Obama to Seek New Payroll Tax Cut for Small Businesses

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...memo-says.html

President Barack Obama will propose cutting payroll taxes for small businesses as part of a more than $300 billion plan to re-ignite the economy and spur hiring, according to an administration memo obtained by Bloomberg News.
The business tax cut will be part of a package of measures Obama will lay out in a speech to Congress tonight, along with assistance for the long-term unemployed, spending for building roads and bridges and repairing schools, and aid to states to keep teachers and emergency workers on the job.
Obama’s advisers also have discussed seeking a deeper cut in the payroll tax for workers, to three percentage points from the temporary two-point cut in effect now, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
Obama would pay for the additional spending by closing corporate tax loopholes and raising taxes on high-income earners. Next week, he’ll send a plan on how to offset the spending to the special 12-member congressional committee charged with coming up with $1.5 trillion in deficit cuts.
With his address tonight to a rare joint session of Congress on jobs, the top concern of voters as the 2012 election campaign gets under way, Obama is seeking to frame choices for voters as much as present a plan for lawmakers.
Republican Resistance
He’ll be proposing his latest stimulus plan in the House chamber, where the Republican majority has signaled opposition to new spending. As job growth has stalled and the unemployment rate hovers above 9 percent, Obama’s job-approval ratings are scraping new lows as public doubts about his stewardship of the economy rise.
“The president has had a difficult summer,” said Democratic political consultant Tad Devine, a senior strategist for the Al Gore and John Kerry presidential campaigns. “All of the polling is heading in the wrong direction. He needs a circuit breaker.”

Article continued on link at top of page.

AP sources: Obama to seek deeper payroll tax cuts as part of nearly $450 billion jobs plan. -RAS

Seeking to boost a slumping economy along with his hopes for re-election, President Obama is unveiling his $450 billion jobs plan Thursday night in a highly-anticipated speech to a joint session of Congress.
The American Jobs Act contains a blend of infrastructure spending, tax relief, unemployment assistance and other aid. All the proposals are paid for with spending cuts although the president isn’t expected to detail them until next week.
“There should be nothing controversial about this piece of legislation,” Obama said in excerpts released by the White House ahead of his speech. “Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans – including many who sit here tonight."

“The purpose of the American Jobs Act is simple: to put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of those who are working,” he said.
Obama is expected to speak for up to 45 minutes, beginning at 7 p.m. ET.
In the excerpts, Obama calls on Congress to "stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy."
Obama's plan calls for increasing and extending a payroll tax cut for workers that goes to Social Security, while providing the tax cut to employers, too.
Top Democrats who have spoken to the president about the speech say he wants to convey a deeps sense of urgency about the economy and plans to try and back Republicans into a corner.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...#ixzz1XPAFDLm1

By Tina Dupuy

There was a 90 percent top marginal tax rate under President Dwight Eisenhower. Ronald Reagan raised taxes nearly every year he was in office and still managed to quadruple the national debt. Teddy Roosevelt was an anti-business trust-buster who snatched Yosemite away from private profits. Gerald Ford ended a long pointless war in Vietnam even though pontificators like Pat Buchanan claim we could have won…eventually. George W. Bush bailed out the banks and the auto industry. I won’t even utter the names Herbert Hoover or Richard Nixon (Republicans sure won’t).

Historians agree the best Republican President was also the first: Abraham Lincoln. Who’s second runner up? Which President has represented Republican values best? Easy. President Barack Obama.

First off – his signature legislative accomplishment was to implement a Republican/Heritage Foundation idea from 1989. Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans reads, "[N]either the federal government nor any state requires all households to protect themselves from the potentially catastrophic costs of a serious accident or illness. Under the Heritage plan, there would be such a requirement...A mandate on households certainly would force those with adequate means to obtain insurance protection."

The Heritage Foundation has since recanted and even filed friend-of-the-court briefs against the mandate. This is only after an alleged Democrat was for it. There’s been a pattern of this partisanship before policy since Obama was sworn in.

But if you ignore the misplaced (and often misspelled) vehemence against the first African-American president as a communist/socialist/Marxist/bad “ist” du jour and instead just look at the policy – we have a stellar Republican in the Oval Office.

Obama renewed the Bush Tax Cuts. Republicans love those tax cuts even more than they love being against something once Obama has signed it. In fact the President hasn't raised taxes at all – just like Republicans say they won’t (see: “Read my lips – no new taxes.”). The only tax he’s raised is on smokers. Obama increased the tax on cigarettes even though he’s an admitted (reformed) smoker. But even that is ideal in a Republican hypocrite kind of way (see: too many anti-gay Republicans in gay sex scandals to list).

And on top of the Bush Tax Cuts - Obama cut even more taxes for 95 percent of Americans.

Plus, he’s cut the size of government! Yes. Regardless of all those email forwards your kooky great-aunt sends you from her decades-old AOL account – the public work force has been reduced under an Obama presidency – therefore “shrinking the size of government.” The reason we had no net jobs in August is because the public sector (i.e., the government) lost jobs due to cuts. The private sector gained the exact amount resulting in a push.

President Obama has managed to quell all anti-war protests and even start a new conflict. That is surely to be the envy of any Republican president who’s ever served.

Guantanamo Bay? Still open. Osama bin Laden? Shot in the head.

Talk about getting 98 percent of what they wanted. If the GOP didn’t have to change their goal post so Obama could never score in their view – Republicans could be dumping Gatorade on Rush Limbaugh by now.

How about the GOP-despised EPA? You know, that “job-killing” governmental regulatory agency GOP candidates Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Ron Paul all promise will go dark when they become president? That agency’s pinko plot for cleaner air estimated to stop tens of thousands of premature deaths? Gone. And guess who said this about it: “I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.” Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH)? Maybe Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA)? Some tea party speaker at some quarter-full rally somewhere? Who said it? The socialist Nazi radical – current occupant of the White House - Barack Hussein Obama! He’s a wonderful Republican.

The right-wing says Obama is left of Lenin – in reality he’s barely left of Goldwater.

What does this mean? It means we currently have eight GOP candidates running against what’s essentially a GOP incumbent. It means we have eight mediocre Republican candidates running against the best Republican president since Lincoln. The safe bet is that a Republican will win the next election.

To be clear, I’m not a Republican – but I have undeniably voted for one.

In the ‘80s there were Reagan Democrats. I’ll solve this whole thing by just calling myself an Obama Democrat.

http://crooksandliars.com/tina-dupuy...sident-lincoln

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Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Yep, puke-boy is a repuke. Fer sure. So anybody that still calls him the names that repukes use doesn't know how to read and comprehend. That's because their ideology controls them. Facts??? Who cares! I know what I believe, they say.

Fox and other right-wing sources tells them what to believe. That's good enough for them.

I understand where you are coming from Atypical. Im disappointed in President Obama's lack of boldness but clearly not as much as you. I do believe he has missed many opportunities to educate the American people on the rightness of many of the Democratic point of view.

That's because he is NOT a progressive. Doesn't believe in those principles. He has shown that many, many times.

See my response above where I show him as a closet repuke.

I dont agree that he is a closet "repuke", but i understand and appreciate your argument.

Would you have said the same about Bill Clinton during his terms in office?

You might not agree with this opinion piece, but i thought it might make for an interesting discussion.

Posted at 11:55 PM ET, 09/08/2011
Obama goes big — and should stay big
By E.J. Dionne Jr.

The best part of President Obama’s speech tonight was his hammering over and over the need to pass “this bill,” meaning his bill to boost the economy. It wasn’t, “we can work this out,” or, “I look forward to talking to Speaker Boehner.” No, Obama said flatly that the economy is in crisis, that action is needed right now, and that he had put together a recipe whose ingredients include many ideas Republicans had supported in the past. He didn’t say it explicitly, but he might as well have said to the Republicans, “So what’s your problem?”

I broadly agree with what my colleagues Greg Sargent, Harold Meyerson and Gene Robertson have already said about this speech. It will obviously come as a relief to progressives (even if some were complaining tonight about those future cuts in Medicare), and I have not seen AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka smiling so broadly in a long time.

The size matters. At $447 billion over the next year, as Harold pointed out, the bill will spend out at “a rate higher than the $787-billion-over-two-years stimulus that Congress enacted in 2009.” With growth stalling and unemployment still over 9 percent, a jolt of at least that size is necessary.

The heavy emphasis on tax cuts should make it harder for Republicans to reject it, particularly the payroll tax that is most helpful to middle- and lower-income workers. Obama’s best jab at the Republicans went like this: “I know that some of you have sworn oaths to never raise any taxes on anyone for as long as you live. Now is not the time to carve out an exception and raise middle-class taxes, which is why you should pass this bill right away.”

I was watching Speaker John Boehner while Obama said this. He wore a wan smile that suggested he appreciated the line the way an athlete appreciates a good play by the opposing team. But he didn’t applaud.

A couple of the smaller, though still significant, items that were good to see in the proposal: Obama finally endorsed help for local governments to prevent teacher layoffs, money I’m told could also be applied to police and other first responders. It totaled $35 billion. We have lost something over 600,000 government jobs because of cutbacks, particularly at the local level. That is a real drag on the economy. The $25-billion school repair program is a good idea, not only because Obama was right to suggest that the shape a school is in tells kids what we think of education -- if schooling is so important, why is the paint peeling and why are the walls crumbling? -- but also because this will spend out quickly. You don’t need a lot of permits and reviews to repair an existing building. And if Obama can pull it off (and we need to know more details), the plan to refinance what I understand will be 2 to 3 million mortgages would help a lot of families and pour some more consumer spending into the marketplace. And that won’t require any legislation.

After months of being a negotiator, Obama finally looked like a president. He has had a real problem in recent months with his standing in the polls on strength and leadership. The speech was a step in the right direction.

And the worst thing for a president is to have an economy faltering and to just keep promising that things will get better. (It did not work well for Herbert Hoover.) Obama finally admitted that the problem was big, he offered a solution of an appropriate size, and he can now say several hundred more times that Congress needs to pass his bill. Finally, he seems ready to go on the offensive not just for his re-election but for a necessary policy. And if Congress balks or cuts it way back, the argument will be exactly the opposite of the one that occurred after the stimulus bill: Obama can argue that he offered a plan that would have worked and that Congress neutered it.

But there is the rub. This speech won’t solve Obama’s problems. Only a persistent, disciplined and focused effort to advance this proposal and the ideas behind it can begin to do that. And to put it charitably, follow-through has not always been this administration’s long suit. Still, the nature of this speech suggests Obama knows that what he had been doing wasn’t working. That’s a good sign.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Havakasha

I dont agree that he is a closet "repuke", but i understand and appreciate your argument.

Would you have said the same about Bill Clinton during his terms in office?

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Essentially, yes, due to his free trade stands, his advisors who were Wall Street (Rubin, etc), and his 'financial' and welfare 'reforms'. He repealed many useful regulations, and said the repeal of a certain regulation concerning banks and their activities was the worst mistake he made in office.

I hear you. I quess this is an argument over semantics. There are CLEARLY significant differences between President Obama, and former President Clinton, and the Republicans in Congress today.

If you haven't seen Paul Krugman's take on President Obama's jobs plan, it's worth reading:


Krugman:
"First things first: I was favorably surprised by the new Obama jobs plan, which is significantly bolder and better than I expected. It’s not nearly as bold as the plan I’d want in an ideal world. But if it actually became law, it would probably make a significant dent in unemployment."
The reason Krugman was favorably surprised is that the proposal was 50% larger than early reports: $450 billion, including more spending than early leaks suggested as well as a bigger temporary tax cut for the middle-class. The big problem? Republicans:

"Of course, it isn’t likely to become law, thanks to G.O.P. opposition. Nor is anything else likely tohappen that will do much to help the 14 million Americans out of work. And that is both a tragedy and an outrage."
Or to put it more bluntly:

"So, at this point, leading Republicans are basically against anything that might help the unemployed."
But even though it may be an impossible task for President Obama to get Republicans to do the right thing, at least he's put forward a plan to change the conversation from the dreary talk of deficits and towards the important challenge of creating jobs now:

"The good news in all this is that by going bigger and bolder than expected, Mr. Obama may finallyhave set the stage for a political debate about job creation. For, in the end, nothing will be done until the American people demand action."
Even if President Obama's plan isn't perfect, it would do a lot of good. And it gives him, congressional Democrats, and people like you and me something to rally around and something to push for.

Odds are, Republicans will turn their backs. But the only chance we have of getting something done is to demand that they take action. President Obama's speech last night was the beginning of that effort. And it can't be the end.

Eugene Robinson at Washington Post


"The measures Obama proposed are eminently reasonable. Who could argue with repairing the nation’s infrastructure, modernizing our children’s schools or providing jobs for brave returning veterans? The program is full of tons of GOP-friendly tax cuts, and it will be entertaining to watch Republicans twist themselves into pretzels to reject so many of their own ideas. But reject them they surely will. The party’s campaign message for 2012 is that Obama is always wrong about everything. At this point, does anyone expect John Boehner and Mitch McConnell to say, “Great ideas, Mr. President, we’ll get all this stuff right through.”

Senate Republicans will threaten to filibuster and House Republicans will just say no. Then what? “We are not going to be overly concerned about their initial answer,” a senior administration official said in an interview before the speech. “We’re not going to say, ‘Okay, we’re going back to the drawing board.’ We are going to make the case for this.”

The senior official said the president’s package, which will cost $447 billion, should create between 1.5 million and 2 million jobs and perhaps boost GDP by 2 percentage points. Those sound like pretty generous estimates to me. Even if they aren’t, by Election Day the economy would hardly be roaring. Unemployment would be lower, but still painfully high. Conditions still wouldn’t be ideal for an incumbent president seeking reelection."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Havakasha

I dont agree that he is a closet "repuke", but i understand and appreciate your argument.

Would you have said the same about Bill Clinton during his terms in office?

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Well, is he or is he not a "closet repuke"? I'm with Hava-gafa-kasha on this one. lol.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Havakasha

I hear you. I quess this is an argument over semantics. There are CLEARLY significant differences between President Obama, and former President Clinton, and the Republicans in Congress today.

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"Semantics"? I think you're missing the mark. Here's a breifer, and I'm being polite about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_system

These folks certainly don't believe Obama is a "closet repuke" lol.

http://commieblaster.com/index.html

Watch the Soros clip - Hava-gafa-kasha's favorite. Now I see why you hate Glenn Beck and Fox News.