NewsTrust - Taxes - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

President Obama Should Seize the High Ground

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Thomas Friedman - May. 27 (Opinion) - President Obama has quite a record of accomplishment to run on for re-election if he would only run on it. During a recent discussion in Seattle with a group of educators, one of them surprised me when she pointed out that even though their state did not win President Obama’s education “Race to the Top,” that program was critical in spurring education reform in Washington State. As I listened to her analysis, the thought occurred to me: I wonder how Barack Obama would do if he ran for president as himself. ... How he would do if he ran for re-election on all the things he’s accomplished but rarely speaks about.

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Hey, Not So Fast on European Austerity

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Christina Romer - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - The core of a sensible approach to Europe’s is to pass needed budget measures now, but to phase in actual tax increases and spending cuts gradually — as economies recover.

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Individual mandate is Ryan tax credit by other name

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Apr. 01 (Opinion) - Tax credits : Under various health-care proposals — including the plan of Republican Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) — the tax code is changed to give families a tax credit for buying private health insurance. Families that choose to go without insurance

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GOP Releases Plan to Save America From the Poor

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Magazine - By Jonathan Chait - Mar. 20 (Opinion) - The House Republicans unveiled their new budget today, complete with a spooky video pressing home the point that only the House Republicans and their leader Paul Ryan stand between us and CIVILIZATIONAL COLLAPSE. Yes, the peril of rising debt is that bad. No, it’s not so bad that it’s worth restoring Clinton-era tax rates to prevent. But so bad that it’s worth throwing tens of millions of people off health insurance? Oh, yeah.

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Economic pie grows, but workers' slice shrinks

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Robert Reich - Mar. 18 (Opinion) - First, the good news. The economic pie is growing again. Growth in the fourth quarter last year hit 3 percent on an annualized rate. February's 227,000 net new jobs marks the third month in a row of job gains well in excess of 200,000. Here's the bad news. The share of growth going to American workers is at a record low. Although the nation is producing more goods and services than it did before the slump began in 2007, we're doing it with 6 million fewer people.

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Money and Morals

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - Conservatives have started telling us that the growing inequality is about a decline in morals. But it’s mainly about money.

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The GOP's Payroll Tax Fiasco

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By WSJ Editorial Board - Dec. 21 (Opinion) - GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest. The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy double play. Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he's spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible.

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Op-Ed Contributors: Don’t Tax the Rich. Tax Inequality Itself.

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Ian Ayres, Aaron S. Edlin - Dec. 18 (Opinion) - To keep inequality in check, tax the wealthiest 1 percent when their income gets out of proportion with median income.

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Fixing America's jobless problem

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Peter Dreier - Dec. 07 (Opinion) - Thousands of long-term unemployed Americans from across the country have converged on Washington this week to dramatize their plight and to urge Congress to extend federal unemployment insurance benefits and the payroll tax cut, and to pass President Obama's jobs bill.

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Cracks in the GOP dam?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Greg Sargent - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - Buried in this big New York Times piece on the continuing war over the payroll tax cut extension is a telling detail: Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said Tuesday that she had suggested a tax increase on high earners that protected employers from that burden. “I don’t think we should be imposing additional taxes on working families at a time when the economy is so fragile,” she said. Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said his party’s plan could involve a small increase in taxes for some high-income people who meet certain criteria. In other words, senators Collins and Roberts are looking for a way to support the millionaire surtax, or something like it.

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We Are the 99.9%

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Nov. 24 (Opinion) - A large fraction of the top 1 percent's gains have actually gone to an even smaller group, the top 0.1 percent - the richest one-thousandth of the population.

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Failure Is Good

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Nov. 18 (Opinion) - In Democrat-world, up is up and down is down. Raising taxes increases revenue, and cutting spending while the economy is still depressed reduces employment. But in Republican-world, down is up. The way to increase revenue is to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and slashing government spending is a job-creation strategy.

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FCC must protect consumer in telecom reforms

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - As the Federal Communications Commission considers reforms that will affect consumers' access to broadband and how much they pay, guest columnist Simon ffitch argues that telecom subsides should have some consumer-minded strings attached.

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Obama Rejects Obamaism

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David Brooks - Sep. 20 (Opinion) - He claimed we can afford future Medicare costs if we raise taxes on the rich. He repeated the old half-truth about millionaires not paying as much in taxes as their secretaries. (In reality, the top 10 percent of earners pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes, according to the I.R.S. People in the richest 1 percent pay 31 percent of their income to the federal government while the average worker pays less than 14 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.)

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Newsflash: GOP isn’t actually opposed to tax hikes

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Adam Serwer - Aug. 24 (Opinion) - Republicans are steadfastly opposed to raising taxes. Except when they aren’t. House Speaker John Boehner is touting a report from the National Association of Business Economists as vindication for the GOP’s opposition to tax hikes. The Boehner release claims that the views of economists reflects the “sentiment of the American people,” who oppose tax hikes “in a big way.” But as Steve Benen points out, a closer look at the survey shows that “nearly 88 percent of working business economists” actually disagreed with the House GOP mantra that, as Boehner’s office put it in the release, “spending cuts are the key to reducing the federal deficit - not job-crushing tax hikes.”

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Fight for a Jobs Agenda

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Aug. 18 (Editorial) - Come September, President Obama’s aides say he will roll out more programs to put Americans back to work. What we are hearing so far doesn’t go nearly far enough. The gist: Continue the payroll tax cut for employees into next year. Reform the patent system. Pass trade legislation. At a stop in Decorah, Iowa, on Monday, he called for employing jobless construction workers to rebuild roads, bridges and schools across America. Those are all sensible ideas, but most are not up to the urgency or scale of the problem: 25 million Americans — 16.1 percent of the work force — are out of work or working part time, and the economy is weakening anew.

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Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Aug. 14 (Opinion) -

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Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Warren E. Buffett - Aug. 14 (Opinion) - for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate. My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

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DNC chair blames Tea Party ‘tyrants’ for S&P credit rating downgrade

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Hill - By Alicia M. Cohn - Aug. 08 (Opinion) - Alicia M. Cohn / The Hill: DNC chair blames Tea Party ‘tyrants’ for S&P credit rating downgrade — The head of the Democratic National Committee joined Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Monday in casting blame for the U.S. credit downgrade on the Tea Party movement. — Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) …

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Obvious compromise between Reid and Boehner debt plans

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Jul. 26 (Opinion) - When it comes to cutting the national deficit, the plans proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner are much more similar than they are different. It’s on the issue of raising the debt ceiling that the consensus cracks.

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Getting to Crazy

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Jul. 15 (Opinion) - Commentators seem shocked at Republican unreasonableness as a debt default looms, but it is the end result of a process that has lasted decades.

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Obama vs. Obama

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Weekly Standard - By Stephen F. Hayes - Jul. 11 (Opinion) - In a 75-minute meeting Sunday night, President Obama once again demanded that more than $1 trillion in tax increases be part of any deficit reduction package attached to a vote on the debt ceiling. In the session, Obama rejected a Republican proposal to seek $2.5 trillion in spending cuts and reforms, and insisted on higher taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals.

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Big Deficit Deal or Not, Obama Wins - Wall Street Journal

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - Jul. 11 (Opinion) - CBC.caBig Deficit Deal or Not, Obama WinsWall Street JournalPresident Barack Obama declared again Monday that he was seeking a really big deficit-cutting deal. In fact, he has powerful reasons to want one—as well as some ability to turn a failure to get one to his advantage. ...Obama, Congress haggle over debt dealMarketWatchDebt talks: Boehner says spending cuts alone reflect 'balance' Obama seeksLos Angeles TimesObama, Republicans back behind closed doorsUSA TodayFinancial Times -Bloomberg -San Francisco Chronicleall 4,486 news articles »

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America's debt: Shame on them

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Jul. 09 (Opinion) -

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The Great Recession, Part II

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Joseph E. Stiglitz - Jul. 07 (Opinion) - Regrettably, the financial markets and right-wing economists have gotten the problem exactly backward: They believe that austerity produces confidence, and that confidence will produce growth. But austerity undermines growth, worsening the government's fiscal position, or at least yielding less improvement than austerity's advocates promise. On both counts, confidence is undermined, and a downward spiral is set in motion.

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