Campaign Like It’s 2010: Obama Doubles Down on Bush Tax Cuts
Perhaps student-loan rates weren’t sexy enough for campaign season. Perhaps the Obama campaign wanted to steer the focus away from this week’s ObamaCare barrage in the House. Perhaps the president needed fresh talking points for a week packed with multiple campaign events.
But around 8 a.m. this morning, the White House sent out an update to President Obama’s daily schedule, adding a statement in the East Room around lunchtime on extension of the Bush-era tax cuts — and rustling up his December 2010 fight that led to a two-year extension of the lower rates.
The Tax Relief, Unemployment Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 heralded the beginning of Obama’s refrain that the Bush tax cuts shouldn’t be continued for the upper-income brackets. That war of words culminated in a compromise temporary extension that was panned by both conservatives and liberals — sparking the legendary eight-hour-plus “Filibernie” on the Senate floor by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Now, just four months out from Election Day and nearly six months away from the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts, Obama is reviving that fight in an attempt to paint himself as the candidate who fights for the middle class in the face of millionaire Mitt Romney.
With rows of cheering supporters in front of him and behind him — middle-class families and workers who would benefit from extension of the rates, the White House explained — Obama turned the East Room into a campaign stop and continued the day giving interviews to regional anchors at the White House before heading to closed-door fundraisers at the Mandarin Oriental.
“I believe it’s time to let the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans — folks like myself — to expire,” Obama said to applause from his assembled admirers. “I might feel differently if we were still in surplus. But we’ve got this huge deficit, and everybody agrees that we need to do something about these deficits and these debts. So the money we’re spending on these tax cuts for the wealthy is a major driver of our deficit, a major contributor to our deficit, costing us a trillion dollars over the next decade.”
Vowing that the American people would side with him, the president challenged Congress to send extensions for all but the wealthy to his desk — and continue to debate tax cuts for the highest earners.
“And then next year, once the election is over, things have calmed down a little bit, based on what the American people have said and how they’ve spoken during that election, we’ll be in a good position to decide how to reform our entire tax code in a simple way that lowers rates and helps our economy grow, and brings down our deficit,” Obama said.
“I hope Congress will join me in doing the right thing,” he added from the bully pulpit.
Congress was in no mood to play these campaign games, though.
“President Obama’s demand to raise taxes on hardworking families and small businesses comes on the heels of the worst quarter for job growth in two years. The uncertainty that is plaguing our economy is a direct result of the president’s insistence on massive tax hikes that will further burden our job creators, already suffering under this administration’s failed economic policies,” said Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
He said that later this month House Republicans will counter the president’s latest push for the tax hike with a comprehensive tax reform package, and invited Obama “to join this bipartisan effort so we can get America back to work.”
“A number of prominent Congressional Democrats are opposed to the president’s call for a massive tax hike – even they know the toll that it will take on private sector job growth,” McCarthy said.
But Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who had been hoping to find middle ground by upping Obama’s tax-cut cut-off from $250,000 to $1 million, quickly backed down from their earlier push, with spokesmen promising that the legislators would be “team players” for the president.
Thanks!
Isn’t it ironic that Obama’s only remaining base of support is recipients of welfare payments, food stamps, and WIC payments, and at the same time complains because his campaign contributions are down.
It is ironic, and it’s good, but it’s not terribly surprising.
He’s a child of a very rarefied atmosphere, but he got nothing from it. Punahou was a college-prep school but he choomed his way through it. An incredible pity, because it’s arguably the best school in the Islands. Occidental, Columbia and Harvard were a lark, seeking out the most radical radicals he could pal around with.
The factual data upon which he bases his picture of “Reality” is as deep as a film of dried mouse pee, basking in a warm glow of Choom.
Still, (like Slick Willie is nonetheless a consummate politician) he is a masterful flim-flam man.
Flim-flam is really all he has. It’s what he is. I have a strong hunch that he will go down in history, 100 years from now, as something of a laughingstock.
“Isn’t it ironic that Obama’s only remaining base of support is recipients of welfare payments, food stamps, and WIC payments . . . ”
Well, he’s also got a lock on the marketing pros who over the years have brought us the “”Think System” for teaching our kids how to play band instruments, the purveyors of Rainmaking Techniques and Guaranteed Lightning Rods, specialists in Nigerian investment opportunities, and virtually all Green Energy Experts.
Obama and the Democrats seem to think that businesses exist in order to hire people and pay taxes. It never seems to occur to them that businesses, especially small businesses, have to actually make a profit in order to stay in business. No business simply absorbs taxes; taxes are always passed on to the end consumer. The market can only hold so much of this, especially if we’re competing against businesses in countries that have sane commercial tax policies. We already have the highest commercial income tax rate in the world, adding these other taxes on top will only kill more businesses.
Senor Obama is calling for a ONE Year extension of the Bush Tax cuts for those making under 250K. Wow, big spender! What about the Obamacare taxes?
Way back when, one of my profs explained one way to define “good” and “bad”.
A medieval nobleman on a horse in the town below the castle, looking down at the dirty, illiterate peasants in the street, sniffing and saying “Bad”.
The peasants looking up at the wealthy nobleman, dressed in silks and furs, snarling and saying “Evil”.
That’s Populism, pure and simple — jealousy with a vicious streak.
Add Frank Marshall Davis and Derrick Bell, a father who wasn’t and a mother who dumped him (and probably James Cone, via Jeremiah Wright) and you have Barack Obama.
I figure the odds are pretty good that Barack looks up at the nobleman and says, “It’s payback time.”
I wonder if your prof also explained that this was also the underlying theme of the “Communist Manifesto”. Establishment Republicans call it class warfare but the manifesto is far more specific, even in translation, it calls for provoking “hostilities” between the classes. While jealously may be an unfortunate part of our human nature, I hardly see Obama’s desperate calls to class warefare a coincidence. The head of the SEIU, with apparently unlimited access to the White House (until it was finally noted), literally uses the direct quote “Workers of the World Unite”. If Romney, like McCain, refuses to call it Socialism, we will lose and our Constitution is likely to be “interpreted” out of existence and replaced with this failed leftist leaflet that centralizes power into the hands of a few and leads to tyranny. An enormous and ever increasing part of our population will be voting for “their” handouts- if we cannot change this mindset of dependency, the strength of our nation will continue to dissolve.
As George Washington stated, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence- it is force. Like fire- it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master”
“The proposal I make today would extend these tax cuts for 97 percent of all small business owners in America. In other words, 97 percent of small businesses fall under the $250,000 threshold. …I want to give them relief. I want to give those 97 percent a sense of permanence.”
I’ve already explained in your other column how this claim is a lie. If conervatives and the GOP do not have enough brains to call thme out on this deliberate attempt to decieve the public, then I give up. I’m sick of them. They just accept the blatant lies in their talking points, and do nothing about it. I’m not going to explain this again. Hint! IRS form 1040-C. Repeat! IRS form 1040-C.
“Boehner also tailored the message seen throughout GOP reactions — that Obama wants to hike taxes on small businesses.”
I’m jusy going to add one thing. That’s not enough to say that! They will repeat the 97% lie a thousand times and people will fall for it and say, “well, it’s only 3%”. Call them out on the lie, you %&%&*%* MORONS! Make sure people know that the Obama people are TRYING TO DECEIVE THEM! Is that asking too much, for god’s sake! How stupid are these people??
Not exactly everyone who makes over $250,000 is a businessman who hires people and I don’t want to lose the election by being on the wrong side of middle class swing voters. Some hills are worth trying to take and some aren’t.
Obama In Denial
http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelgerson/2012/07/09/something
It is worth noting that while obozo, our economic dunce in chief, is talking about raising the taxes on those making more than $250,000 Steny Hoyer is on tape saying that this is a good starting point and that those increases may have to move to people making even less.
Soon the only ones that won’t be rich are those making less than $10,000 and still living with mommy and daddy while they celebrate birthday 40.
Schiff: European-Style Debt Crisis Will Strike US Monday, 09 Jul 2012 05:09 PM By Forrest Jones and John Bachman
http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/schiff-european-debt-crisis/2012/07/09/id/444825?s=al&promo_code=F6C5-1
Odd, but Obama says 97% of small business under the $250m number won’t be taxed. OK, so where is the border or cut off line? Vagueness is usually a cover for deceit and bad news, especially with the thugs in the WH.
Well he got his health care tax passed, but I don’t know many folks making over 200K per year who will not have health care. I imagine quite a few of the student loan crowd will be smacked with it though.
In a country in which the top 40% of earners pay somewhere near 90% of the federal income tax, and where between 40% and 50% of the public pay no federal incoome tax, it is laughable to say that the “rich are not paying their fair share”. obama’s “tax the rich” tax, the one he is pushing so hard for, would fund the government for 8 1/2 days. This is a jerk who once stated that he would raise taxes on the “rich” even if it meant LOWER revenue because it would be in the interest of “fairness”. I HEARD HIM SAY THIS when he was running for office in 2008.