Obama turned his call for middle-income tax breaks into law within a month of taking office, incorporating a $400-a-person tax credit for workers into the 2009 stimulus law. In late 2010, with the economy still weak and Republicans gaining political clout, Obama agreed to an $858 billion tax cut that extended all of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for two years.
“The tax policy has been substantially in the conservative direction whereas the rhetoric has gone in the exact opposite direction,” said Don Susswein, a tax aide to former Republican Senator Bob Dole who said he supported Obama in 2008.
[...] “The tax system is not hugely different from what it was in 2008,” said Leonard Burman, a professor at Syracuse University in New York who worked in the Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton. “The tax system is still too complicated, still unfair and still doesn’t raise enough money to pay for the government.”
The recession and Obama’s tax cuts pushed federal revenue as a share of the economy to a 60-year low. Income tax rates haven’t changed. The estate tax affects fewer people and at a lower rate than when Obama took office. Workers’ payroll taxes were reduced during 2011 and 2012.
Many of the major tax provisions of the 2010 health law haven’t taken effect. Tax credits to help people purchase health insurance begin in 2014 and tax increases on the wages and investment income of the highest earners start in 2013.
In fact, once Obama allows the Bush tax cuts to expire…and he will…the budget deficit miraculously becomes a fraction of what it was, even with healthcare reform. We’ll have a fairer tax system, more revenue for the government to pay its bills and service the existing debt, and after Afghanistan concludes, we could conceivably run a surplus, something Bush never did even though he cheated by running two wars “off the books,” a stunt Obama has been forthright enough not to try to pull.
Indeed, all we need is a little economic growth that provides jobs for the middle class again, and particularly our young. Employment levels for the 18-24 age group in America is about 54%, the lowest it has ever been, lower even than during the Vietnam era draft. College attendance probably accounts for another 5%, so the total percentage of our first time working pool that are currently un- or underemployed is about 40%.
And then people wonder why Occupy Wall Street is so pervasive and so angry.
What makes you think that he actually will let the tax cuts expire? He has not delivered on similar promises (and he hasn’t yet even promised that) yet.
Could you expand more on the statement that Bush ran wars “off the books” and Obama didn’t? Links or a longer explanation. My recollection is that both announced appropriations to fund those wars and both paid for them by deficit spending.
running a budget surplus would be the last thing we’d want the government to do right now. The private sector is heavily loaded down with debt and demand is relatively slack. The government is the only entity that can really spend money at the scale and in the directions needed. A surplus will only hurt the private sector and targeting that as a desirable outcome means the government either has to cut back spending (bad) or spend more but tax much more to still maintain a surplus (bad).
here’s one of those off the book wars on 0 watch and this only 1 of many in Africa.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/in-africa-us-troops-moving-slowly-against-joseph-kony-and-his-militia/2012/04/16/gIQAtwMKMT_story.html
So please I would like to know also and 0 will say anything he has to to retain his job of helping the elite finish off Main Street just like he did 08.
…participation rate rather than the employment rate (ratio of employment to population is lower). The percentage of that population segment enrolled in some form of higher education has got to be higher than 5%. BLS maintains that 68% of 2010 high school graduates went on to enrol in college, so unless you’ve got a very odd population distribution, a killer dropout rate or a very high percentage of the population enrolled in very short courses of instruction, 5% has got to be a low estimate, probably by a goodly bit.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
Bush’s Misleading budgets
The wars were funding under emergency appropriations bills: this served a two-fold purpose. Bush never had to worry about defending either war in the context of a budget negotiation while separating the funding to a stand-alone vote that he could hold potential rivals accountable for.
In the larger picture and in hindsight, it’s small beer: Bush’s deficit spending was staggering and now fully accounted for. At the time, however, it was not and in many instances the actual budget deficits for, say, 2003, were not actually revealed until say, 2005, when people had stopped paying attention.
I was calling to our attention the inherent dishonesty of the administration.
…a different statistic, which I’m having trouble locating off the cuff.
Your figure is accurate, but the statistic I noted was that, at any given time, only 20% or so of college-aged Americans actually attend college. This is the current statistic and is significantly down from the normal 30% or so.
(it’s probably on my blog somewhere because I made a point of writing about it. I can’t search from work because of firewall issues.)
It would mean we’ve gotten ourselves out of the corner we painted us into.
…in 2009 41% of those aged 18 to 24 were enrolled in college, an increase of five percentage points from 1999. source
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs