President Obama Asks Students to Tell Congress: #DontDoubleMyRate 24APR12 & Will a Young Generation's Dreams Be Rescued -- Or Bundled and Sold on Wall Street? 25APR12

AT a time when student loan debt exceeds credit card debt in America Congress is deadlocked in addressing the issue because the repiglicans and tea-baggers are committed to protecting the interest of the financial-banking cabal on wall street and the corporate tax loopholes of the wealthy who own them and big oil. Congressional Democrats are exploring increasing taxes on millionaires or cutting tax breaks for big oil to pay for student loan debt relief, repiglicans and tea-baggers want to take money from funding for health care. They want to transfer the burden of debt for the poor, working and middle classes from education debt to medical debt rather than require those who should be paying more to do so. No matter how this turns out students and their families need to remember who was and is on their side when they vote in November. This from HuffPost and the WH....

President Obama was at the University of North Carolina this afternoon asking students to tell their members of Congress one thing: Don’t double my rates.

Five years ago, Congress cut the rates on federal student loans in half. That was a good thing to do. But on July 1st -- that’s a little over two months from now -- that rate cut expires.  And if Congress does nothing, the interest rates on those loans will double overnight.... And just to give you some sense of perspective -- for each year that Congress doesn’t act, the average student with these loans will rack up an additional $1,000 in debt -- an extra thousand dollars.  That’s basically a tax hike for more than 7 million students across America -- more than 160,000 students here in North Carolina alone.

President Obama said that stopping this from happening -- and helping more young people afford college -- should be a no-brainer because in today's economy, a college degree is an economic imperative:

In today’s economy, there is no greater predictor of individual success than a good education.  Right now, the unemployment rate for Americans with a college degree or more is about half the national average.  Their incomes are twice as high as those who don’t have a high school diploma.

And a college education –whether from a two-year or four-year school – shouldn’t be something that only some families can afford. A good education should be within reach for all students willing to work for it. But tuition and fees at America’s colleges have more than doubled since today’s college students were born, and students are taking on more debt to pay for it.
President Obama has worked to help more young people and their families afford a higher education. His Administration is offering incentives for states, colleges, and universities to keep costs down. And now he’s calling on Congress to do their part, and he’s asking students to help make sure they do.

But I’m asking everyone else who’s watching or following online -- call your member of Congress. Email them. Write on their Facebook page. Tweet them -- we’ve got a hashtag. Here’s the hashtag for you to tweet them:  #dontdoublemyrate. All right?  I’m going to repeat that -- the hashtag is #dontdoublemyrate.  
... Your voice matters. Stand up. Be heard. Be counted. Tell them now is not the time to double the interest rate on your student loans. Now is the time to double down on smart investments that build a strong and secure middle class. Now is the time to double down on an America that’s built to last.

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Learn more:

• How will students who go to school in your state be affected if rates on student loans double?
• President Obama's plan to help make college more affordable: Everything you need to know

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on student loan interest rates, at Carmichael Arena, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, April 24, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy) 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/04/24/president-obama-asks-students-tell-congress-dontdoublemyrate?utm_source=042512&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=daily 

Will a Young Generation's Dreams Be Rescued -- Or Bundled and Sold on Wall Street?

 Interest rates for student loans will double on July 1 unless Congress acts. That's outrageous -- but the fiscal abuse of our nation's young people runs far deeper than that. An entire generation has been trapped into debt servitude and joblessness by the implacable machinery of Wall Street greed. Bank-servile scolds insult the young people of America while the bankers' economic engines strip-mine their financial future.
Jobless or overextended college graduates aren't even allowed to declare bankruptcy -- a privilege that's extended to every reckless investor and mismanaged corporation in the nation. Once they finally find work, college graduates face years of garnished wages to repay the loans that funded their often-overpriced educations. If they haven't repaid that debt by the time they grow old -- a very real possibility at the cost of a college education today -- they'll even be forced to surrender part of their Social Security benefits.
That's indentured servitude.
Meanwhile banks have been slicing and dicing student loans into derivative financial instruments called "SLABS" -- student-loan asset backed securities. We've seen this movie before -- the one where big banks mass-market loans to a population with stagnated wages and dwindling economic prospects, then bundle them and sell them to investors who haven't reviewed the way they were underwritten and sold.
Hey, what could go wrong?
It's true that many of these packaged debts are backed by the U.S. government -- but not all of them.
Why are these graduates facing such a bleak job market? Because Wall Street's gambling on other financial bets crashed the economy, leaving an entire generation without much of a future to give them optimism and hope. Their parents can't help them much, because most of their assets were taken by Wall Street, too. So as an entire generation of college students graduates with unprecedented debt -- and joblessness that's unprecedented in modern memory -- they're looking forward to a lifetime of reduced expectations.
And just like their parents, these young people are being told the the banks aren't the problem: They are.
Half of today's college graduates are un- or under-employed. The total amount owed on student loans is greater than our country's entire credit card debt. The banks were rescued in a multi-billion dollar bailout (that did not turn a profit), but If anybody talks about a WPA-like program to rescue young people the bank-funded political crowd gasps in horror.
Instead of help, young people get comments like this now-notorious one from perenially ignorant GOP representative Virginia (Ginny) Foxx: " I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there's no reason for that."
Ginny Foxx is acting out the last in a four-step process to crush the soul and spirit of a generation:
First, cut funding for colleges and universities throughout the country, driving the cost of a college education out of reach of most Americans. And while you're at it, play footsie with the for-profit college industry, giving out student loans for paper mills that churn out worthless diplomas at inflated prices -- but whatever you do, don't tell the students that!
Second, lobby to "privatize" much of the student loan industry. Turn Sallie Mae, the agency created to help students, into a greed-driven get-rich-quick scheme for greedy executives (See "Sallie Mae's Jets") who used government money to lobby for their own get-rich-quick schemes and turned the student loan program into a taxpayer-funded money tree for already-rich bankers. (To their great credit, the Obama Administration and Democrats on the Hill did a great deal to roll back this part of the greed machine with last year's student reform law.)
Third, deregulate Wall Street and allow them to wreck the economy, forcing an entire generation to face the bleakest job future in modern memory.
Fourth, condemn them for their own situation. That distracts some people from the real cause of this generational misery.
Blame the victim: It's the oldest game in the world. In fact, it's exactly what was done to many of their parents when they bought their homes. They convinced them that homes would rise in value forever, sometimes hired crooked appraisers to inflate their homes' value, encouraged them to take out loans on that inflated value -- and then, when the bubble burst, convinced a lot of people that the real problem in this country is 'greedy homeowners.'
But this time it may not work. There are too many young people, and too many parents, who have learned how the game works. They may not stand for it a second time.
There's another reason why it won't work -- and why Mitt Romney is suddenly the voice of reason, urging his fellow Republicans not to let these interest rates double. If they do rise after July 1, a lot of students will be unable to pay their debts. Not all of those loans are backed by the government, so a lot of banks will be hurt.
Republicans don't want that to happen -- so expect a lot of conversions to "reasonableness" in the coming weeks. The delinquency rates for these loans may be higher than originally believed, and there's reason to believe it could go much higher as more students graduate into a bleak job market. The financial industry is beginning to worry.
It should worry. So should all of the investors who have bought those "SLABS." Between the politics and the economics, Republicans would be crazy to let these interest rates soar. But then, they've done lots of crazy things lately ...
Our financial system can't afford another shock. That's another reason why the Administration's additional proposals for easing student loan debt should be passed immediately, especially the "pay as you earn" and "forgiveness in 20 years" (or less) provisions.
But that isn't enough. We owe the next generation a lot more than what's being offered. We owe them nothing less than a national program of jobs -- a program that will give them experience, income and a sense of restored optimism about the future.
Students also deserve the chance to pay off their loans altogether by taking on tough jobs (with salaries) that help society, as well as themselves. (There's some reduction in the length of the loan under the current system, but it should be improved.)
And yes, we should be talking about forgiveness.
It's surprising that we haven't seen more student protests like those that have gripped Quebec. The Occupy Student Debt Campaign may be the first step in that direction.
Think about it: One trillion dollars in loans -- loans that look increasingly risky with every month that passes. A generation that was tricked into borrowing for their educations -- in many cases for an overpriced or useless diploma, and in many other cases at costs that were driven sky-high by the selfishness and false economy of their elders.
And now, instead of helping our kids, we're letting people like Ginny Foxx demonize them. Or we're letting candidates like Mitt Romney say all the right things, then push for only the bare minimum needed to placate the public -- and protect the banks, which is their real agenda.
The choice is simple, really: We can do the right thing by the nation's young people -- or we can let the banks slice and dice their futures and sell them to unwary buyers. We can give our kids the chance for a decent life, or let their hopes be run through the Wall Street meat grinder.
We welcomed them into this world with promises. Will we sell their dreams to Wall Street to be carted away on SLABs?
Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future and the host of The Breakdown, broadcast Saturdays nights from 7-9 pm on WeAct Radio, AM 1480 in Washington DC.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/will-a-young-generations_b_1454273.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications 

$0 IN FEDERAL INCOME TAX 5APR12

LET your Representative and Senators know you expect them to pass the Buffett Rule. Democracy is not a spectator sport so all Americans should contact their Senators http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm 
and their Representative https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
and tell them you want the Buffett Rule passed, NOW.

$0 in Federal Income Tax In 2009, 1,470 millionaires paid $0 in federal income tax. Meanwhile, millions of middle class families paid their fair share in taxes—funding things like education, our military, and health care for seniors. That's why President Obama proposed the Buffett Rule, so that no household making more than $1 million each year pays a smaller share of their income in taxes than a middle class family pays. Find out more about the Buffett Rule:

Freshman Republican Proposes Millionaires’ Tax 15MAR12

WOW!!!!! Rep Rick Crawford R AR is a brave man, and a honest man too! His constituents in Arkansas can be proud of him for bringing reality to the debate about the deficit, taxes, the 1% and federal government spending. From the Daily Agenda.....

 

Following the lead of the Patriotic Millionaires, Rep. Rick Crawford plans on introducing legislation next week that would impose a surtax on individuals making more than a million dollars per year. One Arkansas paper commentator noted that Crawford will surely get flack from the Grand Tax Poobah Grover Norquist, but Crawford seems to understand, unlike his conservative cohorts, that we currently have a tax crisis, not a spending problem.

Congressional leaders reach spending deal to avoid government shutdown 15DEZ11

HOW are the issues and concerns of the 99% addressed in this agreement? The payroll tax break isn't part of the deal, unemployment benefits haven't been extended, the keystone xl pipeline may still be one of the riders in legislation and there is more interference in the lives of the citizens of D.C. along with funding cuts for the EPA and education. The 1% come out ahead, as usual.....no surtax on millionaires, no cuts to corporate welfare, no closing major corporate tax loopholes, no cuts impacting the profit margins of those merchants of death controlling the Pentagon. Congress is waging class warfare on 99% of the country and Pres Obama has become the Commander-In-Chief of this force of 535 whose motto has become to serve and protect the obscenely rich, the greedy, the corporate welfare queens and the military-industrial complex.

Congressional negotiators signed off Thursday evening on a $1 trillion spending agreement for federal agencies, just 28 hours before a deadline that would have led to a government shutdown.
After dropping policy prescriptions restricting travel to Cuba and a minor provision related to oversight of financial trades, members of the House and Senate appropriations committees gave final approval to the plan after a four-day standoff that was linked to a separate issue: President Obama’s demands to extend the payroll tax holiday for 160 million workers.
That negotiation, lawmakers and aides said, also could be headed toward an agreement, with lawmakers thinking about extending the tax break for two months to buy more time to determine how to fund it without increasing the federal deficit.
There was a broad shift in tone Thursday on Capitol Hill as leaders on both sides stopped saying the other would be to blame for a potential shutdown and began sending signs of progress.
Talks on the payroll tax began after Democrats dropped their demand that the cut be paid for with a new surtax on those who earn more than $1 million a year.
“Yeah, that’s gone,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) confirmed Thursday evening.
But it was not clear whether Republicans would drop a series of provisions added in the House intended to lure votes from conservatives who believe the tax holiday is bad economic policy.
The House “riders” included an effort to speed approval of the construction of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline, reforms to unemployment insurance, higher Medicare premiums for upper-income seniors and a year-long extension of a two-year pay freeze for federal workers.
The package also would extend unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and avert a scheduled cut in Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors.
Baucus, who is negotiating the tax and unemployment package for Democrats, said one consideration was to link the eligibility period of unemployment benefits to the level of joblessness in each state. That would mean that laid-off workers in Nevada — which has a 13.4 percent unemployment rate, the nation’s highest — would be eligible to receive benefits for a longer period than those in North Dakota, the state with the lowest unemployment rate.
A senior Democratic aide said talks over how to pay for the extended tax cut for the full year were ongoing, but an agreement had been secured to at least continue the tax break for two months, at a cost of $40 billion. Among the ideas being considered to pay for the cut, the aide said, were raising fees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collect from lenders, selling wireless spectrum controlled by the government and ending a tax break on the sale of corporate jets.
“There’s momentum building toward a comprehensive agreement, but still there are a lot of pieces to put together,” Baucus said.
To ensure the government remains funded, the White House and Democratic leaders signaled earlier Thursday that they would release their members to move ahead with the $1 trillion spending bill that the Appropriations Committee negotiated, paving the way for final votes on the measure in the House and the Senate.
A vote could occur as early as Friday, with Congress approving a temporary stopgap measure to provide time to complete their work when the legislation that is keeping the lights on ends at midnight.
Democratic leaders had blocked the bill from moving ahead after the White House said it wanted Congress to agree to extend the tax cut first and expressed lingering concerns about some of its provisions.
They included a provision barring the District from spending local tax money on abortion, another blocking the implementation of new standards for energy-efficient light bulbs and a third reversing an Obama administration decision to loosen rules for Americans who want to visit family members in Cuba.
The goal of linking the payroll tax issue to the spending bill was to ensure Republicans in the House could not pass the funding measure and then leave for the holidays — forcing Senate Democrats to accept a Republican proposal to extend the tax cut or let it expire.
At the White House on Thursday, Obama reiterated that the move would be unacceptable to him.
“Congress cannot and should not go on vacation before they have made sure that working families aren’t seeing their taxes go up by $1,000 and those who are out there looking for work don’t see their unemployment insurance expire,” he said.
The hardball tactic of linking tax holiday negotiations — as well as jobless benefits — to the completion of the must-pass spending bill aggravated some Democrats who had worked with Republicans for months to hammer out the appropriations deal.
Rep. James P. Moran (D-Va.), who sits on the key committee, said some Democrats had told the White House that “they should not be using federal employees as pawns in a larger issue.”
“I don’t blame them for trying to use every means available to them,” he said. “But I just don’t think that it’s right.”
The funding bill sets government spending for the year at $1.043 trillion, a level agreed to in the August deal that also raised the nation’s legal borrowing limit. The figure represents a 1.5 percent drop in spending from the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
That doesn’t count $115 billion for overseas military operations, a $43 billion dip since this past year as the war in Iraq winds down. It also doesn’t count $8.1 billion in emergency disaster-relief spending.
The measure outlines spending for three-fourths of the government — all but the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, State and Transportation, as well as NASA and some smaller agencies — which were settled in a November deal.
But it addresses funding for a wide swath of government programs, including Pell grants, border security and federal funding for the District of Columbia, and is designed to settle spending issues until nearly the next election, sparing the government the possibility of another shutdown. As Congress works to lower the federal deficit and reduce government spending, most domestic programs will see cuts.
The measure omits funding for the Internal Revenue Service to prepare for the 2014 implementation of the federal health-care law. But it increases funding for border agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It includes $8.4 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency — a $233 million drop from last year. And provides $550 million for Obama’s signature Race to the Top education program, which incentivizes school reform, a cut of more than 20 percent.
But the Indian Health Service would see funding rise to $237 million. And funding would increase for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

GOP Objects To 'Millionaires Surtax'; Millionaires We Found? Not So Much 9DEZ11

AN honest, fair and accurate report on the fallacy of the gop / tea-bagger claims that tax cuts for the rich and corporations create jobs......If that were true then the gop and tea-baggers in congress would have been able to produce dozens of millionaire job creators and they should have been able to provide the number of jobs they have created in the U.S. (not in Mexico, the prc or India, or anywhere else) because of the bush tax cuts and their extension by Pres Obama. The same applies to all those groups lobbying for the tax cuts for the rich and corporations. They should be able to produce a dozen of these millionaire job creators at the drop of a hat. The only ones who did respond were millionaire job creators that understand the concept of the social contract with the nation, who are not driven by greed, who believe in contributing to the greater good for the nation. The gop used to mean Grand Old Party, now it means GREED OVER PEOPLE, and the tea-baggers....well you know what they do.....

by Tamara Keith

Listen to the Story

Morning Edition

[4 min 37 sec]

 

For the second week in a row, the Senate on Thursday voted down proposals to extend the payroll tax holiday through next year. In the case of the Democrats' proposal, Republicans objected to the "millionaires surtax" that would be used to pay for it.
Ever since the idea of the surtax was introduced weeks ago, Republicans in Congress have railed against it, arguing that it is a direct hit on small-business owners and other job creators.
The argument is that many small-business owners report company profits on their individual taxes because of the way their businesses are structured. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., says the surtax would hurt their ability to hire.

Enlarge J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota says the "millionaires surtax" would hurt small-business owners' ability to hire new workers.

"It's just intuitive that, you know, if you're somebody who's in business and you get hit with a tax increase, it's going to be that much harder, I think, to make investments that are going to lead to job creation," says Thune.
We wanted to talk to business owners who would be affected. So, NPR requested help from numerous Republican congressional offices, including House and Senate leadership. They were unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.
So we went to the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax. Again, three days after putting in a request, none of them was able to find someone for us to talk to. A group called the Tax Relief Coalition said the problem was finding someone willing to talk about their personal taxes on national radio. So next we put a query on Facebook. And several business owners who said they would be affected by the "millionaires surtax" responded.
"It's not in the top 20 things that we think about when we're making a business hire," said Ian Yankwitt, who owns Tortoise Investment Management.
Tortoise is a boutique investment firm in White Plains, N.Y. Yankwitt has 10 employees and in recent years has done a lot of hiring.
As a result, Yankwitt says he's had many conversations about hiring, "both with respect to specific people, with respect to whether we should hire one junior person or two, whether we should hire a senior person."
He says his ultimate marginal tax rate "didn't even make it on the agenda."
Yankwitt says deciding to bring on another employee is all about return on investment. Will adding another person to the payroll make his company more successful?
For Jason Burger, the motivation is similar.
"If my taxes go up, I have slightly less disposable income, yes," said Burger, co-owner of CSS International Holdings, a global infrastructure contractor. "But that has nothing to do with what my business does. What my business does is based on the contracts that it wins and the demand for its services."
Burger says his Michigan-based company is hiring like crazy, and he'd be perfectly willing to pay the surtax.

"It's only fair that I put back into the system that is the entire reason for my success," said Burger.
For the record, both Burger and Yankwitt have made campaign contributions to Democrats in the past, but they say their views on the surtax are about the economics of their businesses and not their politics.
And they're not alone.
"I, like any other American, especially a business owner, I want to make as much money as I can and I want to keep as much money in my pocket as I can, but I also believe in the greater good," says Deborah Schwarz, who owns LAC Group, an information management firm with offices nationwide and in London.
Surtax or no, Schwarz says she hopes to keep hiring.
"We're going to keep on writing proposals, going after contracts, hopefully winning them, and when we do we're going to continue to hire people," says Schwarz.
All of this contradicts the arguments about job creators being made by Republicans in Congress.
"Those I would say were exceptions to the rule," responds Thune. "I think most small-business owners who are out there right now would argue that raising their taxes has the opposite effect that we would want to have in a down economy."
But those small-business owners apparently don't want to talk.