The AMT fix should not be a partisan issue as you're making it out to be. Both parties held Congress and the White House for the last 20 years and NEITHER have done a damn thing about it. You could have just said fix it. They all are to blame.
The Democratic Party's big spenders, including its two remaining presidential candidates, always say they only plan to raise taxes on "the rich."
A few years ago, they talked about "the rich" being people who make more than $1 million a year. Later, Democrats dropped that to folks making half a million, then to $250,000, then to $100,000, then to $80,000.
Now, in the highly partisan $3 trillion budget blueprints for fiscal 2009 that congressional Democrats just passed, with only slight variations in the House and Senate bills, "the rich" turn out to be individuals making $31,850 a year, or $63,700 for married couples.
As critics of tax increases say, regardless of what the tax-and-spend crowd says, it's always the middle class that ends up paying the higher tax tab -- witness the alternative minimum tax. The AMT originally was supposed to hit only the very wealthy. Now, because of inflation and bracket-creep, the AMT is at a point where if it's not repealed, it will hit nearly everyone who pays any income tax at all.
Democrats claim their blueprints -- which are supposed to provide a guidepost for how much congressional committees can spend in their budget bills -- do repeal the AMT. But it pays for the repeal down the road by letting most of President Bush's tax cuts lapse in 2010.
This amounts to a whopping $683 billion tax increase on the middle class, according to House Budget Committee member U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. What Democrats are doing is getting rid of one huge middle class tax and then replacing it with another. Where's the sense in that?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., says it'll all be worth it because the increased spending -- about $20 billion more than even President Bush proposed -- will balance the budget by 2012 and boost spending on programs to benefit the middle class. But what he's really doing is growing the government by telling you that Washington can spend your dollars more efficiently than you can.
Do you really believe that?
Comments
The AMT fix should not be a partisan issue as you're making it out to be. Both parties held Congress and the White House for the last 20 years and NEITHER have done a damn thing about it. You could have just said fix it. They all are to blame.
Everyone on that Congressional Seat is FIRED!
If the Dems get voted in this year, the "rich" will be anyone with a job. So letting the tax cut expire amounts to a $683 billion tax increase, and the Dems say they don't want to increase taxes. They will hide behind the "we didnt raise taxes, we just did not extend the tax cuts" story line that they hope ignorant citizens will believe. I think I will let Mr. Reid go ahead and make my mortgage payment, car payment, insurance payments since he thinks that the government should boost programs to help me. Why not leave my money in my pocket, that will be help I will truly appreciate!!!
It seems reasonable to me if we begin by passing the Fair Tax law. It just might help ...you never know...All the other quick fixes have done nothing but creating more problems. ....who knows....I would just appreciate more than another band-aid when trying to fix a huge leak in the dam....
The Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff (ACES) conveniently ignores that Democrats wanted to expand medical coverage to children of families making up to $80,000 a year in some high cost of living cities & states. ACES threw an s fit over that! $80,000 a year was not considered "poor" enough for children to get subsidized health care as far as ACES was concerned. The Chronicle also rallied for an end to "the death tax". They want Paris Hilton to be able to inherit ALL HER money without an estate tax on billionaire heiresses. Nobody is ever "rich" as far as ACES is concerned whether that money is earned or inherited. Certainly the level that defines "rich" is negotiable. With the dollar losing value daily a million dollars a year won't be rich soon. Remember The Weimar Republic? No doubt someone will pipe up claiming we need "The Fair Tax". They say it is fair because it only taxes consumption. I say, implement a carbon tax. There are solutions to the economic & environmental crises in this country, but strong medicine is needed. The Federal Reserve's efforts to print money & inflate our way out of a deep recession is rife with pit falls - runaway inflation the biggest among them.
uh oh I just piped up Cain....mornin' :-)
Cain, I thought rich was $120,000 for a family of four. Like your fellow Dems, you say one thing one day, another thing the next day. You are everything to all people depending what the criteria of the day is. Hey Cain, check on the LTE by your hero Lowell, inflation is actually DOWN .1% from January to February, so if it is running away as you so state, then let it keep running in a downward direction. Once again, stating OPINION that is counter to demonstrable FACTS. Thanks for the ammo Cain.
A foolish consumption tax is no different then a foolish income tax in that it does as much harm as good for the nation. The Fair Tax is neither foolish nor harmful. It's well conceived and researched and laid out. It's explained in a book and explained in more detail in a follow up book. There's a web seminar available for the watching. Never has a tax concept been so well justified. Still, because of partisan politics, many choose the hole in the foot. Socialism is the carrot for the uninformed and uninspired. Only a concerted effort will save these people from themselves.
Wait a minute. Isn't this the same newspaper that criticized liberals for wanting to provide medical insurance subsidies to families who make up to $85K? Then the AC was criticizing liberals for calling them poor.
liberal faith, doesn't the first bell ring soon?
If you make $10,000 a year you think someone making $30,000 is rich. How can someone making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year determine +/-$100,000 a year for the entire family is rich? I guess if you work to get ahead, you are punished and have to pay for all of the people that didn't.....
Cain: "Certainly the level that defines "rich" is negotiable." Gee, Cain, that wasn't your story last week.LF, why is it hard for you liberal bedwetters to acknowledge that MAYBE, just POSSIBLY, not EVERYONE fits into your categories? Our family income is around the $85k level. We are NOT poor - we do not need the gov't to step in and mandate health care coverage and provide it "free," especially since "free" would involve our taxes going up far more than the "benefit" we would receive by getting hillarycare. We are ALSO not "rich." We make enough to get by, pay the bills, and try not to get deeper in debt. So, no you don't need to come back to my paycheck and try to suck out another several thousand dollars to pay for ANOTHER gov't program for lazy people who've decided not to take advantage of the opportunities that I have ALREADY provided to them by paying the taxes that fund their education, housing, food, healthcare, and every other dang thing. You know, you liberals just CAN'T be that stupid...you're being disingenuous... It's like when you say it's hypocritical to be pro-life and pro-death penalty, PRETENDING not to understand the difference between a baby and a murderer.
johnsmith, Go back & read what I wrote about $120,000 a year for a family of 4 being a reasonable place to start in discussing at what level a household is rich enough to be part of a tax increase on the rich. Furthermore, you vented your anger on me yesterday, saying you had been in Nicaragua a short while and knew something about the Sandinistas being "jack booted thugs" and you had a friend who would like to work me over with a baseball bat because I express my opinion on the subject. It just so happens that I made 3 trips to Nicaragua in 1984 and 1985 carrying medical supplies and protesting that war. I met and married my wife in Nicaragua. We have sent money to her folks in Nicaragua for the last 23 years. Despite a return to "democracy" in 1990 Nicaragua is still the poorest country in the hemisphere save Haiti. United States used the Contras terrorists for its own purpose and then conveniently fuggotabout Nicaragua after 1990 just like the U.S. forgot about Afghanistan after the Soviets were expelled. Last year former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega got elected as President of Nicaragua - part of a socialist movement sweeping Latin America at the ballot box. ~~~cont'd~~~
So EXCUSE ME for having an opinion about the Contra war in Nicaragua & The Augusta Chronicle's rabid right-wing editorials going back more than 25 years! Johnsmith, if I had credit card debt like you I wouldn't be on here "chatting" and threatening people who disagree with me. Today a headline on Bloomberg News reads "As Bear Stearns Implodes, (Warren) Spector Keeps $382 Million". The super rich and the decision making class have made out like bandits (EXACTLY like bandits) under the corrupt Bush-Cheney war regime. Tax payers (that's YOU, johnsmith) are picking up the tab for the bailout of Bear Stears while Warren Spector and other failed CEOs make off with megamillions. Why aren't those guys in jail? Why isn't the Bush justice department going after those who practice fraud and abuse? Because they have done exactly like Grover Norquist recommended. They have shrunk govt to the size it can be drowned in a bath tub. The FBI isn't doing its job. FEMA isn't doing its job. The SEC isn't doing its job. The EPA isn't doing its job. The FDA isn't doing its job. There is nearly zero consumer protection in this country - regarding either product safety or rips offs in the market place. JMO
These are the same Democrats complaining about how much Bush has been spending.
In this country, rich means having a net worth of at least $10 million, and that's the STARTING point. Most of us penny-pinching old farts should have learned better by now that living poor and voting rich doesn't mean you are a good Republican. It means you are sustaining a tradition of voting against your own best interests. Real Republicans reward their own for making mortgage loans they KNEW were bogus. This is socialism for the rich plain and simple. The real rich have always sucked a hind teat and made sure their politicians keep their noses in the trough. The so-called neocons are merely the new Poland-China sows on the block.
What are you smoking? Those ARMS were taken out by people who were in your economic bracket.
Venus de Milo had ARMS till she started biting her fingernails.
does anyone remember how these so called mortgages started? it was said that certain individuals couldn't get loans for homes so loan companies were forced to give certain types of loans. these people knew they couldn't afford the loans and some even gave incorrect information on their loan forms. now the people that could afford loans are having to bail out these companies and people that shouldn't have had loans, in the first place.
Cain, go back and buy a clue, and try to write something-just once-based on an actual fact or datum, rather than your "feelings." You don't get to use the police power of the state to force me to do things to help you "feel" better. The point-which you missed, b/c the voices in your head drown out all logic-is that the proper function of taxation is to fund necessary gov't operations. Coercing me into behaving the way you want, or punishing "the rich" to make things "fair" is NOT an appropriate function of taxation. My point, which your ignorance and arrogance don't allow you to understand, is that it's not a question of WHERE to set the income level at which we start punishing people for making money, because you don't know, you can't know, where that money is going after that person earns it. Not sure why you jumped over to the Sandinista issue today, since it's not relevant, but AGAIN, you fail to read what I wrote. The point is that when you sneer at the ACES for calling the Sandinistas "jack-booted thugs," you sneer at people who were killed by those, YES, jack-booted thugs, for the horrific crime of publicly disagreeing with the Sandinistas. I think-I can't say for sure-
that my friends who died at the hands of the Sandinistas would be very, very angry at bedwetter liberals who are now trying to rewrite history and say that anyone who criticised the Sandinistas was a right-wing reactionary who just doesn't understand how the real world works. Yes, I do believe that anyone who suffered torture at their hands and then got buried in an unmarked grave, if those people could somehow rewrite history and be alive today, your ignorant and ridiculous remarks would move them to a level of anger that might cause them to lose control and try to do bad things to you. Again, I'm not sure how that is relevant to TODAY's discussion of taxation, who the "rich" are and how best to punish them, but I am certainly accustomed to liberal "reasoning" leading all over the place as the liberal is rebutted and shown to be a fool on each successive issue. So I'm always pleased to take the opportunity to show, again, how inane your statements are, and how ridiculous and borderline psychopathing your reasoning is, on ANY issue.
And, Cain, my level of debt is not your concern, nor do I know why it would have any impact on my being allowed to post in this forum. The fact that I had to take out student loans in order to move from the poverty in which I was born, is certainly not a disqualification for commentary in a public forum. The fact that those same years of poverty left me with debts that I am PAYING, rather than declaring bankruptcy or trying to get my political reps to legislate me out of owing, would, I think, be more of a qualification for comment on this topic, rather than the contrary, as you seem to believe. But, then, it is always the liberal's way to try to shut up their opponents, since you never, ever win a point by citing facts, logic, or historical precedent.
Last comment for Cain and his loony bedfellows: quit citing government bailouts of financial firms, government handouts to large corporations, "welfare for the rich" programs and the like, as some sort of rebuttal for conservative opposition to dependency-inducing welfare programs for low-income people. YOU say that "conservatives favor the rich." I am sorry to inform you of the tragic fact that your assertion of something as a fact does not make it a fact. Conservatives do NOT believe that the government has any business bailing out Bear Stearns. We didn't think that the government had any business bailing out Chrysler, or any of the other gov't bailouts since then. To the extent that a politician or pundit DOES support such an action, he or she is not a conservative. That's it. You liberals, if you ever want to convince others that you're not just a bunch of emotion-driven, illogical bedwetters, need to argue every now and then against the actual positions that your opponents take. You will wear yourselves out if you continue to erect the straw men that you then proceed to attack, and I'm not sure what your actual goal is, but I doubt that you're making progress...
If I ran my household the way goverment runs this country I'd have to declare bankruptcy, yet the federal government continues blindly onward spending as it sees fit. And that's a criticism of both parties, not just one or the other!
johnsmith, I brought up the Sandinista issue again because U posted yesterday that U had friends who wanted to "teach me a lesson" or "beat some sense into my head with a baseball bat." Those are angry & threatening words. U don't LIKE me expressing my opinion & you show that day after day. U're not complaining about the federal reserve inflating money & making the dollar's value drop by half during Bush's tenure. U don't think that $12 billion borrowed EVERY MONTH to finance the war in Iraq has SOME negative effect on the U.S. economy? Who pays for this, johnsmith? We can't go on borrowing & spending without paying the piper. So taxes are going to be raised! Get used to the idea. U are welcome to vent your anger & threaten those who disagree with you all U want - my point is that since U yourself told us U are in deep credit card debt - maybe U need to be WORKING instead of venting & chatting. JMO. U obviously have issues with dealing with your anger. If this is your therapy so be it. BTW, I still have pictures of a Contra terrorist forcing a Nicaraguan campesino to dig his own grave & then cutting the man throat. U.S.-backed death squads were in El Salvador. U.S.-backed Contras threatened govt heath & day care workers in Nicaragua & volunteers like my wife who taught compesinos how to read in the mountains. U.S.-trained Contra terrorists killed American volunteer Ben Linder for constructing a small hydroelectric project to help poor villagers and farmers.
JRHC is an idiot for thinking left-wing radicals in South and Central America are any better than right-wing radicals.
No, Cain, that's not what I said.. Maybe you need Hooked on Phonics, or Sylvan could help you with your illiteracy...it must be crippling for you, assuming that you are gainfully employed. I was talking about dead people. Unless you believe in some wacked-out cult OTHER than the modern Democratic Party, you cannot interpret their hypothetical desires as a "threat." So, you're either a loony or an idiot, though I'm not sure that we HAVE to choose, as you may well be a loony idiot. My point, the one you missed on purpose so that you could get all puffed up with righteous indignation, is that you portrayed the Nicaragua Sandinista situation as a good vs. evil conflict, stating that ACES were reactionary and stupid to comment negatively on those fine people, the Sandinistas. I do not doubt that Contras were guilty of horrific acts; there were horrible people in that movement. That does NOT excuse the Sandinistas, whom you portrayed as being somehow victimized. And PLEASE don't cite Ortega's election last year as some sort of vindication of the Sandinistas. You yourself call (elected) bush a "War Criminal" along with (elected) Cheney, etc. Try the truth for once, it'd be refreshing.
I would reiterate that you brought up the Sandinista issue YESTERDAY when it was irrelevant, and also TODAY when it was irrelevant. The fact that you spewed your ignorance and rolled around in it like a dog in stink, and that I replied to you and rebutted your ridiculous assertions yesterday, STILL does not make that conversation germane to today's discussion of your plans to manipulate the tax code in order to punish people for whom you feel hatred and unreasoning envy. You really need help, Cain. And you know what? I'm done with you. We've been down this road waaaaaaay too many times, and you simply are not worth it. You and Rose need to go off in a corner and swap tinfoil hats, because your MO is irritating to the point that it is no longer even ENTERTAINING to debate you. Getting a glimpse of your mind is like a trip thru a sewer in a glass-bottom boat, and I think that I will deprive myself of the "pleasure" in future, and leave it to a mentally challenged 10-yr-old to rebut your feeble claims, if such a child can be found who will not find the challenge beneath him or her. Find a fact sometime, somewhere, and I'll listen to it. Til then, have a nice delusion...
Shame on you, Mike Ryans, for not during research on which Party has raised taxes the most and doubled the national debt. From Eisenhower to Bush II, the Republicans have taxed us more than the Democrats. Even Reagan, you all hero, raised taxes twice and they were big raises. Reagan did cut the income tax percentages from 60 to 34.
Shame on you, Mike Ryans, for not during research on which Party has raised taxes the most and doubled the national debt. From Eisenhower to Bush II, the Republicans have taxed us more than the Democrats. Even Reagan, you all hero, raised taxes twice and they were big raises. Reagan did cut the income tax percentages from 60 to 34.
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