Tag Archives: taxes

Deficit Reduction, President Gets His Way

BY DOUG BADGER
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Congress and the President are on holiday, resting up for the next round of budget wars that will resume after Labor Day. The issues they will face when they return are familiar: the federal government is about to lose authority to do what it does best (or, at least, most naturally) – borrow and spend.

Absent a fresh appropriation of funds, government agencies will close October 1; and unless Congress agrees to raise the government’s credit card limit, Treasury will default on its debt at a yet-to-be-determined date in October or November.

The positions taken by the two parties also are familiar. The President wants a straight increase in the debt ceiling, while Republicans insist on pairing new borrowing with spending reductions. The President says that he will not negotiate with Republicans on this point. On appropriations, House Republicans favor steep cuts in domestic spending Continue reading →

August Is Here!

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

What issue will dominate August of 2013?

1. Will it be war?

In 1914, as Barbara Tuchman wrote in the Guns of August, war dominated the discussion, more specifically, the First World War. The Great War, as it was called until the Second World War, forever ushered in modernity, with all of its terrifying warts.

We were allies of the British in those wars, but in the War of 1812, they burned the Capitol building in August.

When I first started on Capitol Hill, war invaded August when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The Viet Nam War officially started in August when the Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Continue reading →

The Right Bet on the Future

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The Congressional Budget Office used dynamic scoring to predict how the immigration bill, now winding its way through Congress, would impact the deficit.

That must really piss off conservatives who have long demanded that the CBO use that scoring method (which looks beyond numbers and tries to predict future behavioral changes) to predict how tax cuts would actually bring in more revenue.

The Heritage Foundation, which has long been on the forefront of demanding that the CBO use dynamic scoring, released its own analysis a few weeks ago that came up with far different conclusions. Continue reading →

It’s Not the Crime, It’s the Cover-Up

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The three scandals currently on the table are: Benghazi, the IRS targeting conservative taxpayers, and the Department of Justice looking at the phone records of Associated Press reporters.

There is an old saying in Washington: “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up” that does the damage.

The Nixon Administration attempted to dismiss the June 17, 1972 break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex as “a third rate burglary” which it more-or-less was.

1972 was an election year and despite the wailing of Democrats about the seriousness of the campaign probably having ordered the break-in, Nixon beat Democratic Senator George McGovern 49 states to one that Fall. Continue reading →

Can Government ‘Fix’ the Economy?

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

There’s several great scenes in the classic ‘A Fish Called Wanda’ where Kevin Kline as the dim-witted narcissistic con-man gets riled up when someone calls him ‘stupid.’

Generally, we have found in life that we won’t follow the lead of someone who calls us ‘stupid’. On the other hand, we have also found that it is very difficult to get people to follow our lead or to even like us when we call them ‘stupid’.

Life just doesn’t lend itself to calling people ‘stupid’ and getting away with it.

Unless you are Nobel Prize-winning Paul Krugman who somehow has kept his job writing for the New York Times and his Nobel Prize despite having none of Continue reading →

Big Government vs. Small Government

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

When we find things that are better-written, more clear and to the point than anything we can write on a subject, we try to reprint it for your edification. Such is the case with most things Chuck Blahous writes. See for yourself:

Last week House Republicans, under the leadership of Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, unveiled their draft budget for the coming fiscal year. Senate Budget Committee Democrats also released their budget blueprint assembled by Chairman Patty Murray. Continue reading →

Tag Teaming Obama

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Don’t tell the Tea Party, but the tag team of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are currently mopping the floor with Barack Obama.

The president convincingly won a second term in November, but since that time, the congressional Republican leadership has outfoxed, outmaneuvered and plain out-strategized him on just about every issue. Continue reading →

Obama Has Overplayed His Hand

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

This ‘Dreaded Sequester’ will apparently only cut $42B out of this year’s fiscal budget. Not $85B as previously reported and feared.

That is according to CBO. That is also less than 1 penny out of every dollar the federal government spends this year. Even Joe Scarborough says so although Mika would disagree with him, of course.

Have you had to cut back a little more than 1 penny per dollar in your spending these past 4 years? Betcha have.

1 penny. Less than 1% of the budget this year. Continue reading →

Conflicting Interests

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The New York Times ran a story about a staff hire in Senator Reid’s office. It was your typical cynical report about the “revolving door,” in the world of politics. Here is an excerpt:

“Take what happened late last month as Washington geared up for more fights about taxing, spending, and the deficit. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, decided to bolster his staff’s expertise on taxes. Continue reading →

See…Seekwes…Sequestration.

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The latest projectile-sweat-producing event in our nation’s capital is the looming automatic cuts in the federal budget known as “sequestration.”

Sequestration is not a word we get to use every day in a sentence, most of us, but it is fun to say because we get to use the tip and the back of our tongues to say it.

According to Webster’s, sequestration is a 14th century word from the Latin sequesrare – to hand over to a trustee or some other third party. Today it is an Continue reading →

Minimum Sense

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

There are two ways to look at the proposal to increase the minimum wage put out by the President in his State of the Union Address.

There is the way that economists and small business owners look at it: Increasing the minimum wage makes it harder for businesses to hire workers.

Then there is the way that some on the left look at it: Only by increasing the minimum wage will you entice people off of welfare and into the workforce. Continue reading →

Healthcare Stats You Can Use

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

1% of the US population, about 3.1 million people, use 35% of all healthcare expenditures each year. The specific people in this number change each year due to death or recovery.
5% of the US population, about 15.5 million people, use 60% of all healthcare expenditures each year. The specific people in this number change each year due to death or recovery.
Many, if not a majority of these people are in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Healthcare now consumes 18% of GNP. It is expected to consume 20% of GDP by 2021.
Chronic disease such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and strokes account for most of our expenditures.
Anywhere from 35%-50% of all healthcare expenditures can be attributable to these four conditions. Continue reading →

Not a Long, Nor a Long-Lasting Speech

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

“The state of the Union,” the President reported last night, “is stronger.”

He said, to prove his point, we have created more new jobs, sold more American cars, bought less foreign oil, and are sending fewer soldiers into battle.

That is like saying (on the day pitchers and catchers officially reported to Spring Training sites) that a batter going 4-for-4 has raised his batting average by .100 percentage points, without pointing out he was batting .053 and is now batting .153. Continue reading →

The Business of Business

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

“The chief business of the American people is business.”

Calvin Coolidge said that to a group of newspaper editors in 1925, smack dab in the middle of the Roaring 20’s, a decade of brisk economic growth. It was also in the middle of a huge stock market bubble (a bubble which would collapse four years later).

Coolidge summarized perfectly both the Republican and the business sector’s approach to government. Get the government out of the way and let business take care of the people through greater prosperity. Continue reading →

When is ‘Compromising’ not ‘Compromising?

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

We have a serious problem in America today.

Many Americans on both ends of the political spectrum think ‘compromise’ is a 4-letter word. It is clearly not. There were 10 letters in it last time we counted.

Beyond that mere formality, the whole concept of ‘compromising’ is met with disdain and scorn by activists at both extreme ends of the political spectrum.

The rest of the nation? They think our elected leaders in Washington are flat-out ‘crazy’ for not cutting deals and fixing what ails us as a nation. 32% of them in North Carolina alone are now officially registering as ‘Not Democratic’ and ‘Not Republican’ as they sign up as Unaffiliated/Independent voters and that number is rising by 8% per year. What does that tell ya? Continue reading →

Greatest ‘Punt’ in History

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

No, it wasn’t the 79-yard punt by Duke punter Will Monday in the 2012 Belk Bowl in Charlotte, North Carolina, although that was pretty darned great, you gotta admit.

No, the greatest ‘punt’ of the recent college bowl season was performed collectively in a three-legged kick down the road by President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and House Speaker John Boehner on New Year’s Eve in Washington, D.C. in the Fiscal Cliff Bowl Sponsored by The AARP, Grover Norquist, and The American People. Continue reading →

Cliffhanger

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

New Year’s Day 2013. Football games? No. Parades? No. Hangover cure? No.

I spent the entire day watching the Chasing Classic Cars marathon on USA as background noise while focused on Twitter following the U.S. House Republicans wringing their hands over what to do about the Senate-passed bill to crawl back up the fiscal cliff.

Without getting into the weeds about things like (according to CNN.com) extending the excise tax carry-over on rum produced in Puerto Rico and the Continue reading →

Top 1% Pay Their Fair Share?

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

Support the move to replace our corporate and personal income tax code with a national consumption-based tax.

Why?

Because it will be far simpler than the current sclerotic byzantine income-based tax structure that has been in place since 1913. It will return the United States to the preferred tax revenue-generation method favored by our Founders who thought a tax on someone’s income could be capricious and ruinous to a person’s freedom and productivity.

They were right on the ‘capricious’ part. Continue reading →