 1 Million Jobs Zeke Miller Aug. 22, 2011, 9:32 AM The Associated Press reports that congressional Republicans are considering allowing the payroll tax cut to expire at the end of the year — a move President Barack Obama says could cost up to 1 million jobs. The tax, which funds Social Security, now stands at 4.2 percent for employees for 2011 — down from 6.2 percent — and GOP lawmakers, worried by rising deficits and the nation's booming debt, are gearing up to block extending the...

I have been reading about fiscal policy under Ronald Reagan in my father's splendid book, Presidential Economics. What I have learned or re-learned is that Reagan was confronted with a giant problem in his 1980 campaign. The problem was budget deficits from the Johnson/Nixon/Ford/Carter years along with high inflation and a stubbornly high unemployment rate. The conventional economic advice called for raising taxes or monetary restraint to lower the inflation. But the problem there was that those measures would almost surely also generate higher unemployment. Along came what my father calls "the economics of joy," which was supply-side economics. This...

EXETER, N.H. - Texas Governor Rick Perry has telephoned influential Republicans in early-voting New Hampshire and Iowa in recent days as he weighs whether to enter the race for the GOP presidential nomination. “He was looking for my thoughts in terms of what the presidential field looked like and what might happen if someone came in and shook things up a little bit,’’ New Hampshire Senate President Peter Bragdon said yesterday.... The conservative Texan also called several GOP leaders in Iowa, which will hold the first contest in next year’s GOP presidential race. Among those contacted, Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds.......

"HERETIC!!!" That is what leftwingers will be screaming at their computer monitors when they read The New Republic article by Ruy Teixeira in which he praises President Barack Obama for agreeing to extend the Bush tax cuts which are so hated by liberals. Even worse, he claims that the Bush tax cuts extension will improve the economy to the extent that they could improve Obama's re-election chances. Well, there are a lot of other factors at play which will serve to keep the economy in its current doldrums but what Teixeira specifically says about the Bush tax cuts are enough...

Democrats in the House have little relevance in the 112th Session of Congress. The Republicans have a large enough majority to pass any bill they desire, as long as it passes muster within their caucus. Other than using a discharge petition, Democrats can’t even get a bill to the floor without GOP cooperation, and once there, can’t get one passed without significant Republican support. Boehner has allowed Democrats to bring a few bills to the floor already just to make a point about their irrelevance by seeing their proposals go down in flames in full floor votes.However, there is functional...

It's kind of fun to watch former MSM "reporters" turn into totally-out, liberal partisans once they leave their "reporting" gigs. Take Bob Franken. For years a big-time national correspondent for CNN, the network let him go in 2007. Franken is now free to let his liberal freak flag fly. Witness Bob on MSNBC this evening. Commenting on Tim Pawlenty's tax-cut proposal, Franken fulminated that the former Minnesota governor is planning nothing less [cue spooky music] than to lead an "oligarchy" in which the rich would be "buying back the government." Franken also took a scatalogical shot at "trickle-down" economics. View...

One Michigan public school superintendent questioned whether Gov. Snyder’s business tax cut will improve the economy. Charlie Glaes, superintendent of Vicksburg Community Schools made the statement last week in the Kalamazoo Gazette in a story about the cuts to public schools proposed by the governor. “The governor says we must make decisions based on data. What data is he using?” Glaes said in the Kalamazoo Gazette. “Tax cuts under Gov. Engler didn’t work.” Under Engler there were cuts to the income tax and the state’s main business income tax in 1993, 1994 and 1999. And during the era, a key...