When You've Lost the VFW on Budget Cuts, You've Lost America 12DEZ12

MY parents are retired and I know how the current COLA formula for Social Security effects them. The adjustment is never enough to cover the real cost of living. Now the government is considering a ploy called the "chained CPI" to cut Social Security and other benefits for the retired, vets and the poor while raising taxes on the middle class. We can not allow this to become a concession in the ongoing negotiations to avoid the fiscal cliff. We all need to e mail President Obama http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments
our Senators http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
and our Representative http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ 
and tell them the "chained CPI" plan must be rejected and in no way be a part of the fiscal cliff budget negotiations. Don't know what to say? Use talking points from the vets letter to Congress. Or you can check out the letter I emailed at the bottom of this post. REMEMBER, Congress is counting on NOT hearing from YOU! This from HuffPost.... 

The measure of a society’s progress is not whether it can give more to those who have more, but whether it can provide enough to those who have less.
- David Lim
 

The "chained CPI" is an attempt to camouflage deep cuts to Social Security and other benefits, along with tax hikes on middle class wages (but not for high incomes), in a forest of numbers and terminology.
Know who's expert at camouflage? Veterans. And a whole lot of their organizations hate the "chained CPI."
Sneaky ... But Simple
The headline for Derek Thompson's Atlantic piece calls the "chained CPI" "the sneaky, complicated idea that could end the fiscal cliff showdown." There's ongoing chatter that both parties might use it to solve their budget impasse, in large part because they think it's too complex and wonkish for voters to grasp.
But while it is sneaky, it's not that complicated. In fact, the "chained CPI" concept can be explained in one sentence: It calculates cost-of-living increases much more slowly than before, by subtracting the cost of the things you can't afford to buy anymore.
See? I did it in 22 words and 113 characters -- short enough to tweet.  I'll bet you understood it even if you hadn't heard of it before. And not only understood it, but sensed its implications: As a financially-strapped public downgrades from fresh food to canned food ... to cat food ... their benefits will keep plunging along with their way of life.
And yet hope springs eternal among policymakers. Last year the president even said that "most folks would hardly notice" if this cut to the government's cost-of-living adjustment was enacted. Guess what: The nation's veterans noticed.
Standing Up
A wide range of organizations representing the nation's veterans signed a joint letter to leaders in Congress which said "we are writing to express our opposition to changing the formula used to calculate the annual cost of living adjustment (COLA) because of the harmful effects it will have on veterans and Social Security benefits."
The organizations signing on to the letter (18 in all) spanned generations, with the Vietnam Veterans of America and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. It includes former enlisted personnel as well as the Military Officers Association of America. Gold Star Wives, an organization of widows and widowers whose spouses died while on active duty, was represented. And so was the VFW, or Veterans of Foreign Wars, an organization that had traditionally been staunchly conservative.
Here's a thought for politicians who might be considering the "chained CPI": When you've lost the VFW, you've lost America.
Getting It Right
Their letter's a cogent and very well-written analysis of this proposed benefit cut, which it rightly describes as a "misguided policy."  Here's a sample:

The average retirement benefit of a veteran receiving Social Security was about $15,500 in 2010 ... A veteran with average earnings retiring at age 65 would get nearly a $600 benefit cut at age 75, and a $1,000 cut at age 85. By age 95, when Social Security benefits are probably needed the most, that veteran would face a cut of $1,400 -- a reduction of 9.2 percent.

That's absolutely correct. The chained-CPI would also raises taxes for most Americans, and in a very backhanded way: by forcing people into higher tax brackets much more quickly. Know what wouldn't get a tax hike under the chained CPI?  Income above $250,000. The veterans' groups also quote Congressional Budget Office estimates of the chained CPI's deficit impact: $208 billion over 10 years through cuts to Social Security benefits, and through higher taxes -- on everybody but the wealthy. (They'd pay a little more, but the tax hikes would strike hardest at those in the $30-$40,000 income range, and would generally affect those earning $100,000 per year of less.)
The veterans note that roughly half this amount, $112 billion, "would come from Social Security cuts, which veterans rely on very heavily for both retirement and disability benefits."
"Another 11 percent of the savings," the letter notes, "would come from VA benefits, civilian pensions, and military retirement pay."
Eldernet
$208 billion also happens to be very close to my estimate of the amount our government will pay pharmaceutical companies for their bloated profit margins over the next 10 years. We could probably save $150 billion of that through negotiation and competition among drug providers -- but Congress has forced us to pay retail instead.
Think the elderly "won't notice"? Older Americans' viral email chains are dazzling to behold.  Once you get past all the crazy fonts in different sizes and colors -- and the GIF cartoon animations of cute animals and oldsters playing golf -- these emails keep them well informed about Social Security and Medicare.
And they don't need emails to tell them that their current cost-of-living adjustments can't keep up with their expenses.
(That's why economists have proposed the "CPI-E," a higher adjustment for the elderly and disabled who rely on items like medical care and transportation, which go up in cost more quickly than most other items.)
Attention Must Be Paid
Let's get this straight: The "chained CPI" takes money out of the pockets of veterans, the disabled, the elderly and everybody with a job -- except the wealthiest of the wealthy. And we could get the money from Big Pharma and other health profiteers instead.
It's opposed by the young and the old, the left and the right. So who's the constituency for this thing, anyway?
Silly question.
The polls are clear: Our elected officials were called to Washington for a different mission. Any politician who thinks they can infuriate pretty much the entire electorate because they'll have billionaire cash on their side just isn't paying attention.
The good news is that our nation's veterans have a lot of experience bringing recalcitrant recruits to attention.
THE LETTER I EMAILED TO PRES OBAMA, SENS WARNER & WEBB, AND REP WOLF...
The "chained CPI" proposal is wrong for the country and must not be a concession in the negotiations to avoid the fiscal cliff. You can not give in on this matter. It is a dirty, sneaky ploy that will hurt the middle class, retirees, vets and the poor. The average retirement benefit of a veteran receiving Social Security was about $15,500 in 2010 ... A veteran with average earnings retiring at age 65 would get nearly a $600 benefit cut at age 75, and a $1,000 cut at age 85. By age 95, when Social Security benefits are probably needed the most, that veteran would face a cut of $1,400 -- a reduction of 9.2 percent. The $208 billion realized if the "chained CPI" is enacted can be offset by $150 billion if Congress would require drug cost negotiation and competition instead of looking for ways to protect big Pharmas profit margins. DO NOT ENACT "CHAINED CPI" ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

Follow Richard (RJ) Eskow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjeskow 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/when-youve-lost-the-vfw-o_b_2289211.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications 

12 Things You Should Know About Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan 11AUG12

paul ryan r WI and mitt romney's pick for his running mate is like Dr Evil's minni-me, but there is nothing to laugh about if you understand the threat this team presents to the middle class, the working class, the working poor, the retired, disabled, women, students, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. A primer from Think Progress....

Mitt Romney has picked as his running mate 42 year-old Republican Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the architect of the GOP budget, which the New York Times has described as “the most extreme budget plan passed by a house of Congress in modern times.” Below are 12 things you should know about Ryan and his policies:
1. Embraces extreme individualism. Ryan heaped praise on Ayn Rand, a 20th-century libertarian novelist best known for her philosophy that centered on the idea that selfishness is “virtue.” Rand described altruism as “evil,” condemned Christianity for advocating compassion for the poor, viewed the feminist movement as “phony,” and called Arabs “almost totally primitive savages. Though he publicly rejected “her philosophy” in 2012, Ryan had professed himself a strong devotee. “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” he said at a D.C. gathering honoring the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” “I give out ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well… I try to make my interns read it.” Learn more about Ryan’s muse:

2. Raises taxes on the middle class, cuts them for millionaires. Paul Ryan’s infamous budget — which Romney embraced — replaces “the current tax structure with two brackets — 25 percent and 10 percent — and cut the top rate from 35 percent.” Federal tax collections would fall “by about $4.5 trillion over the next decade” as a result and to avoid increasing the national debt, the budget proposes massive cuts in social programs and “special-interest loopholes and tax shelters that litter the code.” But 62 percent of the savings would come from programs that benefit the lower- and middle-classes, who would also experience a tax increase. That’s because while Ryan “would extend the Bush tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of this year, he would not extend President Obama’s tax cuts for those with the lowest incomes, which will expire at the same time.” Households “earning more than $1 million a year, meanwhile, could see a net tax cut of about $300,000 annually.”
Audiences have booed Ryan for the unfair distribution:

3. Dramatically increases Medicare costs for seniors, increases eligibility age. Ryan’s latest budget transforms the existing version of Medicare, in which government provides seniors with a guaranteed benefit, into a “premium support” system. All future retirees would receive a government contribution to purchase insurance from an exchange of private plans or traditional fee-for-service Medicare. But since the premium support voucher does not keep up with increasing health care costs, the Congressional Budget Offices estimates that new beneficiaries could pay up to $1,200 more by 2030 and more than $5,900 more by 2050. A recent study also found that had the plan been implemented in 2009, 24 million beneficiares enrolled in the program would have paid higher premiums to maintain their choice of plan and doctors. Ryan would also raise Medicare’s age of eligibility to 67.
4. Leaves Social Security to the whims of Wall Street. In September of 2011, Ryan agreed with Rick Perry’s characterization of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme” and since 2005 has advocated for privatizing the retirement benefit and investing it in stocks and bonds. Conservatives claim that this would “outperform the current formula based on wages earned and overall wage appreciation,” but the economic crisis of 2008 should serve as a wake-up call for policymakers who seek to hinge Americans’ retirement on the stock market. In fact, “a person with a private Social Security account similar to what President George W. Bush proposed in 2005″ would have lost much of their retirement savings.
5. Budget would result in 4.1 million lost jobs in 2 years. Ryan’s budget calls for massive reductions in government spending. He has proposed cutting discretionary programs by about $120 billion over the next two years and mandatory programs by $284 billion, which, the Economic Policy Institute estimates, would suck demand out of the economy and “reduce employment by 1.3 million jobs in fiscal 2013 and 2.8 million jobs in fiscal 2014, relative to current budget policies.”
6. Eliminates Pell Grants for more more than 1 million students. Ryan’s budget claims both that rising financial aid is driving college tuition costs upward, and that Pell Grants, which help cover tuition costs for low-income Americans, don’t go to the “truly needy.” So he cuts the Pell Grant program by $200 billion, which could “ultimately knock more than one million students off” the program over the next 10 years.
7. Keeps $40 billion in subsidies for Big Oil. In 2011, Ryan joined all House Republicans and 13 Democrats in his vote to keep Big Oil tax loopholes as part of the FY 2011 spending bill. His budget would retain a decade’s worth of oil tax breaks worth $40 billion, while cutting “billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil.” For instance, it “calls for a $3 billion cut in energy programs in FY 2013 alone” and would spend only $150 million over five years — or 20 percent of what was invested in 2012 — on energy programs.
8. Family stands to benefit from oil subsidies. Ryan “and his wife, Janna, own stakes in four family companies that lease land in Texas and Oklahoma to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryan’s budget plan,” the Daily Beast reported in June of 2011. “Ryan’s father-in-law, Daniel Little, who runs the companies, told Newsweek and The Daily Beast that the family companies are currently leasing the land for mining and drilling to energy giants such as Chesapeake Energy, Devon, and XTO Energy, a recently acquired subsidiary of ExxonMobil.”
9. Claimed Romneycare has led to “rationing and benefit cuts.” “I’m not a fan of [Romney's health care reform] system,” Ryan told C-SPAN in 2010. He argued that government is rationing care in the state and claimed that people are “seeing the system bursting by the seams, they’re seeing premium increases, rationing and benefit cuts.” He called the system “a fatal conceit” and “unsustainable.” Watch it:

10. Believes that Romneycare is “not that dissimilar to Obamacare.” Though Romney has gone to great lengths to distinguish his Massachusetts health care law from Obamacare, Romney doesn’t see the difference. “It’s not that dissimilar to Obamacare, and you probably know I’m not a big fan of Obamacare,” Ryan said at a breakfast meeting sponsored by the American Spectator in March of 2011. “I just don’t think the mandates work … all the regulation they’ve put on it…I think it’s beginning to death spiral. They’re beginning to have to look at rationing decisions.”
11. Accused generals of lying about their support for Obama’s military budget. In March, Ryan couldn’t believe that Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey supports Obama’s Pentagon budget, which incorporates $487 billion in cuts over 10 years. “We don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice,” Ryan said at a policy summit hosted by the National Journal. “We don’t think the generals believe that their budget is really the right budget.” He later apologized for the implication. Watch it:

12. Co-sponsored a personhood amendment. Ryan joined 62 other Republicans in co-sponsoring the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which declares that a fertilized egg “shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.” This would outlaw abortion, some forms of contraception and invitro fertilization.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/08/11/677171/12-things-you-should-know-about-vice-presidential-candidate-paul-ryan/?mobile=nc

Romney caught red-handed 10AUG12 & The Romney Plan (Updated)

WITH the information he has made available multiple sources have determined mitt romney's tax plan for America will increase taxes on the 99% while continuing tax breaks for the rich 1% and continues corporate welfare. His supporters say it isn't true, but they and romney himself have not offered any proof these claims are false. Check this out from MoveOn.org and the Tax Policy Center.....

Mitt Romney has a creepy hand. We mean that literally—and we made an ad you're not gonna forget that shows his hand creeping into OUR pockets. Because to pay for tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, he's going to take it right from the middle class.

Incredibly, Mitt's tax plan would actually cost up to $2,000 for middle class families while giving a $87,000 tax cut to rich people like him.¹ Taking that money away would not only harm a lot of struggling families, it could drive us into another recession.²

Too many people think Republicans want to cut taxes for them, when all Romney wants to do is give more tax breaks to the rich. So we've got to get the word out about Mitt sticking his hand into middle-class pockets.

Share this ad with your friends and spread the word about Mitt's creepy hand.

Thanks for all you do.

–Justin, Steven, Ryan, Joan, and the rest of the team

P.S. MoveOn members are sharing their stories of what a $2,000 Romney tax hike would take from them. Click here to add your photo message to our growing Tumblr.

Sources:

1. "New Analysis Shows Romney Tax Plan Would Raise Taxes On Middle Class Families By More Than $2,000," ThinkProgress, August 1, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278200&id=&t=6&id=48486-17549061-IUCECix&t=3

"Study: Romney tax plan would result in cuts for rich, higher burden for others," The Washington Post, August 1, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278241&id=&t=7&id=48486-17549061-IUCECix&t=4

2. "Romney's "Recovery Plan" Could Bring On Another Recession," The New Yorker, August 2, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278435&id=48486-17549061-IUCECix&t=6

Want to support our work? We're entirely funded by our 7 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

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PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. 

The Romney Plan (Updated)

In his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney has proposed permanently extending the 2001-03 tax cuts, further cutting individual income tax rates, broadening the tax base by reducing tax preferences, eliminating taxation of investment income of most individual taxpayers, reducing the corporate income tax, eliminating the estate tax, and repealing the alternative minimum tax (AMT) and the taxes enacted in 2010’s health reform legislation. The Tax Policy Center (TPC) has completed a preliminary analysis of the Romney plan, based on information posted on the campaign website and email exchanges with campaign policy advisors. Because we have received no details on proposals to reduce tax preferences, the TPC analysis does not include those proposals.¹

 View this page as a PDF                                                             Summary tables are available here    
   
Description of Plan

Governor Romney would permanently extend all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts now scheduled to expire in 2013, repeal the AMT and certain tax provisions in the 2010 health reform legislation, and cut individual income tax rates by an additional 20 percent. He would also expand the tax base by cutting back tax preferences, but has supplied no information on which preferences would be reduced. Tax provisions in the 2009 stimulus act and subsequently extended through 2012 would expire. These include the American Opportunity tax credit for higher education, the expanded refundability of the child credit, and the expansion of the earned income tax credit (EITC). The plan would also eliminate tax on long-term capital gains, dividends, and interest income for married couples filing jointly with income under $200,000 ($100,000 for single filers and $150,000 for heads of household) and repeal the federal estate tax, while continuing the gift tax with a maximum tax rate of 35 percent.²

The plan would reduce the six current income tax rates by one-fifth, bringing the top rate down from 35 percent to 28 percent and the bottom rate from 10 percent to 8 percent. The accompanying repeal of the AMT would increase the tax savings from the rate cuts—without that repeal, the AMT would reclaim much of the tax savings.
The plan would recoup the revenue loss caused by those changes by reducing or eliminating unspecified tax breaks, thereby making more income subject to tax. Gov. Romney says that the reductions in tax breaks, in combination with moderately faster economic growth brought about by lower tax rates, will make the individual income tax changes revenue neutral compared with simply extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. He also promises that low- and middle-income households will pay no larger shares of federal taxes than they do now.
At the corporate level, the Romney plan would make two major changes: 1) reduce the corporate income tax rate from 35 to 25 percent and 2) make the research and experimentation credit permanent, It would also extend for one year the full expensing of capital expenditures and allow a “tax holiday” for the repatriation of corporate profits held overseas. The plan does not specify, however, whether repatriated earnings would face any tax and, if so, at what rate. In the longer run, Gov. Romney would reduce the corporate rate further in conjunction with base broadening and simplification and would move the corporate tax to a territorial system.
Gov. Romney would also permanently repeal the 0.9 percent tax on wages and the 3.8 percent tax on investment income of high-income individual taxpayers that were imposed by the 2010 health reform legislation and are scheduled to take effect in 2013.
Because Gov. Romney has not specified how he would increase the tax base, it is impossible to determine how the plan would affect federal tax revenues or the distribution of the tax burden. TPC has analyzed instead the effects of the specified proposals in the Romney plan. These estimates provide a guide as to how much the base broadening would need to raise taxes in different income groups to achieve the plan’s targets.
TPC’s analysis measures the change in tax liabilities against two alternative baselines: current law, which assumes that the 2001-10 tax cuts all expire in 2013 as scheduled, and current policy, which assumes that the 2011 law is permanent (except for the one-year payroll tax cut and temporary investment incentives).³ Compared with the current law baseline, the Romney plan (absent base broadening) would cut taxes for about three-fourths of taxpayers by an average of more than $7,000. In contrast, compared with current policy, about 11 percent of tax units would see their 2015 taxes go up an average of nearly $900 while 70 percent would get tax cuts averaging almost $4,300. The tax increases reflect the expiration of three provisions enacted in 2009: the American Opportunity Tax Credit and the expansion of the earned income credit and the child credit.
Also in the absence of such base broadening, TPC estimates that on a static basis, the Romney plan would lower federal tax liability by about $900 billion in calendar year 2015 compared with current law, roughly a 24 percent cut in total projected revenue. Relative to a current policy baseline, the reduction in liability would be about $480 billion in calendar year 2015.
Sources

Tax: Fairer, Flatter, and Simpler

Appendix: Detailed List of Assumptions Underlying Analysis
Based on the campaign's summary and Gov. Romney’s statements, TPC assumes that the 2001-03 tax cuts become permanent but that temporary tax cuts enacted in 2009 and 2010 are allowed to expire. Provisions that are permanently extended include marriage penalty relief, the 0 percent and15 percent tax rates on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends, and the higher amounts and increased refundability of the earned income tax credit and child tax credit enacted in 2001. The American Opportunity tax credit would expire and be replaced by the permanent Hope tax credit for higher education. The temporary reduction in the phase-in threshold for refundability of the child credit and the increase in the EITC for larger families enacted in 2009 would also expire in 2013 as scheduled.
Individual income tax rates decline by 20 percent, as shown:

Current Rate        10%	15%	25%	28%	33%     35%
New Rate             8%	12%	20%	22.4%	26.4%   28%

Of particular importance are details of applying the exemption of investment income (long-term capital gains, dividends, and interest income) for most taxpayers with income less than threshold amounts ($200,000 for married couples, $100,000 for single returns and $150,000 for heads of households). We assume that all other income is counted first in determining whether investment income is subject to tax. Therefore, for any married couple with income from other sources above $200,000, all capital gains, dividends, and interest would continue to be subject to current tax rules.
For taxpayers with other income below the relevant threshold, the maximum exemption for investment equals the threshold minus other income. For example, a married couple with $150,000 of income from sources other than long-term gains, dividends, and interest would pay no tax on the first $50,000 of investment income and statutory tax rates on any investment income in excess of $50,000. This income would face current statutory rates—0 percent or 15 percent for long-term gains and qualified dividends and as high as 35 percent on other dividends and interest income.
Because non-qualified dividends and interest income would face higher statutory rates than long-term gains or qualified dividends, we assume that the former would be exempt ahead of the latter. Thus, a couple with $150,000 in other income, $40,000 in interest income, and $30,000 in qualified dividends would pay no tax on the interest income and $10,000 of the dividends but would pay tax on the remaining $20,000 of qualified dividend income.
The plan would allow businesses to continue to claim the research and experimentation credit, which is scheduled to expire under current law (but is assumed to be extended in the current policy baseline).

View this page as a PDF                                                    Summary tables are available here

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1 Gov. Romney’s tax plan is contained in “Tax: Fairer, Flatter, and Simpler." TPC obtained additional information about details of the plan  
from campaign policy advisors.

2 Gift tax provisions would follow 2010 law: $1 million lifetime exemption and a 35 percent top rate.

3 TPC assumes that the full burden of corporate income taxes falls on owners of capital in proportion to their income from capital. Under alternative assumptions that allocate some of the burden to workers, tax changes from the Romney plan would be distributed differently. Tax units with the highest income would receive smaller tax cuts on average and low- and middle-income tax units would receive slightly smaller average tax increases or slightly larger average tax cuts than the distribution tables show. The results shown in the distribution tables would be little changed for the bottom 99 percent of tax units and the overall pattern of tax changes would be qualitatively the same—the largest tax cuts as a share of after-tax income would go to the highest income taxpayers. 

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© Urban Institute, Brookings Institution, and individual authors, 2010. Site Map | Privacy Policy | Support TPC | Contact Us

http://taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/romney-plan.cfm 

Try out our new tax calculator 3AUG12

A tool to show you just how much MORE you will pay in taxes if mitt romney is elected. And check out my earlier post with analysis and discussion of the Obama and romney tax plans at Study: Romney Plan Increases Taxes On 95% Of Americans 1AUG12 & Study Says Romney's Tax Plan Would Most Benefit Wealthy Americans 2AUG12 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/study-romney-plan-increases-taxes-on-95.html

Try out our new tax calculator

A lot of times policy debates on the campaign trail can be a bit confusing. This one isn't.

A new report released this week runs the numbers on Mitt Romney's tax plan. To pay for the tax cuts he'd give to millionaires like himself, he'd actually raise taxes on middle-class families with children by an average of more than $2,000.

We've put together a new tool that lets you see for yourself -- take a look at our tax calculator and find out how each candidate's tax plan would affect you:

http://my.barackobama.com/Tax-Calculator

Study: Romney Plan Increases Taxes On 95% Of Americans 1AUG12 & Study Says Romney's Tax Plan Would Most Benefit Wealthy Americans 2AUG12

HERE is an analysis of mitt romney's tax plan for America, which will grant tax relief to the suffering rich and corporations by increasing taxes on 95% of all Americans. See more on the tax trials and tribulations of the rich in my earlier post Charts: America Has the World's Luckiest Billionaires 30JUL12
From Mother Jones and PBS News Hour...

—By Josh Harkinson

Mitt Romney has been on the defensive today over a new study that found his tax plan would most likely increase taxes on the middle class in order to pay for a hefty tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. The study (pdf) by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center scrutinizes Romney's plan to pay for a variety of tax cuts by closing tax loopholes. It concludes that under the most progressive approach possible, Romney's plan would give an $87,000 tax cut to people making more than $1 million a year but require 95 percent of Americans to pay more taxes—on average, $500 more per year.
"He's asking you to pay more so that people like him can get a big tax cut," Obama said from the campaign trail in Ohio today.
Romney has pushed back against the study, claiming that the Tax Policy Center (a wing of the Brookings Institution) is a "liberal" group. But as ThinkProgress points out, Romney praised the Tax Policy Center's analysis of Gov. Rick Perry's tax plan during the GOP primaries, calling it an "objective, third-party analysis."
Here's TPC's chart illustrating who will win and lose from Romney's tax plan:
Tax Policy Center and Brookings Institution

Josh Harkinson

Reporter

Josh Harkinson is a staff reporter at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. Email him with tips at jharkinson (at) motherjones (dot) com. To follow him on Twitter, click here. RSS | Twitter

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  http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/08/study-romney-plan-increases-taxes-95-americans 

  Study Says Romney's Tax Plan Would Most Benefit Wealthy Americans 2AUG12

   

  SUMMARY

  Romney's campaign is trying to win over middle class voters by promoting Mitt Romney's tax plan, which would lower individual tax rates. Judy Woodruff talks to Tax Policy Center's Bill Gale and Tax Foundation's Scott Hodge about a new study that states the rich, not the middle class, stand to benefit most from Romney's plan.

  
  

  Listen: MP3
  

  Transcript

  JUDY WOODRUFF: With fewer than 100 days to go until the November election, President Obama and Governor Romney spent today campaigning in battleground states, trading barbs on taxes and the economy.
  For the president and his Republican challenger, the day's stage was a pair of key states, and the intended audience, the middle class.
  

  Mitt Romney stumped in Golden, Colo., his first campaign event since returning from a weeklong overseas trip. Romney argued again that the president's policies have failed the middle class.
  MITT ROMNEY (R): Now, I know he will be able to speak eloquently and describe all the great things he's doing and what he's going to do, but look at the results.
  And you look at the results, and it's been a disappointment. His policies have not worked. They have not got America back to work again. I understand that it's small businesses that create jobs in America, that people create jobs, not government, and I'm going to get America working again.
  (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
  JUDY WOODRUFF: The Romney campaign also went up with a new television ad highlighting economic troubles in Florida, ahead of the president's visit there today.
  NARRATOR: But under President Obama, 8.6 percent unemployment, record foreclosures, 600,000 more Floridians in poverty. He focused on Obamacare, instead of jobs. Barack Obama, what a disappointment.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: The Obama campaign countered with its own new ad. It attacked Romney for paying just 14 percent of his income in taxes in 2010, and charged his tax reform proposal favors the rich.
  NARRATOR: Now he has a plan that would give millionaires another tax break and raises taxes on middle-class families by up to $2,000 a year. Mitt Romney's middle-class tax increase -- he pays less, you pay more.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: The president hit that same theme during an event this afternoon in Orlando.
  PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: They have tried to sell us this trickle-down tax cut fairy dust before.
  (LAUGHTER)
  PRESIDENT OBAMA: And guess what? It didn't work then. It will not work now. It is not a plan to create jobs. It is not a plan to reduce the deficit. It is not a plan to build our middle class. It is not a plan to move our economy forward.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Mr. Obama again highlighted a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that concluded Romney's proposal would provide large tax cuts to high-income households and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers.
  But Eric Fehrnstrom, a top Romney adviser, called the report -- quote -- "a joke" and raised questions about its impartiality and methodology. The sharpened debate on tax fairness underscores the importance both campaigns have placed on middle-class voters.
  A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll gave Mr. Obama a 16-point lead on Romney when it comes to who would better look out for the middle class.
  For a closer look at what exactly is in the Romney tax proposal at the heart of this political fight, we turn to Bill Gale of the Tax Policy Center. He is a co-author of the report in question. And Scott Hodge of the also nonpartisan Tax Foundation, he has a different read on the Romney plan.
  And, gentlemen, we thank you both for being with us.
  BILL GALE, Tax Policy Center: Thank you.
  SCOTT HODGE, Tax Foundation: Thank you.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Bill Gale, to you first.
  Just quickly, how do you respond to the Romney adviser who called this assessment a joke and he questioned its impartiality and methodology?
  BILL GALE: Well, first thing, let's be clear. That's a shoot-the-messenger kind of answer.
  If they had a substantive response to our analysis, I presume that they would make a substantive response. Last fall, when we put out analysis of the other Republican candidates' tax options, the Romney campaign liked our analysis a lot and said very nice things about us. So it seems like their opinion of us depends on whether we're reporting on what they do or what someone else does.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, Bill Gale, let me ask you what in a nutshell did the Tax Policy Center conclude about where the tax burden falls, assuming the Romney plan were enacted -- tax plan?
  BILL GALE: Well -- thank you.
  We did a very straightforward exercise. We said, Governor Romney wants to cut rates by 20 percent. He doesn't want to raise the rate on capital gains or dividends or other saving investments. But he wants his reform to be revenue-neutral.
  That means you have to raise the revenue somewhere else. We took the most optimistic way, the most progressive way to raise that revenue. And we showed that, even under those circumstances, there would be a big tax cut for high-income households and a tax increase for middle-income households.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: That's boiling it down to a great degree. But...
  BILL GALE: Yes, and what I want to emphasize is it's a matter of arithmetic. It is not some incredibly fancy calculation.
  It's simply that, if you cut tax rates for high-income households, you lose so much revenue there, that you can't make it up by shutting down the tax exemptions that high-income tax households have.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Scott Hodge, what do you make of this analysis from the Tax Center?
  SCOTT HODGE: Well, I think you have to be fair and what Bill and the Brookings have done is, I think, a pretty reasonable assessment.
  But you have to understand that it is not an analysis of the Romney plan. The -- Romney has only set out some very, very broad parameters in terms of tax policy, in terms of cutting the individual rates, all of them by 20 percent, cutting the corporate rate by 10 percentage points.
  But what Brookings did was actually fill in a lot of this unknowns with their own assumptions and then analyzed it. So this is not technically an analysis of the Romney plan. It is one option for how to get from here to there.
  There are many ways in which Romney could fill out the details of his plan. They of course are not forthcoming with that, because they would like to keep to a big-picture approach. So we have to be very careful about reading too much into this, because it really is not the Romney plan.
  (CROSSTALK)
  JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, so filling in a lot of assumptions, what about that?
  BILL GALE: Let me respond to that.
  It's correct that Governor Romney has not specified all the details of his tax reform plan. He has specified the goodies, the tax cuts, but he's not specified how he will pay for them. If he would do so...
  (CROSSTALK)
  SCOTT HODGE: He may not even pay for them. He may decide that we are going to scrap revenue neutrality.
  BILL GALE: No. Well, he has said he wants it to be revenue-neutral.
  (CROSSTALK)
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Revenue-neutral, meaning money is not raised -- that taxes are not raised.
  BILL GALE: Exactly, meaning, on net, the average tax cut is zero.
  So we took the options that he said he wanted. And then, when we filled in how to pay for that, we did that in a way that -- that fills it in most by taxing high-income households, OK? So if Romney wants to finance his tax cuts with spending cuts, that's going to be even more regressive, because spending cuts go largely to low- and middle-income households.
  So we -- we made what is the most optimistic assumptions in the filling-in part, and still came out to the conclusion that I mentioned.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: What about that explanation?
  SCOTT HODGE: Well, one of the most interesting aspects of the study is that it really confirms how progressive our current income tax system is.
  And what the study unfortunately doesn't show is that about half of all Americans pay no income taxes whatsoever. And the vast majority of income taxes are paid by the top. In fact, a recent CBO study shows that the top 20 percent of taxpayers pays 94 percent of all income taxes.
  And so, they are correct. It's mathematically impossible to cut all tax rates without somewhat benefiting the rich, because the rich are the only ones paying income taxes. Meanwhile, we have half of all Americans paying no income taxes whatsoever and benefiting from about $100 billion of refundable tax credits, even though they pay no income taxes.
  So, we're going to have to have a big decision here on tax reform. Do we put some of those non-payers back on the tax rolls, and how many should avoid paying taxes?
  JUDY WOODRUFF: What other -- what more information would you have needed, Bill Gale, in order to make a fuller, a more complete analysis of the Romney plan?
  BILL GALE: Well, he -- the governor would simply have to specify how he wanted to pay for the rate cuts that he wants.
  He had specified that he doesn't want to raise dividend and capital gains tax rates. But he hasn't specified any other way of paying for the tax cuts.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: And what's your sense of why he hasn't done that?
  SCOTT HODGE: Well, because, the more details you put out there, the more room that you have for others to shoot holes in it.
  And I think what wants to do -- and I'm not a surrogate for the Romney camp, by any means -- I think what they are trying to do is stay to the big picture and talk about the bigger issues here and that their belief is that when you cut marginal tax rates, you see economic growth.
  And they have a lot of research behind their belief in that. And I think that that is the message that they are trying to...
  (CROSSTALK)
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Does that show up in your analysis, that there's more...
  (CROSSTALK)
  BILL GALE: We do have some behavioral responses. And we did analysis allowing a growth effect.
  
  The growth effects of revenue-neutral tax reform can be vastly overstated. Congressional Budget Office, Joint Committee on Taxation has done analysis showing relatively small effects. In 1986, we had a big revenue-neutral tax reform. We didn't get a big growth effect out of that.
  And the answer is because the net -- the reason why is that the -- essentially, the average marginal tax rate doesn't end up changing that much in a revenue-neutral reform.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Respond to that.
  SCOTT HODGE: Well, there are lots of ways to get from here to there.
  And if you designed it in one way, you are going to get poorer results. If you design it in a more pro-growth manner, you can get vastly better outcomes.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Bill Gale, do you at the Tax Policy Center plan to do an assessment of the Obama tax reform plan?
  BILL GALE: We have done assessments of the president's budget every year when it comes out, in fact, assessments that are much more detailed than and extensive than this particular paper that came out yesterday.
  We have done estimates of the Republican candidates' tax reform plans. We will continue to estimate anything we can get our hands on, basically.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, we are going leave it there.
  Scott Hodge, we thank you very much with the Tax Foundation.
  SCOTT HODGE: Thank you very much.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Bill Gale with the Tax Policy Center.
  Gentlemen, thank you.
  BILL GALE: Thank you.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: And you can watch both candidates in action on the campaign trail today. We have posted their full speeches on our Politics page.
  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec12/campaign_08-02.html
   

10 concluding thoughts on Ryan’s budget 6APR11 & So which is it: The Ryan tax, or the Ryan deficit? 8APR11

rep paul ryan r WI is typical of the extreme right wing gop/tea-bagger extremist in the House that are determined to enrich the rich and increase the profits of corporate America on the backs of the poor and the working and middle classes of this nation. He is a political whore, serving those with money and power, working to increase the economic disparity in the U.S. and so hasten the plutocracy demanded by the greed of the wealthy to replace our Republic in everything but name. If the gop and tea-baggers get their way we really will descend economically to Third World status.

By Jonathan Bernstein

Paul Ryan and the Republicans really owe everyone an answer to one major question about their plan: does it include a massive new middle-class tax increase, or does it explode the deficit?
CAP’s Michael Linden makes an important point about Ryan’s budget : It calls for revenues to stay the same despite a good deal of (specified) upper-income tax cuts. He concludes from this that the vague allusions to ending some tax expenditures really means a very large middle-class tax increase will be necessary to achieve those revenues. He could be right! On the other hand, I’ve focused more on the clearly bogus economic assumptions underlying the revenue forecasts, and I’ve conclude that what’s really going on here is phony numbers.
In other words, if actually enacted, Ryan’s budget would just produce huge deficits — just as Ronald Reagan’s budgets and George W. Bush’s budgets did when they used similar forecasts.
As far as I can tell, none of the information Ryan has provided gives enough information to prove either the “huge tax increase” or the “huge deficit” theory correct (see a lot more about the math from Ezra Klein).
Bruce Bartlett tries to at least figure out how large the revenue gap might be, noting that the difference between Ryan’s promised revenues in his budget and the revenues realized from his Roadmap version of the proposal would be some 2.2% of GDP. That’s probably the best estimate one can make at this point of the size of the middle-class tax increase, or additional deficit, built into the Ryan budget.
So which is it: Is it a tax increase, or more deficits? It sure would be nice for Ryan to let everyone know the answer before the House is asked to vote on his budget.

By Jonathan Bernstein  |  05:17 PM ET, 04/08/2011

Posted at 06:59 PM ET, 04/06/2011

10 concluding thoughts on Ryan’s budget

By Ezra Klein

Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin and chairman of the House Budget Committee, speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, April 5, 2011. (Joshua Roberts - Bloomberg News)
As my earlier post on controlling medical costs suggests, I’m in a listmaking mood. I’ve also been wanting to somehow summarize my last two days of blogging on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget. So here are 10 concluding thoughts.
1) Ryan’s suggestion that Medicare and Medicaid can or should be held to the rate of inflation is absurd. His budget has no way of making that happen, save for draconian cuts in both (this goes far, far beyond “means-testing”). And you don’t have to take it from me. Alice Rivlin, an eminent budget expert and co-author of Ryan’s original Medicare proposal, will tell you the same thing. But those cuts are how he saves so much money going forward. They’re the assumptions that make the rest of the budget work. And they’re essentially no less ridiculous than predicting that unemployment under Ryan’s budget will drop to 2.8 percent.
2) The idea that conservatives believe the savings in Ryan’s plan are realistic while those in the Affordable Care Act aren’t boggles the mind. For one thing, Ryan includes the supposedly unrealistic savings from the Affordable Care Act; they can’t be realistic in Ryan’s budget but not realistic in the ACA. For another, the ACA’s savings are more modest, and the law has many, many more ways to attain them than simply saying “the government promises not to spend more than inflation, even if spending less means millions of seniors and disabled Americans will have no health care.” I spent a lot of time taking conservative arguments on the ACA’s half-dozen cost control mechanisms seriously — including in a conversation with, yes, Paul Ryan — so watching Ryan propose this budget is both frustrating and disillusioning.
3) I suspect Ryan capped Medicare and Medicaid at the rate of inflation rather than at GDP+1% because when he used GDP+1%, he couldn’t get the numbers to add up without including some tax increases.
4) The budget is much more regressive than I thought it would be. In the first 10 years, it has $4 trillion in program cuts, and most of them are coming from programs that primarily serve low-income or otherwise vulnerable Americans. In our previous conversations, Ryan was always been quick to say that government should help the truly vulnerable. This budget evinces none of that compassion.
5) The implication of the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis isn’t just that seniors would pay more for less under Ryan’s Medicare reform but that the gap between Ryan’s plan and traditional Medicare would grow over time. That suggests Ryan’s plan isn’t just shifting costs without cutting total costs but that it’s shifting costs while increasing total costs. I don’t know that people have grappled with that yet.
6) This is related to No. 5, but there’s a big difference between cutting costs and shifting them. Cutting medical care for the disabled doesn’t cut the cost of their care; it just means someone who isn’t the federal government has to pay it. Solving a problem for the federal government isn’t worth that much if it comes at the cost of creating a problem of equal or greater size for individual households.
7) The difference between Ryan’s treatment of spending that occurs through the tax code and Ryan’s treatment of spending that occurs through programs is both instructive and disappointing. On the one hand, he’s willing to slash Medicaid to reduce the deficit. On the other hand, when he slashes the deduction for employer-provided health-care insurance, he’s only willing to use it to lower tax rates. He could’ve slashed regressive tax expenditures to pay down the deficit and preserved Pell Grants.
8) The Heritage Foundation has done itself some serious damage.
9) People don’t realize that if you drill into any deficit reduction plan, what really cuts the deficit are caps on new spending or promises about future taxes. So the question is always whether the proposal has a credible way to make those caps work. On this measure, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s proposal (otherwise known as Rivlin-Domenici) remains the gold standard.
10) Speaking of Alice Rivlin, Ryan has been suggesting she supports his plan when she doesn’t. He also said they had consequential disagreements about the Medicare exchanges that, as far as Rivlin knows, didn’t exist . That matters because it has implications for whether Ryan has been honest in his assessment of the Affordable Care Act. This is misdirection at best and dishonesty at worst.
Some readers have asked (and, in some cases, challenged) me to interview Paul Ryan about his budget. I’ve put in repeated requests to his office, but I haven’t gotten a reply. As always, however, I’d be happy to let Ryan lay out his case and response in conversation with me and post the transcript. Also, no reconciliation today. I think I’m all listed out.

By Ezra Klein  |  06:59 PM ET, 04/06/2011