• Tag Archives budget

  • Taxes: President Obama’s budget would hit middle class

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    President Barack Obama rarely misses a chance to call on upper-income Americans to pay more taxes.

    But his annual budget is doing more to target middle-class taxpayers than any of his previous proposals, calling for caps on deductions, changes in the way some tax benefits are calculated and a big hike in cigarette taxes — all proposals that would make middle-class Americans pay more.

    Obama’s budget is still being picked apart on Capitol Hill, but his openness to an even wider range of tax increases will frame the coming fiscal debates.

    “It’s a new paradigm,” said Bob Williams, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “This is the first budget he’s presented that has proposed raising taxes on people below the $250,000 thresholds he’s maintained over the past five years.”

    It also has some Democrats worried, especially those who represent districts where their constituents make a good salary but don’t see themselves as rich stand to get hit.

    “It’s a concern,” Rep. Allyson Schwartz, a Pennsylvania Democrat who represents some of Philadelphia’s suburbs, told POLITICO in reference to Obama’s proposed deduction cap. “For many people, the mortgage tax deduction is your biggest deduction. It’s very significant. And just as the housing market is coming back, there’s a question about the timing of that.”

    Republicans are lapping up the proposals as evidence — despite Obama’s rhetoric — the administration won’t spare the middle class from higher taxes.

    “The president keeps breaking his campaign pledge to not tax the middle class — first with his health care law and now with these tax hikes in his budget,” Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top GOP member on the Finance Committee, told POLITICO. “As I’ve said before, when it comes to this White House and its penchant for wanting to raise taxes, everyone — including those middle-class families the president says he wants to help — needs to watch their wallets.”

    Full article: http://www.politico. … kes-90469.html?hp=f2


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  • Army to Congress: Thanks, but no tanks

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    If you need an example of why it is hard to cut the budget in Washington look no further than this Army depot in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada range.

    CNN was allowed rare access to what amounts to a parking lot for more than 2,000 M-1 Abrams tanks. Here, about an hour’s drive north of Reno, Nevada, the tanks have been collecting dust in the hot California desert because of a tiff between the Army and Congress.

    The U.S. has more than enough combat tanks in the field to meet the nation’s defense needs – so there’s no sense in making repairs to these now, the Army’s chief of staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno told Congress earlier this year.

    If the Pentagon holds off repairing, refurbishing or making new tanks for three years until new technologies are developed, the Army says it can save taxpayers as much as $3 billion.

    That may seem like a lot of money, but it’s a tiny sacrifice for a Defense Department that will cut $500 billion from its budget over the next decade and may be forced to cut a further $500 billion if a deficit cutting deal is not reached by Congress.

    Why is this a big deal? For one, the U.S. hasn’t stopped producing tanks since before World War II, according to lawmakers.

    Plus, from its point of view the Army would prefer to decide what it needs and doesn’t need to keep America strong while making tough economic cuts elsewhere.

    “When a relatively conservative institution like the U.S. military, which doesn’t like to take risks because risks get people killed, says it has enough tanks, I think generally civilians should be inclined to believe them,” said Travis Sharp a fellow at the defense think tank, New American Security.

    But guess which group of civilians isn’t inclined to agree with the generals on this point?

    Congress.

    To be exact, 173 House members – Democrats and Republicans – sent a letter April 20 to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, urging him to continue supporting their decision to produce more tanks.

    That’s right. Lawmakers who frequently and loudly proclaim that presidents should listen to generals when it comes to battlefield decisions are refusing to take its own advice.

    Full article: http://security.blog … -no-tanks/?hpt=hp_c1


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