President Obama proposed Monday to pay for his $447 billion stimulus package largely by taxing the rich more.
Obama's largest proposed pay-for -- which the White House estimates would raise roughly $400 billion over 10 years -- would limit itemized deductions and certain other exemptions for individuals with adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 or more ($250,000 and up for married couples).
The tax measure would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2013, when the White House assumes the top two income tax rates would revert to 36% and 39.6%, up from the current 33% and 35% as a result of the Bush-era tax cuts.
Obama's proposal would cap itemized deductions at 28%. That would mean for every $100 in deductions the rich claim in 2013, they would be able to reduce their tax bill by only $28. That would be less than the $36 or $39.60 they would get if they are in the top two tax brackets.
Relative to other federal tax filers, high-income households benefit disproportionately from itemized deductions -- including those for mortgage interest and charitable contributions.
What's in Obama's stimulus package
Obama's plan is similar to one he offered in each of his three budgets. But the proposal has gone nowhere in Congress.
The president put forth other repeat proposals on Monday to pay for the stimulus package.
So-called carried interest -- a portion of the money paid to managers of hedge funds and other investments partnerships -- would be taxed as ordinary income under Obama. Translation: It would be subject to rates as high as 39.6%, up from the current preferential rate of 15%. The White House estimates this change could raise $18 billion over 10 years.
Obama also wants to repeal various oil subsidies for an estimated savings of $40 billion. And he would impose a less-generous depreciation rule for the purchase of corporate jets. That measure would raise an estimated $3 billion.
All told, the pay-for proposals would raise roughly $467 billion, White House budget director Jacob Lew told reporters.
Lew noted that the White House measures "intentionally overachieve" on savings to compensate for likely differences in estimates that will be made by the Congressional Budget Office, which is the official cost-and-savings arbiter for Congress.
"We've built in a cushion for the differences that happen," Lew said.
The president's pay-for proposals will likely meet with stiff opposition from Republicans. Many GOP lawmakers don't want to raise taxes on anyone and aren't keen on the president's jobs plan to begin with, even though it contains more than $200 billion in tax cuts.
And at a time when Congress' debt super committee is working to cut deficits by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years, Obama's pay-for plan would reduce the committee's revenue-raising options.
On the other hand, many career deficit hawks support measures to spur the economy now, so long as they are paid for eventually and paired with a long-term debt reduction plan.
As Congressional Budget Office director, Doug Elmendorf doesn’t advocate for specific policy proposals. Rather, his office tells Congress how much the policies that they decide on will cost.
But during his testimony in front of the “supercommittee” this morning, Elmendorf came awfully close to pushing Congress to support stimulus spending as part of its deficit reduction charge.
“Credible policy changes that would substantially reduce deficits late in the coming decade and over the long term, without immediate cuts in spending or increases in taxes, would support the economic expansion in the next few years and strengthen the economy over the longer term,” Elmendorf said at the hearing. “There is no inherent contradiction between using fiscal policy to support the economy today, while the unemployment rate is high ... and imposing fiscal restraint several years from now, when output and employment will probably be close to their potential.”
This could be a difficult policy for the supercommittee to follow through on. The 12-member panel’s charge is to find $1.2 trillion in cuts; making space for increased government spending is a challenge in that context.
But Elmendorf made the case that it’s the best approach. “If policymakers wanted to achieve both a short-term economic boost and medium-term and long-term fiscal sustainability, a combination of policies would be required: changes in taxes and spending that would widen the deficit now but reduce it later in the decade,” he said.
Elmendorf did caution, however, that such an approach would need a good amount of political will behind it. It would need to be “sufficiently specific and widely supported” so that individuals and businesses would have confidence in the changes. There needs to be a belief on the part of the public, he urged, that “future fiscal restraint would truly take effect.” With public levels of confidence in Congress at all-time lows, finding faith that the body will act may be nearly as challenging as finding the funding for stimulus in the first place.
The Congressional Budget Office would be stepping out of bounds if it endorsed specific legislation or even hazy policy objectives. But it's hard to read CBO chief Doug Elmendorf's testimony to the joint deficit Super Committee Tuesday as anything other than a de facto endorsement of President Obama's broad strategy to boost the economy: legislation that spends money to hire people and reduces payroll taxes in the near-term, and that reduces deficits by even greater amounts in the middle and end of the decade.
"If policymakers want to achieve both a short-term economic boost and long-term fiscal sustainability the combination of policies that would be most effective according to our analysis would be changes in taxes and spending that would widen the deficit today, but narrow it in the coming decade," Elmendorf told the panel's 12 Democrats and Republicans. "The combination of fiscal policies that would be most effective would be policies that cut taxes or increase spending in the near-term, but over the medium and longer-term move in the opposite direction."
This is a generalized version of precisely what President Obama is proposing -- a $447 billion jobs bill that will increase spending on hiring programs, and reduce payroll taxes; accompanied by deficit reduction measures that take effect in 2013, to more than cover the cost of the jobs bill.
But Elmendorf went even further, under questioning he ranked various tax cuts by their stimulative impact, and payroll tax cuts, benefitting employers and employees topped the list.
Many Republicans are resistant to the idea of using the joint committee as a vehicle to pass or pay for Obama's jobs bill, a significant chunk of which they oppose. But the legislation is written in such a way that -- if it passes -- it will count any extra savings that the committee finds toward the cost of its bill. And at a Tuesday press conference House Speaker John Boehner encouraged the committee to go well beyond its statutory requirement of finding $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction.
Combined with the fact that the White House is now signaling that President Obama would sign piecemeal elements of his jobs plan, it's feasible that this could be a path to passing at least some additional expansionary policies this year.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday welcomed U.S. President Barack Obama's plans for a U.S. troops drawdown and said it's a sign that Afghanistan is ready to take control of security in the war-torn nation.
"The number of troops that he has announced to be withdrawn is a sign that Afghanistan is taking over its own security and is trying to defend its territory by its own means," Karzai said. "So we are happy about the announcement."
As the United States pulls back, Karzai painted a picture of a more stable Afghanistan, despite the fact that May was the bloodiest month for Afghan civilians since 2007. He told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview set to air Sunday that Afghans were ready to take the reins of their own country.
"It is the responsibility of the Afghan people to protect their country and to provide security for the citizens of the country," Karzai said. "If you fail in fulfilling our most important responsibility with regard to our country and our people, then somebody else should take over."
Obama announced Wednesday night that 10,000 U.S. troops would leave Afghanistan this year and all 33,000 forces sent as part of a 2009 surge would return home by the summer of 2012.
Karzai also defended his public criticisms of NATO, which in recent weeks have taken on a more angry tone. Karzai blasted the alliance for civilian deaths and nighttime raids. He said his comment on NATO becoming an "occupying force" was taken out of context.
"No, I don't regret having made that comment," he said. "That comment was not seen in the full sentence that I spoke. It was after the incident of civilian casualties in Afghanistan where children were killed in an aerial bombing, where I said, 'No more of such aerial bombings on our residents.'
"The question was what if they continue?" Karzai said.
"When Afghanistan asks that these operations cease and even then, if they continue, this means we are not in charge of our country," he said. "And that, of course, becomes an occupation. It was in this context that I spoke, and I stand by that."
Karzai stressed regional cooperation between his homeland and neighboring Pakistan and India in the fight to bring an end to many years of conflict. He said the United States and Afghanistan's other allies could do a lot more in expediting talks with the Taliban to put an end to the violence.
"My statements are neither hostile nor inflammatory nor designed to get anything but an understanding from our partners that the Afghan people need to feel secure, they need to see this war take a direction in which they can see the end of the tunnel," Karzai said.
He said Afghanistan, dependent on U.S. dollars for security and development, was grateful to American taxpayers, but expressed dismay that U.S. humanitarian efforts have not always taken Afghan wishes into account.
He cited a Kandahar electricity project in which he said the United States spent $250 million to buy generators. Karzai said Afghanistan would have preferred the construction of a dam, which he called a more lasting solution.
Last Night The Entire World Listened As Pres. Barack Obama Announced What Could Be Considered An End To Bush's Fake "War On Terror" Era.
Our Troops Are Finally Coming Home!! Thank God!
Perhaps Not All At Once, Which Is Unrealistic But At Least They Are Finally Moving Out Of Iraq, Afghanistan & Pakistan Heading Back To American Soil.
Hopefully For Good!
Do I Agree With Progressives That Pres. Obama's Afghan Troop Withdrawal Plan Should Be More Aggressive?
Yes!
However I Do Still Give Him Credit For Keeping His Word Regarding The Timeline To Begin Withdrawing U.S. Troops From Afghanistan.
For All The Skeptics Of Obama's Afghan Troop Withdrawal Plan, Here's Something Crucial To Consider.
If It Were Up To A Republican President, The Idea Of A Troop Withdrawal Plan Would NEVER Have Been Discussed!
And Why Should It?
Why Discuss An Afghan Troop Withdrawal Plan If Hundreds Of GOP Leaders On Capitol Hill Are Earning Million$ Each Year From Oil Interests & If Millions Of Dollar$ Are Being Donated To GOP Campaign Pots From Super Wealthy, NO Tax Paying Government Contractors Friends?
i.e., War PROFITEERING!!
That's Right! I Said It!
Many GOP Leaders & Friends Of GOP Leaders Have Become Millionaires From Bush's "War On Terror" PROFITEERING!!
Now Do You Understand Why Most GOP Leaders & Pentagon Generals NEVER Want U.S. Troops To Leave Iraq, Afghanistan & Pakistan?? NOT Ever??
Its ALL About Oil Interests & Government Contractor PROFITEERING!
NOT National Security Or World Peace!
Thank The Good Lord Pres. Obama Genuinely Does Care About National Security & World Peace.
I Also Thank God Pres. Obama Wants To STOP Throwing U.S. Dollars To The Wind Overseas By Placing Billion$ Of Taxpayer Money Into The Hands Of Corrupt Middle East Leaders.
Real FREEDOM & Democracy Can NOT Be Purchased!
If Karzai (Afghanistan) & Zardari (Pakistan) REALLY Want Their Nations To Experience Some level Of Democracy, Let Them Use Their OWN Money & Troops To Do It!
Once Again I Am NOT Opposed To U.S. Forces Being Deployed After Osama Bin Laden's 9-11 Attack On American Soil.
The U.S. Government SHOULD Have Responded As Such Because What Happened To Our Nation On 9-11 Was Indeed An Act Of War!
However......
I Still Believe Bush's Administration Could Have Captured & Executed Osama Bin Laden Long Before The Obama Administration Acted If That Is TRULY What G.W. Bush Wanted.
History Has Since Proven Former Pres. George W. Bush Did NOT Really Want Bin Laden Killed.
How Do I Know This Theory To Be True?
Because It Took Bush's Administration 8 Years To NEVER Capture Osama Bin Laden, While It Took Obama's Administration ONLY 2 Years To Capture & Execute This Greedy Murderer.
So Please Don't Try To Persuade Me To Believe That Bush's Endorsement Of Torture Tactics Worked Or Helped Lead Obama's Administration Officials To Osama Bin Laden's Capture & Execution Because I'm NOT Buying It!!
Thanks To Pres. Obama's Afghan Troop Withdrawal Plan, A New Future Now Lies Ahead For America & Her U.S. Armed Forces.
No More Blood Money Being Wasted To Harbor Murderers & Crooks!!
No More U.S. Troops Being Used As Pawns On A Chessboard Losing Their Lives To Prop Up Greedy Politicians & Their Super Wealthy, No Tax Paying Government Contractor Friends!
Especially Government Contractor Friends Who Refuse To Hire Minority Veterans Or Pay Minority Veterans Wages Equal To What They Pay, White Veterans!
And Money Previously Wasted Overseas By The U.S. Dept Of Defense, Can Finally Be Put To Good Use Creating American Jobs Via Rebuilding Our OWN Nation.
Ex: Fixing Crumbling, Decades Old Infrastructures, Creating Clean Energy Jobs & Green Energy Jobs, Reducing Our Deficit, Restructuring Our Broken, Racist Public Education System, etc.,
So While I Do Agree Pres. Obama's Afghanistan Withdrawal Plan Should Have Been More Aggressive, I Still Applaud Him For Making The Best Of A Terrible Mess.
A "War On Terror" PROFITEERING Mess Left By His Predecessor, George W. Bush.
For The Record I Don't Hate Former Pres. George W. Bush.
I Just Hate What He Did To Our Country Via His Fake "War On Terror".
President Obama declared Wednesday that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion a substantial withdrawal of American troops in an acknowledgment of the shifting threat in the region and the fast-changing political and economic landscape in a war-weary America.
Asserting that the country that served as a base for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks no longer represented a terrorist threat to the United States, Mr. Obama declared that the “tide of war is receding.” And in a blunt recognition of domestic economic strains, he said, “America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.”
Mr. Obama announced plans to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year. The remaining 20,000 troops from the 2009 “surge” of forces would leave by next summer, amounting to about a third of the 100,000 troops now in the country. He said the drawdown would continue “at a steady pace” until the United States handed over security to the Afghan authorities in 2014.
The troop reductions, which were decided after a short but fierce internal debate, will be both deeper and faster than the recommendations made by Mr. Obama’s military commanders, and they will come as the president faces relentless budget pressures, an increasingly restive American public and a re-election campaign next year.
Only hours after Mr. Obama spoke, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said on Thursday that he would also begin drawing down the 4,000-strong French contingent in Afghanistan.
”Given the progress we have seen, France will begin a gradual withdrawal of reinforcement troops sent to Afghanistan, in a proportional manner and in a calendar comparable to the withdrawal of American reinforcements,” Mr. Sarkozy said in a statement issued by his office, Reuters reported.
Mr. Obama, speaking in businesslike tones during a 15-minute address from the East Room of the White House, talked of ending America’s longest war and of the painful lessons he thought could be taken from it. While justifying the nation’s decade-long commitment, he talked of “ending the war responsibly” and warned of the perils of overextending the military by sending large numbers of soldiers into combat. He acknowledged that huge challenges remained before an end to the conflict that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and 1,500 American lives.
The withdrawals would begin winding down the military’s counterinsurgency strategy, which Mr. Obama adopted 18 months ago. Administration officials indicated that they now planned to place more emphasis on focused clandestine counterterrorism operations of the kind that killed Osama bin Laden, which the president cited as Exhibit A in the case for a substantial American troop reduction.
“We are starting this drawdown from a position of strength,” Mr. Obama said. “Al Qaeda is under more pressure than at any time since 9/11.” He said that an intense campaign of drone strikes and other covert operations in Pakistan had crippled Al Qaeda’s original network in the region, leaving its leaders either dead or pinned down in the rugged border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Of 30 top Qaeda leaders identified by American intelligence, 20 have been killed in the last year and a half, administration officials said.
But the withdrawal of the entire surge force by the end of next summer will significantly change the way that the United States wages war in Afghanistan, analysts said, suggesting that the administration may have concluded it can no longer achieve its loftiest ambitions there.
Mr. Obama acknowledged as much in his remarks. “We will not try to make Afghanistan a perfect place,” he said. “We will not police its streets or patrol its mountains indefinitely. That is the responsibility of the Afghan government.”
Mr. Obama’s decision is a victory for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has long argued for curtailing the military operation in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama indicated a willingness to move toward more focused covert operations of the type that the United States is conducting in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. “When threatened, we must respond with force,” he said. “But when that force can be targeted, we need not deploy large armies overseas.”
The pace of the withdrawal is a setback for the president’s top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who has been named director of the Central Intelligence Agency. General Petraeus did not endorse the decision, said another official. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates argued publicly against a too-hasty withdrawal of troops, but he said in a statement on Wednesday that he supported Mr. Obama’s decision.
During the internal debate, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also expressed reservations about the scale of the reductions, officials said.
General Petraeus had recommended limiting withdrawals to 5,000 troops this year and another 5,000 over the winter.
He and other military commanders argued that the 18 months since Mr. Obama announced the troop increase did not allow for enough time for the Americans to consolidate the fragile gains that they had made in Helmand and other provinces.
But troops have succeeded in clearing many towns and cities of insurgents, and then keeping them safe so that markets were able to reopen and girls could go to school, for example.
Military officials say the withdrawal of American troops will impose limits on which areas of the country can be pacified. In particular, plans to pivot extra American troops from south and southwestern Afghanistan to volatile areas in the east, along the Pakistan border, will be curtailed or even canceled, officials said.
The effort to transfer responsibility for security to Afghan forces remains elusive because the Afghan troops are proving unprepared for the job. Corruption in the government of President Hamid Karzai continues to be rampant, sapping the confidence of many Afghans.
Still, the growing disenchantment in the United States with the war, particularly given the ballooning national debt, the country’s slow economic recovery and the whopping $120 billion price tag of the Afghan conflict this year alone, were all considerations weighed by the president. “Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war at a time of rising debt and hard economic times,” Mr. Obama said. “Now, we must invest in America’s greatest resource: our people.”
Republican presidential candidates including Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr. are demanding a swift withdrawal from Afghanistan, while Democrats complain that the cost of the war is siphoning money away from efforts to create jobs in the United States. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, called on Mr. Obama to speed the withdrawal. “If we’re going to leave, we should leave,” he said in a statement. “The centralized system of government foisted upon the Afghan people is not going to hold after we leave. So let’s quit prolonging the agony and the inevitable.”
Highlighting the unusual political splits the war is causing, other Republicans criticized the president for pulling out too soon. Representative Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, suggested that Mr. Obama was playing politics with the troop reduction, saying, “The president is trying to find a political solution with a military component, when it needs to be the other way around.” He said the situation in Afghanistan was “very precarious,” and that the White House seemed to be panicking about the levels of violence.
Mr. Obama’s speech, delivered at dawn on Thursday, Kabul time, is expected to be the subject of a speech by Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, scheduled for later in the day. Senior figures in Mr. Karzai’s administration began signaling that they were comfortable with the withdrawal of 10,000 troops by year’s end.
Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said the Afghan National Army “has this capability and quantity to fill the gap of those places where the foreign troops withdraw and leave Afghanistan.”
“We are ready,” General Azimi said.
Muhammad Siddique Aziz, an adviser to Mr. Karzai on tribal affairs, said the withdrawal plan was acceptable, but he warned against a complete withdrawal of American troops before the Afghan government was strong enough to administer the country on its own. “I think they have to concentrate more on the Afghan government so when they leave, the government can stand up on its own,” Mr. Aziz said.
Tonight Pres. Barack Obama Will Finally Announce The End To Former President G.W. Bush's Very Expensive, Oil/ Government Contractor Scheme: His Fake "War On Terror".
Immediately After Sept. 11, 2011, No One Doubted Bush's Intent To Invade Iraq Because Practically Everyone In America Thought It Only Right To Get The "Bad Guys" (Al Qaeda) For Breaching Our Safety Net & Destroying Our Comfort.
We Sincerely Wanted To Show Terrorists & Extremists That NO ONE Can Attack America, On American Soil & Get Away With It!
NO ONE!
Thus When G.W. Bush Approached Congress With His LIE-Based ("Weapons Of Mass Destruction") Scheme To Invade Iraq, For Lawmakers On The Hill To Question His True Motives Would Have Appeared Anti-Patriotic.
Fast Forward To 8 Years Later.
There Were NO "Weapons Of Mass Destruction"!
It Was Later Discovered We Were ONLY There To Protect The Interests Of GOP-Registered, Oil Rich American "Powers That Be".
And Even After Capturing Saddam Hussein, U.S. Troops Are STILL In Iraq, Afghanistan & Pakistan.
Why?
Since Both Saddam & Bin Laden Are Now Dead, Why Are We STILL In Those Countries??
Why Are U.S. Military Generals STILL Insisting We Remain In Iraq, Afghanistan & Pakistan?
Could It The ONLY Foreign Policy Interests Our U.S. Troops Are Currently Protecting Are Those Of GOP Lawmakers Profiting In A HUGE Way Via Government Contractors?
This Is The ONLY Reason Why GOP Lawmakers On Capitol Hill & Pentagon Brass Are STILL Insisting U.S. Troops Remain In Iraq, Afghanistan & Pakistan.
Truth Be Told GOP Lawmakers Don't Give A Darn About The Lives Of Thousands Of U.S. Troops Lost In Iraq, Afghanistan & Pakistan!
They Just Want To Keep Their Pockets Fat At Any Cost!!
i.e., BLOOD MONEY!!
And To Make Matters Worst, Most Government Contractors (Blackwater Now XE, Balfour Beatty, Dyn Corp, KBR, Halliburton) Working In Iraq, Afghanistan & Pakistan Largely Practice Racial Discrimination By Hiring Very, Very Few Minority Veterans. (Almost Zero Black Veterans!)
Or If They Do Hire Any Minority Veterans, Those Minority Veterans Are Paid Much Lower Salaries Than White Veterans.
In Addition, Balfour Beatty A Construction Company Which Helps To Build & Manage U.S. Military Bases, Also Grossly OVERCHARGES Active Duty Soldiers & Veterans Residing On Those U.S. Military Bases.
So I Along With Millions Of Other American Voters (Democrats, Independents & Republicans) All Agree Its High Time This Government Contractor/ Oil-Rich Charade FINALLY Comes To An End!!
Like Yesterday!
For The Record, American Voters Are NOT Stupid!!!
We Know That George W. Bush Left Behind A Mess, In Fact Several Messes For Pres. Obama To Clean Up!
i.e., Deregulated Wall Street Mess, Subprime Housing Mess, Iraq Mess, Afghanistan Mess, Pakistan Mess, Osama Bin Laden Mess, TARP Mess, HUGE Unemployment Mess, etc.,
YES!
While Serving 8 Years In Office, George W. Bush Left Behind A Ton Of Serious Messes & Now The GOP Unrealistically Expects Barack Obama To Clean Up Those Serious Messes After Serving Just 2 Years In Office!
Well Its Time For Bush's Messes To Be Placed In The Trash Can Where They Belong!
In 2008 Barack Obama Was Elected NOT To Continue George W. Bush's Political/ Deregulated Charades For Personal Gain.
Instead Obama Was Elected To Discontinue & Clean Up G.W. Bush's Messes So That America Could Begin To Heal.
Obama Was Elected To Discontinue Bush's Schemes & Bring Our Troops Home!
As It Relates To George W. Bush's Government Contractor, "Nation Building" Scheme, Let The Corrupt Leaders Of Afghanistan & Pakistan Build Their OWN Nations, With Their OWN Money!
Do We Need To Maintain Some Type Of Alliance With Pakistan Even Though Its Been Proven They Can't Be Trusted?
Yes Or They Will Build An Alliance With India & China Against America.
However.....
American Leaders Should NO Longer Allow Afghanistan & Pakistani Leaders To Make Fools Of Us Or Hold American Leaders Hostage!!!
Tonight During Pres. Obama's Anti-War/ Afghanistan U.S. Troop Withdrawal Speech American Voters Expect To NOT Only Hear That Our Soldiers Are Coming Home For Good!
But Also That America Will NEVER Again Use U.S. Military Troops For Personal Gain i.e., Oil & Government Contractors!
NEVER Again!!!
NO MORE BLOOD MONEY!!
Pres. Obama Should Also Apologize To All The Families Of U.S. Troops Serving Overseas, Including Those Who Lost Loved Ones During Combat And.....
YES Pres. Obama Should Apologize To Iraq, Afghanistan & Pakistan For What Past U.S. Leaders Did For The Sake Of Personal Gain.
Don't Get It Twisted!
Should We Have Caught & Killed Osama Bin Laden For What He Did To Our Country On 9-11??
YES! A Thousand Times Yes!
However Doing So Did NOT Take 8 Years!
I Repeat: It Did NOT Take 8 Years To Capture & Kill Osama Bin Laden!!
I Truly Believe Former President George W. Bush Knew Exactly Where Osama Was Hiding.
I Also Believe G.W. Bush & His Administration Was Somehow Involved In A Scheme To Pay Off Pakistani Leaders To Help Hide Bin Laden.
Why??
Oil & Government Contractors!!
Pres. George W. Bush Will One Day Pay For His LIES, Deceit & Sin But....
Tonight America Expects Pres. Barack Obama To End Bush's LIES & Start A New Chapter In American Foreign Policy Sans LIES!!!
Pres. Obama Please Don't Disappoint Us Tonight.
God Bless America Land That I Love & ALL U.S. Troops Everywhere!
President Obama will talk about troop numbers in Afghanistan when he makes a prime-time speech from the White House on Wednesday night. But behind his words will be an acute awareness of what $1.3 trillion in spending on two wars in the past decade has meant at home: a ballooning budget deficit and a soaring national debt at a time when the economy is still struggling to get back on its feet.
As Mr. Obama begins trying to untangle the country from its military and civilian promises in Afghanistan, his critics and allies alike are drawing a direct line between what is not being spent to bolster the sagging economy in America to what is being spent in Afghanistan — $120 billion this year alone.
On Monday, the United States Conference of Mayors made that connection explicitly, saying that American taxes should be paying for bridges in Baltimore and Kansas City, not in Baghdad and Kandahar.
The mayors’ group approved a resolution calling for an early end to the American military role in Afghanistan and Iraq, asking Congress to redirect the billions now being spent on war and reconstruction costs toward urgent domestic needs. The resolution, which noted that local governments cut 28,000 jobs in May alone, was the group’s first venture into foreign policy since it passed a resolution four decades ago calling for an end to the Vietnam War.
And in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, said: “We can no longer, in good conscience, cut services and programs at home, raise taxes or — and this is very important — lift the debt ceiling in order to fund nation-building in Afghanistan. The question the president faces — we all face — is quite simple: Will we choose to rebuild America or Afghanistan? In light of our nation’s fiscal peril, we cannot do both.”
Demonstrators describing themselves as “angry jobless citizens” said they would picket the Capitol on Wednesday to urge members of Congress to use any savings from Mr. Obama’s troop reductions to create more jobs. The group sponsoring the demonstration, the Prayer Without Ceasing Party, said in a statement on Tuesday that it was “urging the masses to call their congressmen and the president to ensure that jobs receive a top priority when the troops start returning to America.”
Spending on the war in Afghanistan has skyrocketed since Mr. Obama took office, to $118.6 billion in 2011. It was $14.7 billion in 2003, when President George W. Bush turned his attention and American resources to the war in Iraq.
The increase is easy to explain. When Mr. Obama took office, he vowed to aggressively pursue what he termed America’s “war of necessity” (Afghanistan) and to withdraw from America’s “war of choice” (Iraq). He has done so; the lines on Iraq and Afghanistan war spending crossed in 2010, when the United States spent $93.8 billion in Afghanistan versus $71.3 billion in Iraq, according to the Congressional Research Service.
But the White House is keenly aware that the president is heading into a re-election campaign; with the country’s jobless rate remaining high, topping 9 percent, his poll numbers on his handling of the domestic economy have plummeted.
“Do we really need to be spending $120 billion in a country with a G.D.P. that’s one-sixth that size?” asked Brian Katulis, a national security expert at the Center for American Progress, a policy group with close ties to the Obama administration. “Most Americans would be shocked to know that we’re spending that kind of money for jobs programs for former Taliban, and would wonder where are our jobs programs for Detroit and Cleveland?”
In 2010, Congress — at the Obama administration’s request — set aside $100 million to support programs in Afghanistan aimed at moving former insurgents off the battlefields and into the country’s mainstream economy. Those efforts — similar to what the Bush administration did in Iraq — have yet to bear much fruit; the 1,700 fighters who have enrolled in the reintegration program represent only a fraction of the estimated 20,000 to 40,000 Taliban insurgents, The New York Times reported Monday.
Most American aid bypasses the Afghan government and goes to international companies, a practice that, according to a June 8 report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, can undercut the Afghan government and lead to redundant and unsustainable donor projects. But Obama administration officials complain that the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai has, thus far, been unwilling to tackle corruption in any meaningful way, making it hard to argue that it should get more money directly.
In Washington, the argument over whether the United States should be building bridges in Kandahar or Cleveland is bound to grow even louder as the 2012 election campaign heats up.
After Senator Manchin made his speech on Tuesday calling for an end to nation-building in Afghanistan, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, took to the floor to rebuke him, calling Mr. Manchin’s remarks characteristic of the “isolationist-withdrawal-lack-of-knowledge-of-history attitude that seems to be on the rise.”
But in Mr. McCain’s own Republican Party, which has historically been more supportive of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars than Democrats, there is clearly some queasiness about war spending during a period of economic distress.
Four years ago, Representative Ron Paul of Texas was the only Republican presidential candidate raising concerns about the costs of the Afghanistan or Iraq wars. But last week, Mr. Paul was joined explicitly by another contender, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah and the Obama administration’s former ambassador to China, who said that the cost of a continued military presence was a leading factor in his belief that a major troop drawdown should begin in Afghanistan.
“Very expensive boots on the ground may be something that is not critical for our national security needs,” Mr. Huntsman said.
Even when Mr. Obama does withdraw the bulk of troops from Afghanistan, Americans will still be footing the bill for years, argued William R. Keylor, an international relations professor at Boston University.
“The total cost of the war, the longest in American history and one that was paid for by borrowing rather than by increased taxation, should not be measured solely by the costs of financing the troops and the extensive aid programs administered by the State Department,” Mr. Keylor said. “It should also include long-term costs of the war, primarily veterans’ benefits for the returning soldiers, who will require medical and mental health services for many years to come. Long after the last troops depart from the country, that hidden part of the bill will come due.”
"If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples, so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be okay."
"But “The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, as least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted."
"One of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement, was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that."
I Was Extremely Pleased With President Obama's Speech Last Night On Improving Our Nation's Fiscal Situation, As Were Many Of His Base Constituents. Especially The Part About Making Super Wealthy Citizens Pay Their Fair Share Of Taxation Versus Paying NOTHING Such As Most Of Them Are Paying Now. Thank You President Obama!
Its About Time Pres. Obama Finally Stood Up To His GOP Counterparts In Congress. For Too Long After His Election He Has Bowed Down To White, Republican Leaders As If He Were A Butler Or Servant. Telling Congressman Paul Ryan To His Face That He Does In Fact Plan To Raise Taxes On The Super Rich, Was A Bold Political Move That Won My Approval.
Republican Paul Ryan's plan to cut the deficit, which debuted last week, claimed it would cut government spending and drive U.S. growth. In fact, he described his plan as, "Each and every reform in this budget is advanced with a clear focus on economic growth and job creation." More specifically, Ryan said his plan "Spurs economic growth, increasing real GDP by $1.5 trillion over the decade."
But the result of the plan's implementation couldn't be more anti-growth, according to research from Societe Generale analyst Rudy Narvas.
If we use the Debt Commission proposal as the template for the Obama plan and assume the budget is balanced through general spending from 2011 to 2020, the average annual hit to GDP could range between 0.9pp to 3.0pp.
The Republican plan which looks for steeper spending cuts would have an impact of somewhere between 1pp to 3.6pp. The analysis does not take into account the potential hit to GDP from the revenue side of the Fiscal Commission report which would likely result in a further drag to GDP. In our forecasts for the US economy, we did not take into account any austerity measures by the US federal government. If any plan is passed that has a similar deficit reduction trajectory of the two plans, we may have to adjust our GDP forecast down for 2012 and beyond.
Similarly, the deficit commission's proposal would also have a negative impact on GDP growth, at about the same rate as the Republican proposal, according to Narvas.
This visualization certainly backs up Larry Summers comments on the UK's austerity plans, that a cuts for growth strategy was "oxymoronic."
More worrying even is that a decline in GDP growth is likely to lead to a decline in tax revenue, which would add to the deficit.
President Obama this month has sustained the momentum he gained in December by playing the role of Political Strategist, world leader and, in the last week, the nation’s healer.
He’s avoided engaging Republicans in debate over the difficult choices ahead, allowing the opposition to come under pressure and preserving himself for the State of the Union Address on Jan. 25.
The chess moves began the day after Obama returned from a two-week vacation in Hawaii. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs announced he was leaving the day Republicans took control of the House.
The changes appeared somewhat unscripted, but the White House had been some time in planning them. The effect of the timing was to keep Republicans from dominating the news cycle at a time when they expected to get their best, and easiest, coverage.
But the changes also kept the White House press corps from pressing the administration on the kinds of questions that Republicans began facing immediately after the New Year, such as what spending they intended to cut, and what they planned to do about the nation’s deficit and debt.
The personnel moves positioned Obama in the eyes of Politicos as a political force, already maneuvering to set up his reelection team for the 2012 campaign. And in the eyes of the general public, the hiring of Daley moved him closer to the center.
Besides that, the White House successfully kept its head down, leaving Obama to assume his role as world leader. Prior to Saturday’s shooting in Arizona, this week was set to be a contrast between House Republicans holding a symbolic but toothless vote to repeal the president’s health-care law, and Obama hosting a series of heads of state for visits.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy came Monday, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri visited on Wednesday, and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is set to arrive Friday.
Vice President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Afghanistan and Iraq this week.
Then Chinese President Hu Jintao is set to come next Wednesday to the White House for a highly anticipated state visit.
The White House, and congressional Democrats, were prepared to start hearkening back to Obama’s words on Air Force One en route back to Washington about the new GOP majority: “They are going to play to their base for a certain period of time, but I’m pretty confident that they’re going to recognize that our job is to govern.”
Once through next week, Washington’s attention would turn to the upcoming State of the Union speech, and the White House could begin playing the expectations game without really saying much about the contents of the address.
But then a 22-year old gunman shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others outside a Tucson super market, nearly killing the Democratic congresswoman and taking the lives of six others who were there to meet their representative on a Saturday morning.
The incident – as horrific and as unwelcome as it was – has had some political impact. One of the biggest is that it pushed the president forward into a difficult but broadly appealing role of national unifier.
Obama’s speech Wednesday in Tucson was widely acclaimed by conservatives as a master stroke, a moment of true political leadership. The president’s approval rating became higher than his disapproval rating this week for the first time since July, standing at 49 percent in favor and 46 percent against, according to the Real Clear Politics poll average.
The White House on Thursday was clearly viewing the speech as a potentially seminal moment for the nation, and by extension for Obama’s presidency.
“I think there are moments in our history — Oklahoma City, the Challenger accident, what happened in Arizona — that are important for the president to talk to the nation about, and to help be part of the process of celebration and healing. I think that’s how he approached – that’s how he approached this,” Gibbs told reporters.
Conservatives, when asked about the turn of events, downplayed the impact it will have on the inevitable showdowns between the president and Republicans over spending cuts, raising the debt limit and reforming entitlements. These are all things that have to happen to one degree or another. But each side has different visions for what those actions will look like.
Like the president, Republicans in Congress have attempted to make it through this prelude period in January without putting much skin in the game. They have tried to do this by subsisting mostly on the pomp of a new Congress and by putting forward a few PR-savvy measures, such as cutting congressional office budgets.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican, attempted to put some of the pressure for fiscal decisions on the president.
“Once we get to the State of the Union, I can tell you, I expect this president to put some action behind the words that he has been using. Number one, I am looking to see some significant spending cuts proposed by the president that we can work on together,” Cantor said the day before the GOP took control of the House.
But it is clear that Obama has been more successful so far than Republicans — who suffered a series of gaffes their first week before the Arizona shooting — in positioning himself for battles ahead.
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